The experience we have gained working with schools has enabled us to develop a range of services to complement our core business of assisting schools with a full management service.

These services reflect the needs of clients who engage a contractor or a local authority to deliver their school catering but may need outside expertise to relook at their current provision.

Lack of time, expertise and resources?

We work to your brief to provide the service you want, to ensure effective in house management. This service includes:

• Dedicated management support, telephone helpline and regular visits.
• Sourcing of suppliers and supply chain auditing and monitoring.
• Budget preparation and monitoring.
• Full Personnel support and recruitment.
• Menu advice to meet the New Food Based Standards (September 2006), taking account of pupil and school preferences. www.schoolfoodtrust.org.uk
• Nutritional Standards Monitoring.
• Termly Audit Report.
• Food Safety Advice, HACCP systems and Food Safety Manual.
• Health and Safety Advice.
• Pupil Focused Initiatives and Consultation.
• Support to achieve the Healthy Schools Standard. www.healthyschools.gov.uk/
• Advice on kitchen design/refurbishment.
• T.U.P.E. transfer arrangements and preopening programme.

This service includes:

• Price monitoring and benchmarking.
• Value for money audit.
• Renegotiation of suppliers and supplier terms.
• Supplier chain due diligence monitoring audit.

We are currently requesting that all our suppliers provide us with product analysis in order to comply with nutrient based standards.

The following link may prove useful:

www.fairtradeschools.net/schools

The menu is key to a successful service.

We are actively involved in promoting a healthy lifestyle and healthy choices.

We contribute to the growing schools programme, Grab 5, Get Active Get Cooking and most recently with a Birmingham Primary Health Care Trust. www.sustainweb.org/grab5

CMC hold a license to promote the 5 A Day’s logos within our menus.

This service includes:

• Product and menu cycle reviews including nutritional analysis.
• Assess equipment requirements.
• Provide suitable menus for your needs within your budget.
• Investigate local food sources regarding future food sustainability.
• Source local organic fruit and vegetable suppliers.
• Consult staff and pupils regarding proposed changes.
• Work alongside catering team and pupils to introduce the new menu concept.
• Monitor staff and pupil reaction through sales analysis.

Whole School Food Policies now form an important part of several school based benchmarking exercises, namely compliance with the New Food based Standards to enable you to achieve the National Healthy Schools Standard. This will be a useful tool as evidence in future OFSTED inspections.

www.nutrition.org.uk

Providing a catering service involves a plethora of procedures and policies that need to be set up and monitored to ensure compliance with legislation. This service includes:

• The Food Safety Act (General Food Hygiene) Regulations 1995, Food Hygiene Regulations 1995 and Food Safety Legislation (HACCP) 2006, England.
• The Health and Safety At Work Act 1974.
• Environmental Health Officer Reports.
• Kitchen Health & Safety.
• Risk Assessments.
• Manuals for Food Safety, Health and Safety and HACCP.
• Staff Training.
• Pest Control.
• Kitchen Hygiene.
• Please note CMC is an accredited training centre for the Institute of Environmental Health.

The following link may prove useful:

www.hse.gov.uk/

This service includes advice on:

• The equipment needed to deliver a catering service for the future.
• Kitchen / dining room upgrade initiatives.
• Sourcing the right equipment.
• Training support for the effective use of the equipment.

This service includes:

• Pay reviews.
• Industry staffing level ratios.
• General employee relations.
• Skills audits.
• Staff development programmes.
• Recruitment.
• Training. We are accredited by the Chartererd Institute of Environmental Health to train food safety to the level of the Intermediate Food Hygiene Certificate. www.cieh.org
• Managing Sickness.

Whether you have room for a few pots to grow herbs for the school kitchen or an allotment, we can assist your school to develop its outdoor classroom.

We can provide horticultural advice throughout the gardening calendar to allow your pupils first hand experience of their natural environment.

The following links may prove useful:

www.teachernet.gov.uk/growingschools/

www.rhs.org.uk/schoolgardening/

www.gardenorganic.org.uk/schools_organic_network/

When a contract is put in place there is always a need to ensure that the performance of the provider is monitored on a regular basis. Many schools do not have the resources to check if the provider is performing according to budget projections or if they are forefilling the promises they made within their tender documents.

