‘There will be teething problems’: Some school lunches arrive late

Thursday, 30 January 2025

The 2025 school lunch programme has landed to mixed reviews.

ACT leader David Seymour fronted media on Thursday morning and discussed the “teething issues” they were facing as they served up the new school lunch programme for 2025.

Outside Otahuhu College, where the new programme was serving up its first round of healthy lunches for the year, Seymour said there would “no doubt be teething problems,” including examples of meals being delivered late in the first few days.

“We apologise for that, but we also just point out that this is an operation of getting 230 thousand meals on time, at the right temperature, to children in communities up and down this country,” he said.

Seymour said it was also true of any food - whether it was a fast food joint, a Michelin star restaurant, “or your nan’s home cooking” - there would always be “a variety of opinions about the quality of the food”.

What has your experience of the new School Lunch Programme been so far? Let us know at newstips@stuff.co.nz

Seymour said the reasons behind the food delays were operational issues.

“They produce a large number of meals, they then have to defrost them. In the first week they got some timing wrong and I understand there’s been some complaints, particularly in Rotorua,” he said.

“We apologise for that but we also make the point that these are teething problems as you scale up an enormous operation.”

Photos circulating on social media purported to show some of the meals that had been served to students late.

Stuff approached the Education Ministry to verify the images were genuine. A spokesperson said it would “not be appropriate for me to comment on the authenticity of someone else’s photos”.

Seymour said it was “obvious” lessons would be learned.

“But I think you’ve got to put it in perspective, we’re heading towards 230,000 a day so obviously there will be people that find they get better headlines by focusing on a few hundred that were late, but let’s just get a balanced view of what’s happening here.”

Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said instead of investing in children’s nutrition and supporting local food suppliers, the Government “chose cost-cutting ahead of quality”.

“This Government slashed school lunch funding and handed the job to a global corporation instead of supporting local suppliers—now kids are stuck with worse meals,” she said.

“Their choice to prioritise cuts over proper nutrition for our kids is a disgrace.”