This is what school lunches looked like for Wellington’s Mana College last year, and what they look like now

Monday, 3 March 2025

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Wellington principals say the previous school lunch model using local providers was working well.

The new model is experiencing ongoing issues, including poor food quality, mix ups with dietary requirements and resource-intensive distribution for school staff.

The Principals’ Federation has written to Associate Minister David Seymour, calling for a return to the previous system.

When Anna Bannon’s business was providing school lunches to Porirua’s Mana College last year, she was on-site every day.

Left: Lunches from Waitoa Catering last year. Right: This year’s butter chicken.

“At the end of lunch time we would see what had been eaten, which is a good form of feedback, but the kids would also talk to us. Fist pumps were really good for gauging feedback,” she said.

“One day we did tuna wraps and the students didn’t like them. They were quite vocal, which is fine, we just never did them again.”

Until the new school lunch model featuring the centrally-located School Lunch Collective was introduced this year, Bannon’s Waitoa Catering provided lunches for two specialist schools ,as well as Mana College. She had six staff working alongside her, who have since been let go.

“They were local people with family members in the schools,” she said.

School lunches prepared for Mana College by Waitoa Catering.

Asked about what she has seen of the lunches being provided this year, she was emotional.

“It is just really sad, because I know how much those kids need a filling meal in the middle of the day that they can look forward to,” she said.

“The foods they are being given now are edible, but they're not made with much respect. And, you know, it's the love and respect that goes into them that is the important thing.”

According to Mana College principal Jeff Chapman, the previous local model was working well. The meals were reliable, high-quality and nutritious, he said.

“It was a nice little circular local economy, and it was working great. The contractor was providing local employment and using local food,” he said.

That is a stark contrast to many schools’ experiences this year.

“The main two issues for us are the massive drop in quality, … as well as the amount of time that my deputy principals are having to put into serving the lunches and distributing them,” said Ben Hague, principal of Avalon Intermediate School which moved from their local provider, Kāpura, to the Collective this year.

He said he was patient when it came to teething issues, noting how big of a logistical operation it was to feed kids all around the country.

But it was asking a lot of school staff, and of the kids eating them. “Because there is so much left over, especially when it's not a very nice meal, we're spending a lot of time trying to distribute it into the community because it is terrible seeing so much food go to waste,” he said.

Porirua's Mana College has hired someone to help distribute school lunches provided by the School Lunch Collective.

Calls to return to a local model

On Thursday, the Principals’ Federation wrote to Associate Minister David Seymour, calling for a return to the previous system relying on local providers.

Butter chicken curry - previously one of the most popular at Mana College, now tastes like “cardboard” students say.

School lunches are provided to Maraeroa College in bulk and heated daily on-site.

Vegan students at Mana College received their school lunch in a plastic bag one day.

In a statement to Stuff, Minister Seymour made clear he had no intention of doing that, saying the previous model is untenable.

“The priority for the school lunches programme must be delivering lunches to students, at a cost affordable to the taxpayer. It was impossible to justify the old model when it’s possible to deliver the programme at half the cost.”

“The minimum size, weight and nutritional standards of the school lunch meals have not changed with the introduction of the new programme. What has changed is the cost. The new model costs $170 million per year less than the old model, and gets the same results for children. Principals are doing the students a disservice by teaching them they should never be grateful for anything and complain about everything.”

Food quality still a concern under new model

The lunches provided by Waitoa Catering last year were made from scratch and included anything from butter chicken and beef chop suey, to filled rolls, burgers and nachos.

The food was popular - and having it prepared on-site meant the students were engaged with what was coming, Bannon said.

“I would make butter chicken curry from scratch with spices, garlic and onion. It was a long process, but if you are starting at six o’clock in the morning the smell goes around the whole school and students would look forward to it.”