We are able to offer a bespoke service to clients either as a one off catering audit or on a monthly basis to ensure schools get the best value from their current arrangements.

Under the current challenging times with catering under the spotlight, it is even more important to ensure that the service runs at its most effective in both monetary terms and standard of food served. This service includes:

• Menu reviews to include compliance with the Government Food Based Standards September 2007.
• Benchmark the menus, services and prices offered against six other similar schools.
• Identify shortfalls in service quality.
• Review the speed of service, queuing arrangements and counter layouts.
• Meetings with staff and pupil representatives to determine perceptions and expectations of the service.
• Review catering structure and staffing levels.
• Review training offered to staff and undertake a skills audit.
• Review arrangements for the procurement of catering provisions and consumables.
• Review financial systems within the catering department and school.
• Review current operating budget and it's effect on school resources.
• Review systems and procedures to ensure compliance with regard to Food Safety and Health and Safety Legislation.

We are able to offer clients assistance with preparing a school tender and specification through to the full service of taking the catering out to tender and managing the project process dependent on client needs. These services may include:

• Establishing with the school the required provision and standards.
• Preparation of catering specification, tender documents and contract document.
• Advise on advertising of tenders to comply with Audit guidelines.
• Managing contractor site visits and site meeting.
• Detailed objective financial and operational evaluation of the tenders received.
• Provide shortlist recommendations.
• Contractor liaison pre and post contract commencement.
• Contractor monitoring during the duration of the contract period.

We are able to offer clients project management consultancy to assist schools with achieving specific initiatives.

Our specialist project management services include:

• Cashless Catering - Assisting schools with procuring and introducing a cashless card or biometric system.
• Marketing - Assisting schools to maximise income generation potential through creative marketing techniques.
• Customer Satisfaction Surveys - Questionnaire design and analysis.
• A Chef for a Day - Supporting schools to introduce new menu concepts with the support of a Chef.

From 1st September 2008 the Government’s nutrient-based standards came into effect in primary schools. At the same time there are changes to the food-based standards for school lunches. From 1st September 2009 the Government’s nutrient-based standards come into effect in secondary schools.

The Government’s nutrient-based standard will be mandatory which means that schools will have a legal responsibility to comply. CMC have teamed up with our preferred partner Hport who will support us with a nutritional analysis software system specifically for school catering. This will enable us to create great, delicious food for your pupils with the safe knowledge that they are nutritionally compliant. The benefit of purchasing the system through CMC is that once menus and recipes have been developed we can then assist your cooks and chefs to implement them. CMC do this by visiting your school and providing on site training. All our consultants at CMC are qualified chefs who have vast experience in school catering. They have the gastronomic knowledge to tweak a recipe to ensure compliance very easily without upsetting tried and tested methods that have been deployed within the school sector for generations. CMC are mindful that these changes can be disruptive within the kitchen but our onsite mentoring ensures that this is an effective, smooth and trouble-free process.

Did you know that the School Lunch Grant 2008–2011 is available to all schools and you can use it to pay for nutrient analysis software and the expertise to operate this software? Our easy to use software lets your catering staff check that menus meet the food and nutrient standards and it provides easy to use recipe cards which have the preparation method or instructions for each recipe. The recipe cards can be updated to show the correct quantities for the number of portions you want to prepare. You can also see daily store pick lists and weekly commodity order lists. This information can really improve the preparation of food and helps you tightly follow the recipes.

The system bases costing on your suppliers' food costs The menu costing information is based on your food costs and the menu numbers you are serving. There is also the facility to factor in labour costs for recipe preparation. With the food costs easily accessible you can confidently compare suppliers' prices. Better food better health! Pupils can learn about balanced diets using interactive tools that are based on your school's menus. The topics covered include food groups and sources of vitamins and minerals in food. Pupils' choices Monitoring pupils' choices, may seem like a tall order but it is possible to monitor every pupils' choices using our point of sale software. Once you are meeting the nutrient standards, you can move to this next level of personal care for pupils. The results of monitoring pupils' choices are both fun and informative. A report for each pupil outlines the balance of nutrition in their diet. There is no more direct and effective educational tool. New menus and recipes. We will be developing and maintaining a database of menus and recipes that you can import into your database. We welcome contributions to this database.