By Mrs Tombs (Deputy Catering Manager)

Each term, I organise a menu planning forum with students from the Senior School. The forum meets four times during its cycle, aiming to help them create and design menu items for the following term. Its task is to gather feedback and suggestions from their classmates and assist the Green Kitchen Team in deciding what gets served at lunchtime.

The first meeting focused on outlining the forum's plan. The students discussed considerations in menu planning, such as seasonality, sustainability, costing, and how items perform in a hot plate setting. They created a plan regarding what topics the forum needs to discuss with their classmates and how to gather feedback from their year groups.

During the second meeting, the students shared the feedback they received from their classmates. They discussed ideas, potential successes and obstacles with certain dishes. Stand out dishes from this session were sushi and noodles with students stating that they would like to see sushi available and that they would like to see more noodles available at lunch. Additionally, they proposed having food stations during lunchtimes, like the nacho bar from the previous term and a burger topping bar for customising their burgers. There was also a discussion about cultural menu day takeovers, giving students the chance to vote.

The third meeting, which was arguably the most popular session, involved the Greens Kitchen Team creating the menu items suggested by the students. The forum members tasted each dish and discussed what worked and what could be improved. This term, they sampled sushi, a noodle bar inspired by the street food stand 'Chopstix', tacos, enchiladas, miso soup, sub rolls, and warm cookie dough with ice cream. Valuable feedback was gathered; they deliberated on the feasibility of producing enough sushi for everyone and decided to make it available for purchase this term while the Greens Kitchen Team found a way to cater to all lunchtime students. We are delighted that on next term's menu, there will be a noodle/rice bar, tacos, enchiladas, sub rolls, chicken nuggets, a nacho station, a burger-building station, a pancake station, and a half-termly themed day where the students vote for a cultural takeover of the menus, all making it onto the menus - all led by the forum.

We now look forward to our final meeting which will take place next term. We are very proud of our forum, it is extremely important to us that the students have a voice during the menu planning process, we want to be creating food that is not only healthy and nutritious but is exciting and appealing to students.

See photos from the tasting session here.