School meals
It is the aim of the school that all students should have a nutritious meal every day and to this end the catering team is constantly seeking new ways to improve the range of food provided and to evolve our food service.
The catering team has set its sights on continually improving school meals and changing student’s perception of food, whilst adhering to the following principles:
- Eat less salt or no added salt
- Eat less fat
- Increase Omega 3 foods to help lower cholesterol
- No deep fried foods at all
- Incorporate fruit into puddings
- Encourage students to eat ‘5 a day’.
Free school meals
If you have children under 19 and in full-time education, you may be able to get free school meals for them.
Am I eligible?
To be eligible for free school meals you must be in receipt of one of the following benefits:
- Income Support
- Income Based Jobseekers Allowance
- Child Tax Credit (not including Working Tax Credit)
- Guaranteed Element of State Pension Credit
- Asylum Seekers
- Proof of support under part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999.
- An Income-related Employment and Support Allowance.
To apply for for Free School Meals please visit this website.
We are Cucina
Twickenham School caterers Cucina is jam-packed with real foodies. Our belief is to bring restaurant-quality food to education and business organisations across the UK.
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 chefs, and all Cucina meals are cooked from ‘scratch’, starting with fresh ingredients many of them local.
Each of our dishes contain at least one fruit or vegetable but none are promoted as the specifically ‘healthy option’.
Our focus is always on:
- Great food cooked from scratch every single day
- Innovative menus that change regularly to keep interest
- Highly skilled teams equipped to do a great job
- Going ‘above and beyond’ to become part of our clients daily life
Our future health and prosperity depends on ensuring that the next generation is better fed. In association with ‘The School Food Trust’, ‘Food for Life Partnership’ and other organisations, we work hard to promote higher standards of food in Education.
Give them what they want. Believe it or not, this has always been the secret to healthy eating. It’s just that before now, ‘what they like’ almost always meant low-quality, fattening and unhealthy food.
We have a simple philosophy: to serve fantastic fresh food, quickly with a smile, to satisfied customers who return every day.
Delicious lunch? Shhhhh! It’s healthy too!
As educators we all want students to eat better, and yet their dining choices are very rarely influenced by overt health messages, or tables groaning with crunchy vegetables. The major drivers continue to be taste, cost and convenience.
That’s why Cucina’s menus are interesting, fun and different. Our approach, which we call stealthy eating has helped us more than double the uptake of school dinners. It has also enabled our partner schools to significantly reduce their catering costs.
Our food, handmade on site by skilled chefs and attractively presented, is largely sourced from fresh UK ingredients. It’s also full of nutritional goodness, but that isn’t something we like to shout about. Our customers continue to choose ‘healthy’ simply because that’s the food they like to eat. Isn’t this the way it should be, after all?
Teaching through their tastebuds
Healthy food? Absolutely. Although young customers tend to put it in other ways, like, ‘wicked’, ‘the future’, ‘gorge(ous)’, ‘cool’, ‘way better than the shops’, and ‘Mum, I want school lunches’.
The more that students like our food, the more they get to know about it. Then, with the help of chefs and kitchen staff, they start to try other options.
We KNOW that eating well is crucial to improving ability and behaviour. In helping students to eat better, Cucina aims to impart a genuine love of great food and help grow knowledge in the process.
Cashless catering
Click here for more information on how to pay for school meals.
