How to Plan a School Kitchen

Date

17.10.22

Good school meals provide sustenance to children across the country – keeping their brains ticking and energy up throughout the day. Proper nutrition is a vital part of a child’s development, and school cooks provide an invaluable service to hungry students and hard working parents.

With the value of school meals considered, their preparation needs to be streamlined, comfortable for staff, and above all, safe.

Here’s some advice on how to go about setting up the perfect kitchen environment for your school.

• Size – Size is perhaps the most important consideration when creating an effective cooking environment. The Independent Food School Plan recommends a room of at least 6m x 3m (20ft x 10ft) for adapting into a kitchen environment. This will allow your staff ample room to access units and prepare food. It’s important for safety as well, spacing out your kitchen will ensure order and may diminish the possibility of food contamination.

• Flooring – Your staff will likely be moving from one station to another: it is important therefore that the floors are fitted with slip resistant tiles, in case of spillages, and so that they respond well to frequent cleaning.

• Connection to school dining room – Your location must be adjacent to or near to the school dining room. School corridors can be a chaotic place, and we want to minimise the risk of incident when hungry children are taking their food from the kitchen to the dining room. It’s also important to consider that this will speed up service, and make sure the youngsters have enough time to eat.

These are just some of the factors to consider in setting up a safe, effective environment for school meals. The independent school food plan linked above provides comprehensive assistance to schools looking to create or expand a kitchen environment. For fittings, servicing and maintenance, PCD is a leading kitchen design company that can help you to design and install your school kitchen, and ensure that it is kept up to standard with a free, no obligation kitchen health check.