Luke Consiglio

What we found in the pilot was an increase in food costs and a 15% drop in uptake.

If any company in our industry saw 15% off of their sales, none of us would exist anymore.

And also the school food people who I sit on the national board for and I also represent, we've been campaigning for more funding for school meals for a long time now.

And if the school food stand is going to change, which we're all in support for, we all want the best meals for children, but if this is going to drive further increasing costs...

the government need to support that.

We're a fresh food company already, so our menus didn't change a great, great deal.

There was two key problems that parents and children had.

So at the moment, we can offer a sweet dessert five days a week if we choose.

Now,

that still has to contain sort of fruits or vegetables, yeah?

So it's the healthier version of a sweet treat.

But also as a caterer, we do use that sort of cake, for example, to drive uptake.

So for example, we know that children like the sweet dessert.

So if they're looking at a menu five days a week, we can safely say that fish fingers, they can order that.

That's a big one for us.

Pizza, they can order that.

There might be some days where, again, we're a fresh food company, where the meals aren't as popular as like Fish Fingers.

So by putting a chocolate cake on that day, we will still capture that child because they really want the chocolate cake and we're feeding them a really healthy main meal.

So we have to be really sort of strategically clever with our menus.

The big change is they're actually taking away the option to do that.