The culinary expertise of Cardiff Catering has been celebrated with a series of award nominations.
The Council’s catering service has once again proved it has all the right ingredients with recognition in a number of industry awards schemes.
The service, whose 800 staff provides meals to 140 schools in the city, as well as therapeutic diets for pupils, vending services and occasion catering for business meetings, has been shortlisted in the 2011 Educatering Excellence Awards, Innovation category for the Live N Cooking initiative.
Live N Cooking is a live demonstration showpiece aimed at raising awareness of the high standards and scope of Cardiff Catering and was developed to educate, stimulate, and demonstrate just how easy it is to create healthy, nutritious and affordable meals in little more than 20 minutes. The format is an interactive cooking demonstration of easy, tasty and affordable food by Executive Chef Martyn Payne, with nutritional information and facts about each of the ingredients used.
The scheme has been a huge success since its inception, igniting young people’s interest in cooking and healthy eating.
The awards ceremony will take place on October 17 at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington.
Moorland Primary School’s kitchen manager Yvonne Nelson has also been shortlisted in the Primary School Caterer of the year category in the Educatering awards. Yvonne heads a team with a total of 66 years experience of providing school meals and has become an integral part of the school by working closely with the senior management team.
With her team, she consistently provides a high level of service and has worked to increase the uptake of school meals at Moorland as well as engaging pupils in a wide range of activities from growing produce to dining room displays and recipe development.
After winning the Local Authority Catering Association (LACA) Welsh Catering Management Team of the Year Award in February 2011, Cardiff Catering was shortlisted in the top three at the UK awards earlier this year while Moorland Primary School was a finalist in the Best Catering Service Team at the APSE (Association for Public Service Excellence) Service Awards in Bristol earlier this month.
Executive Member for Education and Lifelong Learning, Cllr Freda Salway, said: “Cardiff Catering consistently provide a fantastic school meals service across the city and it’s great to hear about the many award nominations the service receives. Despite their success, the team never rests on its laurels and is always looking for ways to improve by delivering an even better product to its customers. I think it’s fantastic the way they have engaged young people through the Live N Cooking initiative.
“Congratulations to the team once again for gaining this national recognition and good luck for the awards ceremony next month. I am very proud of the high standard of service provided by the team here in Cardiff.”
