"We are education catering specialists, meaning that we focus solely on primary, secondary, academy and college clients. Healthy eating is at the very heart of our approach to food. We wholeheartedly encourage balanced diets within our dining rooms and significantly invest in training our teams. Our policy of purchasing a range of seasonal produce from local and regional suppliers enables us to deliver exceptional value."
Catering at Perins
Perins School catering is provided by Caterlink; the company chosen to provide our school meals service and who specialise in school catering. Caterlink provide delicious home cooked food each day and can cater for individual dietary requirements.
Caterlink’s primary objective is to provide pupils, staff and visitors with a choice of homemade, nutritious and well-balanced meals. All their food is made fresh on-site using quality produce in line with both Food For Life Silver or Gold standards, and the School Food Standards. They have won a number of awards for using honest, local produce, including Compassion in World Farming ‘Good Egg Award’ and ‘Good Chicken Award’ for their commitment to source only free range RSPCA assured eggs. They use red tractor meat, MSC sustainably sourced fish products and a range of Fairtrade products.
They deliver a termly three week menu cycle, which will be developed alongside local teams, development chefs and nutritionist with input from pupils and staff within the schools. They offer a range of both meat and vegetarian options, as well as a daily salad bar, vegetables and a choice of two fresh breads baked on site. Freshly cut fruit and natural flavoured yoghurt will be available daily as an alternative to their homemade desserts. All their desserts are in line with lower sugar recommendations and all contain less than 6.5g of free sugars per portion. Menus will reflect the requirements and tastes of pupils and staff and will be continually monitored to ensure that menu choices encourage the highest levels of uptake.
Cashless Catering System
Perins operates a cashless catering system in order to reduce both queuing times and issues with students carry large amounts of cash. To buy food at breakfast, break-time and lunch-time your child’s account will need to be topped up. As your child purchases food items, the money they spend is taken out and the new balance is shown at the end of the transaction.
Your child’s account can be created by scanning their face, no image is stored, but a mathematical template is created. The template cannot be viewed or used to recreate an actual facial image. Under the Data Protection Act this is a special category data that we are only able to process with your explicit consent. If you wish to have your child’s face scanned for use of the catering outlets you will have completed the Consent Form. If you do not wish to give consent your child will be able to make purchases in the Cafeteria with their name. Their identity will be verified against their ID photo.
Payment is preferable through the online payment system.
Special Diets/Allergies
Our caterers are committed to providing meals for students with special diet or allergy requirements, whether for religious, ethical, food intolerance or allergy reasons. Please complete this form here and return to school.
Free School Meals
We strongly encourage any families who are entitled to Free School Meals to register. All students’ accounts at Perins appear exactly the same and there is nothing to show that they are getting a free school meal. More information on eligibility and how to register can be found here on Hampshire County Council’s website.
Students entitled to a free meal have their balance updated every day with the amount allocated for a free school meal. This money can only be used at lunch and any under-spend or missed meals cannot be carried forward to the next day. Parents can also add extra money to their balance if they wish, in exactly the same ways as other, to buy items at break time or extra items at lunch time.
