Feeding Children At A Holiday Club

Three problems, none of them the menu

The numbers move. Attendance at a holiday club is not a list, it is a forecast. Eighty on Monday, fifty-five on Thursday, and nobody knows why.

The allergies are not negotiable. In a setting full of other people’s children, a mistake is not an inconvenience. It is the thing that must not happen.

Children do not sit down. They eat between activities, outdoors, standing, with one hand.

Everything about how kids club lunches work follows from those three facts rather than from what is on the menu.

Why individually packed

A shared platter has to be supervised by an adult who knows which child cannot have what. That adult is also running an activity for thirty children.

A labelled box does that job by itself, and it keeps doing it when the child has wandered off to a field. It is the single biggest difference between catering that helps a setting and catering that adds a job to somebody’s day.

Full allergen information goes on every box. Allergen versions cost exactly the same as the standard one, charging extra for a child’s medical requirement is not something we are willing to do.

What is in one

A main, sides, fruit and a treat. Sandwiches or a wrap, a pasta pot or a cheese and cracker pack; cucumber and carrot sticks, crisps, cheese cubes or a yoghurt tube; a fruit portion; a flapjack or an oat biscuit.

Balanced enough that a setting can stand behind it, and recognisable enough that children actually eat it, which is the constraint most “healthy kids food” fails on.

From £5.25 a head, delivered free.

HAF and funded programmes

Holiday Activities and Food programmes are a good share of what we deliver over the summer. The per-head model fits how that funding is usually reported, and we will invoice in a way your finance team can reconcile. Tell us the scheme when you book.

How the ordering works

Numbers confirmed the day before. If they move again, ring. A change first thing is usually manageable where a change at noon is not.

Delivery is daily rather than weekly. Lunches are made on the morning they go out, so a week delivered on Monday would not be food anybody should eat on Friday. A daily drop costs no more.

For a party rather than a club

Different thing, different menu. The kids party buffet is £8.00 a head cold or £10.50 hot, and it is proper party food rather than lunch boxes. Order it alongside an adult buffet from £5.50 a head: two orders almost always costs less than one buffet big enough for both, and both groups eat better.