School catering services

Tender description

Due to government changes to the Schools Funding Reforms in 2013 the Lambeth Schools Consortium (LSC) was formed to centrally supply the school meals service to participating Primary schools in Lambeth. Today, LSC represents 35 Primary schools and 4 nurseries and through its management committee is responsible for ensuring ‘best value’ is maintained for all participating schools. As a consequence, the management committee with agreement from its participating schools now wishes to conduct a tender process for the supply of school meals and catering related services. Collectively, the 39 schools have approximately 9 300 pupils serving approximately 1 240 000 meal per year. The contract is estimated to commence in September 2020 and will be for an initial period of 5 years plus an option to extend by 2 further years up to a maximum of 7 years. In order to deliver best value, the contract will be awarded either on a group or individual ‘Fully Inclusive Fixed Meal Price' basis. The estimated turnover to be GBP 15 000 000 (over the initial 5 year period). Objectives The appointed supplier will have significant experience of delivering quality catering services within primary schools and should have proven expertise of successfully increasing pupil meal uptake, together with a compelling attitude towards making the lunchtime service appealing, healthy and educational for children. Coupled with the familiarity and practice of successfully managing the TUPE process for a large workforce, the supplier should ideally have a strong operational base in London and able to leverage sufficient resources to ensure the required level of service is constantly maintained. There are number of Dining Centres within LSC which are schools without kitchens. These schools have their meals produced from a nominated production kitchen from within LSC which are schools with large kitchens. It will be imperative that bidders are able to provide either direct or via a third party the transportation of meals between the nominated production kitchens and associated Dining Centres. Ultimately, it is important that the supplier can demonstrate a proven ability to manage a well-organised and efficient catering service through the application of effective staff training, best practice and quality control that ensures continual ‘best value’ to each participating school.