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 Schoo

I’ve been a canteen manager here for over 10 years. We used to sell frozen foods, chips toasties, flavoured milk. Now we have the new menu everything is made on the premises which is fabulous. It’s going very very well and I’ve had parents come up and actually say how wonderful it’s going. And they’re really quite surprised. The kids have embraced it

Returning families will be aware that we are involved in a School Food Project that aims at increasing our children’s love of healthy, unprocessed foods. A major part of this is the introduction of a new canteen menu that goes beyond the guidelines to provide tasty, nutritious meals and snacks.

I would like to congratulate you and your team for making a real difference to our school canteen. The food is both nutritious and delicious!!!

The School Food Project have helped us to completely transform our canteen menu. Moving away from a heat-and-serve canteen to one that makes nutritious healthy lunch and snack options, students, staff and parents have provided an all-round positive response to the changes that have been made. The SPF team worked tirelessly to support our canteen managers and canteen committee redesign the menu to allow for freshly cooked meals and snacks, as well as helped us in the redesign of the kitchen space to allow the meals to be cooked efficiently. The team also helped to promote the healthy school canteen idea to our community by attending school events and fundraisers where they would promote the changes and cook free samples, helping us to gain vital volunteer support.

In the initial stages, the School Food Project team also worked with the students to gather their feedback for menu options, offering free tastings. They also ran cooking classes for our Senior classes and provided the teachers with fantastic resources and teaching ideas in order to support the nutrition units which the whole school taught in conjunction with the launch of the new school canteen. SFP also provided needed assistance in setting up our online ordering system. It is amazing now to see students and staff enjoying a large range of nutritious canteen-made meals throughout the week. Walking through classrooms and the playground at lunch time with the waft of freshly made chicken teriyaki or the crunch of the ever popular Ramsgate Beach Box is a delight to see, with many visitors frequently commenting on the excellent variety of nutritious options available for purchase. Without the SFP team, it would have been a much longer road to travel to get our canteen to where it is today

The kids are raving about the food. Parents are reporting that kids who previously didn’t want to eat certain things are coming home really happy to eat the food and really excited about it.

The School Food Project is fantastic. The support from the team is unbelievable.  It’s all balanced, right down to how to set up our online ordering. The kids are absolutely loving it.

We are very fortunate to have The School Food Project here at St Michaels.  It’s really been a breath of fresh air for our community.  They transformed our canteen from the usual frozen pies, chips and ice blocks so all our meals are homemade.  It’s great to have food that has good nutritional value for our students

“The school went ‘cold turkey’, and completely wiped out food that coordinator Taj Shipway said, was simply not needed.  

“We used to have things like hash browns, frozen meat patties, and lots of processed food. We decided that we would make our own (chicken) bites with a beautiful tangy crumb recipe, and we freeze it in big batches.”

Green smoothies have been a hit, and are one of the items born from the School Food Project organisation, that the school was a pilot for…They helped us, trained our staff, and brought in an incursion – where kids make the smoothies and interact with the food,” Mrs Shipway said.”  The Leader, St George Shire 28.03.19

“Blakehurst Public School has been working in collaboration with the School Food Projectfor the past 12 months. During this time, our canteen menu has transitioned to ensure that our students are accessing tasty, healthy food options on a daily basis.

The School Food Projectprovided direct and ongoing support to the canteen manager and staff to ensure that they were able to confidently undertake the menu transitions and have continued to engage regularly with the canteen committee since the launch of the new menu, to ensure that the changes remain sustainable. We found the School Food Project staff to be friendly, professional and flexible in their approach.

Our students and families have provided very positive feedback on the canteen changes and we thank the School Food Projectfor their role in implementing these positive changes.

The School Food  Project team provided much needed guidance and support with the introduction of our schools Big Breakfast focus.  We were assisted with menu planning and organisational strategies to allow for a responsible approach to managing school funds to best meet the needs of the project’s focus.

The knowledge and obvious passion of the School Food Project team to make real achievable differences to students and their nutritional choices in the school setting was inspirational. Easy practical solutions were immediate alongside good nutritional facts, which helped our school to introduce a different start for students to ready themselves for learning through a nutritious big breakfast. Thank you to The School Food Project team – we couldn’t have had such a positive start without you beside us”.

Biggest thanks to our partners at ‘The School Food Project’ (SFP) @Theanna Christina Camargo Lima Melinda Wigan who have helped ensure a successful Badalya launch.

Due to their expertise & mentorship we have been able to “deliver a streamlined fresh food menu, to engage local fresh food suppliers, to serve in sustainable packaging and to minimize food waste” in a very short space of time.

Special thanks to Christina Camargo Lima who has spent the last two weeks in the Badalya kitchen training, guiding & teaching us. Ensuring we have the skills to successfully run a healthy, fresh canteen.

We will really miss her calm, bubbly & beautiful personality.  Biggest thanks SFP – you guys are amazing!!!