OUR MISSION
Transforming school canteens to provide fresh, tasty, nutritious food for every child.
Together, through better school food, we can make a significant contribution towards children’s happiness, academic attainment, opportunities and health – whilst educating positive food choices for life!
Welcome to the School Food Project.
Founded in 2016, The School Food Project is a registered charity committed to empower, train and mentor canteen staff in how to transform their canteens to deliver a viable service of nourishing lunches and snacks, cooked from scratch, using whole fresh food
School canteens are the largest take away food outlet for Australian children [1], and canteen managers are undertaking the heroic task of feeding our future generation.
Our Fresh food Canteen Kit training model and resources were developed during the pilot schools partnerships. Our team comprising of a chef, nutritionist and project manager worked alongside canteen staff and within school communities – principals, students, teachers and parents. Together we crafted our training model of practical culinary skills, streamlined routines and developed tasty cooked from scratch recipes so that canteens are able to successfully deliver delicious and nutritious menus that appeal to children.
Our services can be tailored to meet your school community’s needs.
To embed the fresh food menus, we educate to promote the canteen initiative. Our community engagement program, and classroom cooking and nutrition workshops bring students, parents and teachers together on the fresh food canteen journey. As a result, the canteen is the nourishing hub of the community modeling and educating fresh food choices beyond the school playground
We also link an existing gardening program to the canteen service and offer a cooked breakfast program for schools who would like their students to have a better start to their day of learning.
All our recipes are portioned and costed, and meet The Australian Dietary Guidelines, 2013. Our menus also meet the NSW Healthy School Canteen strategy food and drink criteria.
If you are interested in improving your canteen’s service or need some
fresh ideas, we would love to hear from you.
The School Food Project is an independent voice in school food
provision, with Deductible Gift Recipient status
HEAR WHAT THEY’RE SAYING
“The School Food Project has completely transformed our canteen from selling warmed food to a canteen that sells fresh, home-made produce. As a principal, for me to walk around the playground and see the children who had previously no fruit or vegetables tell me they ENJOY eating vegetables and rainbow fruit kebabs, whole meal bread, fresh salads on rolls – it completely warms my hearts. It’s something we couldn’t have done without the SFP.
We didn’t have the capacity to come up with the recipes, to find out the nutritional value or to source these products. Without SFP I wouldn’t have been able to change our canteen. But now the canteen is something the community has OWNERSHIP over and it’s something our children are really proud of. And it’s feeding into all sorts of other programs in the School.”
– Michelle Hostrup
Principal, Daceyville Public School.