When Peta Wilkinson noticed there was left over food at the end of each day at Goodstart Endeavour Hills Barnsley Drive, she decided to put it to good use.
The service offers daily take-home meals to families and parents are lapping them up.
“As well as loving the convenience of being able to take a home-cooked meal with them, our parents are loving our focus on sustainability and reducing food waste,” she said.
Rather than waste the children’s uneaten food at the end of the day, Peta decided to adjust the children’s daily portions and package the rest of the food up and offer it to parents.
“Some days the children eat everything and in that case we provide them with as much food as they need, but more often than not they don’t, or we might have children away, so we always tend to have left over food,” she said.
Parents receive an alert each day with details of the meals on offer, as well as the number of portions.
They have to book in advance to secure their meal which they can collect at the end of the day.
“Our new Take Home Meals are very popular so the parents know they have to book in quickly to secure themselves a meal,” she said.
“The great thing about this new initiative is that it isn’t costing us anything extra, it’s just that we’ve changed our practises to better meet the needs of our families.”
The recipes for each meal are available in the centre foyer, all meals are prepared and stored in accordance with the Goodstart Early Learning Food Safety program, developed in partnership with Goodstart centres, food safety supervisors and professional Food Safety Auditors, and instructions on the safest way to reheat the food are provided.
The service has also recently introduced a range of other initiatives to meet the needs of families.
These include regular movie nights for the children and a community pantry initiative.
The service offers daily take-home meals to families and parents are lapping them up.
“As well as loving the convenience of being able to take a home-cooked meal with them, our parents are loving our focus on sustainability and reducing food waste,” she said.
Rather than waste the children’s uneaten food at the end of the day, Peta decided to adjust the children’s daily portions and package the rest of the food up and offer it to parents.
“Some days the children eat everything and in that case we provide them with as much food as they need, but more often than not they don’t, or we might have children away, so we always tend to have left over food,” she said.
Parents receive an alert each day with details of the meals on offer, as well as the number of portions.
They have to book in advance to secure their meal which they can collect at the end of the day.
“Our new Take Home Meals are very popular so the parents know they have to book in quickly to secure themselves a meal,” she said.
“The great thing about this new initiative is that it isn’t costing us anything extra, it’s just that we’ve changed our practises to better meet the needs of our families.”
The recipes for each meal are available in the centre foyer, all meals are prepared and stored in accordance with the Goodstart Early Learning Food Safety program, developed in partnership with Goodstart centres, food safety supervisors and professional Food Safety Auditors, and instructions on the safest way to reheat the food are provided.
The service has also recently introduced a range of other initiatives to meet the needs of families.
These include regular movie nights for the children and a community pantry initiative.