Food firm secures 1m meals a year schools contract
WELSH beef is on the menu for pupils across Denbighshire now a Gwynedd food distribution company has won the contract to supply over a million school meals a year for the county.
Harlech Foodservice of Llanystumdwy won the three-year contract from a US-owned multinational and have pledged that wherever possible the county’s seven secondary and 48 primary schools will receive food sourced in North Wales.
Harlech Commercial Director Mark Lawton said: “This is a hugely important contract for us to win against competition from one of the biggest wholesalers in the UK. It shows we have the quality and the capacity to supply and deliver high quality food, including beef sourced from farms in North and Mid Wales, for well over a million meals a year.
“Pupils in Denbighshire eat 7,500 meals ● a day and each week the head cooks in each of the 55 schools in Denbighshire place their orders for some 35,000 meals and we have the capacity to guarantee delivery for that through our fleet of lorries and vans. It extends the service we provide for schools in North Wales where we already supply similar numbers for Gwynedd and Conwy which makes for over 100,000 school meals a month.”
Cllr Huw Hilditch-Roberts, Denbighshire Council’s Lead Member for Education, Children’s Services and Public Engagement, said: “We’re very pleased to have been able to award this contract to a North Wales company. Ensuring pupils get healthy, varied and nutritious meals to improve learning and development is a priority for the Council.
“We know the majority of their meat comes from their own farms and is prepared by their own butchers and that is another box we can tick.”