Supporting Leicester’s School Holiday Food Programme

It’s half term holiday time and Cold Chain Federation member Samworth Brothers is proud to be working in partnership with Leicester City Council and Leicester City Football Club on a holiday food programme to support children in Leicester who normally have a free school meal

The programme is providing families with all the ingredients they need to make five tasty lunches at home this holiday, together with simple instructions for making the meals.

Adam King, part of the co-ordinating team at Samworth Brothers, explained “We were provided with the recipe cards for the five meals, and our Samworth Brothers distribution and business development teams have worked closely with our supply partners to deliver nearly 14,000 food boxes to 109 schools across Leicester.

Behind the scenes it has been a giant team effort.  Earlier this week the Samworth Brothers Supply Chain distribution site at Oak Meadow on Scudamore Road, Leicester was the hub for a giant packing and distribution process.   More than 300 pallets of food were broken down into 450,000 single units and packed into mixed food parcels for each child via a conveyor line with 21 packing stations.  Then the Samworth Brothers Coldcall van fleet and Samworth Brothers Supply Chain made a total of 125 delivery drops over two days.

Adam said “It was quite a challenge, but we have some fantastic people who pulled out all the stops to make it happen. We are passionate about our role within our local communities and we’re pleased we have been able to support such a great initiative.”

Stars of Leicester City – Jonny Evans Ricardo Pereira, Ayoze Pérez, Marc Albrighton and Luke Thomas – have showed their support for the scheme with videos of the players making the family favourites, such as easy-peasy pizza and tuna & vegetable frittata, being posted on the club’s social media platforms to encourage youngsters to have a go at making the dishes themselves.

Deputy city mayor Cllr Sarah Russell said: “Almost 14,000 children and young people in Leicester are eligible for free school meals and it’s vital that they don’t miss out on a meal when the schools are closed. I’d like to thank the team at Samworth Brothers and Leicester City Football Club for helping us to support thousands of young people and their families across the city with this important half-term initiative, the volunteers who helped deliver the boxes to local schools, and the organisations who are providing activities as part of the programme.”

Each box will include the ingredients needed to make the five meals featured in the recipe cards. These are: Lentil Curry, Chickpea Tray Bake, Quick Pizza, Tuna & Vegetable Frittata, and Tuna & Sweetcorn Pasta.

More information about the scheme can be found at families.leicester.gov.uk/fsmhalftermoffer