Your Questions, Answered
At the School Lunch Collective, we know that questions can arise when it comes to providing nutritious meals for tamariki across Aotearoa. That’s why we’ve put together this comprehensive FAQ section to address the most common inquiries from schools, kura, and whānau.
Compass NZ, Gilmours and Libelle make up the collective, however we are enabled by a network of suppliers and partners from the top of the North Island to the bottom of the South. In fact, the collective works in partnership with a range of suppliers, local community and Iwi partners to consistently deliver the food to schools.
The collective shares a deep commitment to fuelling our tamariki and setting them up to learn and thrive. We can deliver both quality food and cost-effectiveness through bulk purchasing, streamlined logistics and supply chain, as well as a network of trusted supply partners, wholesalers, and distributors.
The School Lunch Collective has nutritionists and dietitians involved in menu development. They’ve undertaken nutritional analysis of recipes and will evaluate and monitor production of the meals to ensure they meet the agreed nutritional guidance. This means parents and their tamariki can expect family favourites to appear on a rotating, term by term menu, with most lunches in the program being delivered hot, and ready to eat every day. We will also have a range of cold lunches, that will be reviewed and swapped out from term to term.
Food is produced at scale in a central production unit, with the highest focus on food safety and quality. It’s then distributed to a number of central production kitchens across the country. There, the lunches are finished and delivered to the school, hot and ready to eat, the day of consumption.
We operate with the highest level of focus around food safety. We utilise a very strong digital health and safety process that will be applied at every step of the value chain, to ensure best practice standards are met.
The lunches will be delivered to schools through a distribution network of trucks and vans. Lunches are delivered to the schools in the Cambro Go-Box insulated carriers which are purpose made to maintain temperature for extended periods of both hot and cold food.
Once produced the lunches are frozen, then immediately dispatched to a holding facility for picking, packing and delivery to the central production kitchen.
The School Lunch Collective partners with a network of local providers to ensure we source local produce as much as possible.
The collective has a responsibility to manage our impact on the environment and are continually looking for more efficient ways of working. We are focused on four priorities: food waste, single-use plastics, plant-forward meals, and reducing carbon emissions. Everything we do to reduce our impact is underpinned by our Environmental Management System and delivered according to the ISO 14001:2015 standards.
We will use aluminium trays, which are recyclable and one of the safest ways to transport food. Using these trays means we can save on packaging, as well as heat and transport more lunches at once, saving energy and resource.
We will work with schools in areas potentially affected by severe weather to ensure they have supplies of non-perishable foods available should deliveries be delayed. We will also draw on the networks and logistics expertise of Gilmours and Foodstuffs who have a long track record of getting food to New Zealanders during challenging weather and natural events.
The School Lunch Collective is using a state-of-the-art central production unit in Hamilton. This is where all of the meals will be produced, before being frozen to seal in the freshness, and shipped to our 25 central production kitchens around the country.
There are 25 central production kitchens around the country. The locations of these central production kitchens ensures most schools fall within a 2 hour driving distance – ensuring we can get meals out to tamariki quickly and efficiently.
A map of the central production kitchens is available here.
We have reworked recipes and tested them extensively with students. Our goal is to provide meals tamariki will genuinely enjoy eating. Every meal includes vegetables or salad, often cleverly incorporated so that kids eat their entire meal without picking out the healthy bits.
The menu for this term can be found here.
We know tamariki generally prefer hot meals, but the School Lunch Collective also offer cold options, especially during warmer months. See the menu for more details.
Left over lunches and packaging will be collected by our team each day and taken back to the central production kitchens. We’ll then work with our waste management company to arrange for them to be disposed and recycled.
In most cases the waste and packaging will be collected daily by our delivery drivers.
No – the meals will arrive hot and ready to be served. They are transported in our Cambro Go-Boxes, which keep them hot, and even have smart sensors that record the temperature of the meals right through the whole food journey.
Yes – all the meals meet the agreed nutritional guidelines.
At the School Lunch Collective, we strive to accommodate as many dietary preferences as possible. Our ‘Halal Friendly’ meals are made with Halal suitable ingredients, and they do not contain pork or pork containing ingredients.
Our team are very well trained, and we have very strict cleaning and wash down procedures between each meal production. However, the way the meals are handled and prepared in our production facility is not strictly Halal, so our production facility is not Halal Certified. Therefore, we class our meals as ‘Halal Friendly’.
We recommend individuals with halal requirements exercise personal discretion and assess their comfort levels before consuming our meals
Whether you’re curious about our menu options, dietary accommodations, or the logistics of meal delivery, we’re here to provide clear and helpful answers. Explore the sections below to find the information you need, and if you don’t see your question here, feel free to get in touch – we’re always happy to help!
Let’s make lunchtime simpler and more enjoyable for everyone.