Benefactorum Recordatio Jucundissima Est

Things done well make the best memories

Sir Norton Knatchbull - 1637

Catering

Welcome to the Knatch Hatch and to Cucina!

The school uses cashless payments. To add money to the cashless payments: click here. Once money has been added, students can then use their fingerprint to make payments.

Here are a few key documents:

     

 

Cucina... Who are we?

Cucina Catering

Please take a look at our website www.cucina.co.uk

Unlike most caterers, Cucina take a hands on approach to ensure there is something on the menu for everyone. As educators we all want students to eat better, and yet dining choices are very rarely influenced by overt health messages, or tables groaning with crunchy vegetables. Our Executive Chefs not only run a three week menu cycle (see back page for an example of our current week 1 menu) to ensure no day is ever the same, but also run cooking classes, foodie groups where students can have their say and various competition throughout the year to engage and interest students, staff...and even parents! Cucina is jam packed with real foodies.

Our belief is to bring restaurant-quality food into education. We don’t operate canteens, food halls or cafeterias; our outlets are all proper restaurants, with everything implied by that. Each of our sites has its own trained chef and all Cucina meals are cooked from ‘scratch’ starting with fresh ingredients...many of which are locally sourced.

Cucina

Theme Days

Theme Days with Cucina never fail to interest all our students and staff and make lunch times fun. With two special themed days per month, the restaurant teams always go above and beyond to mix up their menus for a day and present a varied choice for everyone to try new flavours and dishes. Look out for our teams in fancy dress, the sillier the better. All of our theme days are in keeping with popular events and days throughout the year and these will always be advertised in advance of the change of menu so students, staff & parents are aware. There will be a Theme Day Planner displayed around your school to make sure you know what’s coming up next. We like to keep things fresh and we recognise that a big part of our job is to keep you coming back to your restaurant every single day - not just because you are hungry but because there is an ever changing range of fresh exciting food made just for you. Please refer to school website for upcoming theme days and theme day calendar.

Did you know we do take away too?

Cucina offers much more than school dinners! With lots of offers available throughout the day, we also provide food to take away too! Pizzas are popular and these can be made exactly how you like them to takeaway. Orders must be placed with your school chef on a morning and will be ready at the end of the day. We also offer take home service on all of our main meals, you can choose any two portions from our hot selection to save time making healthy delicious meals on an evening. Have a look at our menus to see what dishes we offer, from Chinese dishes to Mexican Chilli Con Carne, there is a wide variety of choice to suit all appetities.

Meal Deals

We also offer various reward cards which entitle students to free fruit pots should they dine with us every day. Coffee and hot chocolate is also very popular and we offer a reward card to all students, just as you would see in coffee shops on the high street, buy 6 hot drinks and receive the 7th for free. We also offer the fruit reward, buy 5 pieces of fruit, get the 6th free.

Allergies, Intolerances & Dietary Requirements

We understand that there are students and staff that often need a little extra guidance when making their menu choices. This may be due to allergies, intolerances or dietary requirements. Our menus for the following year are signed off within the summer holidays however from 2014 legislation made it compulsory that all caterers must be able to advise customers of the ingredients and allergens of their dishes. With this in mind, we always produce a full overview of the allergens in our dishes which is available from September.

In addition to our allergen breakdown, we produce all of our cold deli shelf edge labels with the allergen icons on them, making choosing an appropriate dish easier.

Nutritional Analysis ~ Dietary Requirements

For students and staff with dietary requirements we advise that they initially seek advice from a health professional or dietician. We are often contacted by dieticians and are able to produce an estimated calorie and carbohydrate nutritional analysis of our menu. This can often be used to assist with menu choice and ensure that your diet fits in line with your particular requirements.

Vegetarian Options

We offer a full menu with a variety of options for any students who follow a vegetarian diet. For most main meals which contain meat we replicate these so they are available to vegetarians.

Vegan Dishes

Due to the increase in students eating a vegan diet, we introduced the naturally range to suit their requirements. Please speak to your chef at any point for him to advise on dishes that are vegan friendly.

Your Chef

Your chef will be available to speak to each day from breakfast until close of school day. All of our chefs are highly skilled and most have been in the catering industry for many years. Should you need to discuss a requirement or issue please feel free to do so... they are more than happy to help.

Cucina... Going Greener

Over the last 13 years, Cucina have engaged in many initiatives, but often quietly behind the scenes, and we now want to share with you the actions we have already taken, as well as our plans to ensure our restaurants, and the future of our planet, are safeguarded.

  • We have always carefully selected our food stuffs, and now purchase the majority of our ingredients from within the UK; this not only supports our economy, but also reduces food miles and carbon significantly. The introduction of multi-temperature delivery vehicles has also helped to reduce our carbon impact.
  • Through waste oil recycling schemes, we have created enough bio-diesel in the last 12 months alone to remove the equivalent of 113 family cars from the road.
  • We support the “Drop 4 Drop” charity, which has resulted in the building of two new water wells in the developing world through sales of Life Water. Our first in India and our second in Uganda, give families access to a sustainable source of clean drinking water, improving both their health and the future opportunities of their children. We plan to build 20 wells by the year 2020.
  • One of the challenges for a fast-flowing food service, catering for hundreds of customers in a very short time frame, in restaurants with limited seating space, is there will always be a need for speed. Pre-packaged, ready to serve and eat foods are therefore essential to a large degree, so we have taken the following steps to ensure our packaging is environmentally friendly:
  • We use packaging only where needed and reduce this to a minimum;
  • Our sandwich packaging already uses less than 50% of the plastic of previous versions such as sandwich cassettes;
  • We use compostable and biodegradable packaging already for much of our range…and as more becomes available and affordable, this will be introduced too;
  • We use thin recyclable water bottles in our restaurants, and refuse to buy coloured plastic bottles that cannot be recycled;
  • We use paper cups for our regular hot drinks and pure fruit slushes. We will introduce small paper cups too shortly, as well as paper straws to replace plastic ones;
  • We are about to launch a “use your own cup” initiative for teachers and sixth formers.

This is just a snapshot of the steps we have taken so far…but now we need your help too.

Whilst the waste already collected from your school does not end up in our oceans and is destined for landfill sites or incineration facilities, reducing non-recyclable waste is the challenge ahead of us!  Together with you, our school partners, we want to introduce robust recycling schemes in each of our restaurants, as simply collecting and segregating waste inside the restaurant that then gets thrown back together in the external bins, makes no sense at all. We need your investment into facilities to change this please.

  • We are undertaking trials with the aim of introducing a range of initiatives and tracking the benefits and costs of launching these as permanent programmes within all of our restaurants. These will involve, but are not limited to:
  • The addition of plastic bottle, paper and in some cases, cardboard recycling where this is not already present;
  • The investment in paper cup and can collection points within the restaurants;
  • The introduction of several more biodegradable, recycled and recyclable packaging ranges and even edible packaging when available;
  • The introduction of paper straws;
  • The introduction of wooden or starch based disposable cutlery; or investment into traditional metal varieties and magnetic bins;
  • The introduction of our cupless coffee card for teachers, encouraging them to use their own cups for hot drinks.

I know many of us are quite rightly focusing on this hugely important issue. I think Marks and Spencer have summarised their approach in the perfect way; their environmental policy is “our Plan A, because there is no Plan B”. We hope that in the next year Cucina, with your help, will be able to launch a sustainable eco friendly system.