More factory than kitchen: PM steps behind the scenes at school lunch programme

Friday, 26 March 2021

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern visited Bite L.A.B, a division of Montana Catering, which is supplying 18,000 lunches to schools in Waikato and Manurewa South.

The prime minister donned a hair net to watch how thousands of pasta salads are packed for free school lunches from a Hamilton kitchen.

Jacinda Ardern visited Bite L.A.B, a division of Montana Catering, which supplies 18,000 lunches across Waikato and Manurewa South for the Ka Ora, Ka Ako healthy school lunch programme.

The Government initiative was launched in 2019 for Years 1-8 and was expanded in 2020 to include some high schools.

Bite L.A.B is more factory than kitchen, Montana Catering director Dallas Fisher told Stuff, and producing 9000 nutritious, home-made, tasty lunches from the site is a big commitment.

* Lunch rush: The challenge of serving up free school meals in Manawatū

The menu in the lunchbox: chicken pasta salad, grapes and packets of popcorn.

* Free school lunches in South Canterbury popular and tasty

“We have pulled out all stops,” he said.

The school lunch programme was the 'hardest thing” the company had ever done, Montana Catering director Dallas Fisher told Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

“But this goes back to what I first said, not only are we doing something at scale which is interesting and innovative, but it's right, it is the right thing to do.”

Montana Catering won its contract in December 2020, and started supplying the lunches in February 2021.

Ardern wandered around the Hamilton-based kitchen on Thursday, meeting chefs, caterers, assemblers and packers.

Large pots of chicken pasta salad were being cooked up and mixed for the lunchbox, accompanied by piles of grapes and packets of popcorn.

Montana Catering director Dallas Fisher said 100 staff worked to design menus, cook and assemble the thousands of school lunches.

Rows and rows of the identical recyclable packages were swept along the conveyor belt, where they would be tightly packed, then delivered to the schools.

In Hamilton, about 100 staffers work to cook and supply the lunches, which get delivered to underprivileged schools in Hamilton, Tokoroa and Te Awamutu. Another 100 staffers work in Penrose for the Manurewa South schools.

At one stage, Fisher mentioned the changing iteration of the cheese sandwich, as the caterers discovered the kids’ taste.

“At first, the kids didn’t like the edam cheese, so we changed it to colby,” Fisher told the prime minister.

“Now the cheese sandwiches are actually a bit of a hit.”

Ardern replied she heard some students loved the grated cheese because they could put it in the toastie pie machine.

“This is the far and away the hardest thing we’ve ever done,” Fisher told Ardern. “It's a hard audience, five to 17-year-olds.”

Speaking to Stuff, Ardern said Hamilton High School students told her they liked some Government lunches more than others.

“That’s probably likely to happen with a lunchbox as well.”

It’s a mostly primary school focussed programme, so the Government was testing feedback at high schools, she said.

Producers would know how many school lunches went uneaten and the Government was evaluating that, she said.

'Some of the feedback I’ve got from schools is that actually it’s been really good. They hear that kids are trying very new food, and that's taking time to adapt.”

Ardern said there had been reports from Child Poverty Action Group for some time, calling for food in schools.

“For me it's all about child wellbeing, what can we do to make sure that we have kids who aren't missing school because of not having something to take to school.”