Our Commitment to Locally Sourced Food at Woodbridge School
Throughout Woodbridge School, including both our Prep and Senior School, we work hard to ensure resources are sourced locally – part of our commitment to not only supporting our local community, but to protecting the planet in every way we can to keep Carbon emissions down by avoiding long distance deliveries.
We’re incredibly lucky to have a selection of local businesses that supply our Catering team in particular and this benefits everybody in many different ways, especially our staff and students as they get to enjoy speciality lunches, a multitude of different options and even the chance to try foods they possibly otherwise wouldn’t. As you’ll read more about below, our Catering Manager Kelly Newstead and her wonderful team ensure our children and staff have delicious, responsibly sourced and beautifully prepared food each and every day in School and at all of our events.
Most recently we’ve developed and secured a relationship with Stokes Sauces, based in Rendlesham Hall in Suffolk. Producing and supplying ketchups, tartare sauce and other condiments and preserves, the short distance between our School and their company means the environmental impact of delivering their delicious sauces is minimal in comparison to other suppliers who would need to transport goods many, many miles – and that short distance of transportation of goods is one of the motivators for a great deal of our other supplier relationship decisions.
Other local suppliers include Fairfield Crisps, a family run business which has been farming in East Anglia for three generations. They’re an award winning company who grow their own potatoes as well as generate their own energy, using sustainable technologies and are based in the Colne Valley just North of Colchester in Essex.
We’ve recently begun working with Gressingham Duck, a local company once again, based in Debach, Suffolk; they supply to all the major UK retailers, lots of independent stockists and butchers and are featured on the menus of top restaurants nationwide. Their duck features in our wraps as well as our CCF dinners.
These are just a few of the companies and businesses that we work with, and we will continue to source locally and develop more and more relationships with suppliers in our own community. The recent launch of our coffee trailer in School has been incredibly popular and made us strive to form relationships with suppliers that source their own products responsibly, and who can offer training to our new barristers – we can’t give too much away at this point, but we’ll soon be announcing a new partnership with a non-profit organisation, that will benefit our students, staff and customers.
We’ve such diversity in our local suppliers, and 90% of our menus feature fresh produce from a wide selection of local providers. From themed menus to celebrate events and special dates throughout the year, to everyday meals which provide our students and staff with nourishing, healthy and tasty choices at lunchtime throughout the School year, our menus are full and vibrant, and something everyone looks forward to enjoying. Most recently we’ve celebrated Black History Month in School with a Jamaican-themed menu at our Senior School. Students were offered the chance to taste and experience goat, quite possibly for the first time. We sourced the meat from Potsford Farm in Suffolk; a working care farm which supports adults with learning difficulties, autism and/or mental health needs, they offer a range of meat and eggs from animals they rear themselves – and goat is becoming increasing popular apparently!
Our superb Catering Team offers themed lunches throughout the year, with different foods from different cultures and places across the world – and they’re always received incredibly well. With 15 nationalities represented in Woodbridge School from across the world through our day and boarding students, this diversity is extremely important and impactful, encouraging appreciation for and knowledge about one another’s cuisine and cultures.
And our commitment to the community and future doesn’t stop there. Although we rarely have large volumes of food waste in terms of that which children don’t eat from their plate, we do have vegetable peelings and other parts of food that we cannot use. We work with a company called Olleco, who are ‘Recovering precious resources from waste’, as they collect our food waste and use it to generate green energy and bio-fertilisers, which in turn help to grow more food.
This is a mere snapshot of the relationships we have and the local suppliers that we’re proud to work with and support, we will continually search for local, reliable and resourceful companies we can form partnerships with and work together to not only provide excellent, exciting interesting and healthy food for our School, but ones we can rely on to help us to support our local and global environment in many ways.
