Swan Lane Primary School Upgrades School Meals with PKL KitchenPod

PKL Supplies Modular KitchenPod to Swan Lane School
Swan Lane’s 25 year old building is perfect for its 360 pupils in the centre of Evesham – except there is no kitchen inside the building. As the school became increasingly dissatisfied with their delivered meals service, it became clear they needed another option.

“The quality of the food we were receiving was disappointing,” said Business Manager Claire Wharrad, “We were seeing most of it thrown away and not many children were actually buying the meals. When the children miss a good quality hot meal in the middle of the day, you can see their engagement and energy drop. Something had to change.”

Installing a kitchen within their existing building was not an option, both due to space and budget constraints. But a modular building, which could occupy currently unutilised land in the school grounds seemed like a better option.

After finding PKL, Claire begun to investigate our KitchenPods. After speaking to the sales team she visited an existing installation in Birmingham and found the pod very impressive. The school decided to take advantage of PKL’s five-year lease option on a two bay unit, which allowed easy accounting and peace of mind, thanks to the full technical support from PKL’s dedicated team.

“It works really well for us, and lets us plan long-term for the school’s catering offer,” she said.

The school were involved in the design process from start to finish, changing the Pod’s finish and the kitchen specification after consultation with PKL’s project manager and design team.

After installation the school were able to employ their own catering team who have built an enviable reputation in just a few months. Uptake of meals has been ahead of predictions, with staff and pupils taking advantage of the high-quality meals cooked on site.

A few early equipment teething troubles caused little disruption, as the school called the PKL technical support line and an engineer was on site to fix the problems the same day.

A celebration of the new kitchen, with a special Christmas menu, saw 300 out of 360 pupils opt to have cooked lunches.

“The KitchenPod has made a massive difference – we have fresh, good quality meals that the children enjoy. This fantastic food offer gives them the energy and focus to succeed.
It has been a creative solution to our catering challenge that has worked perfectly,” said Claire.