Stafford Grammar Bursar John Downes – we will always go for Gold

The catering team at Stafford Grammar School celebrated earlier this year when they won a Gold Cap Award. Here Bursar John Downes explains what the award did for the team and how it has set them up for the future…

Not that long ago we decided to bring our catering service in-house to improve the food offering to pupils.

The previous suppliers had done a good job, and even won a Silver CAP Award themselves, but we thought we could go one better and set ourselves the target of winning a Gold CAP Award.

This was a powerful motivation for the catering team, to prove they had what it took to put the best food on the menu and to run a slick, professional kitchen.

Going for a Gold CAP also guaranteed that all our practices and procedures had to be of the very highest quality and that full HACCP was being applied.

Winning the award was obviously a great achievement but the ongoing support has also been hugely beneficial to us here at Stafford Grammar.

The 12-month office support has allowed for ongoing updates of best-practice and to be aware of any legal changes coming down the pipeline. For instance the recent updates to allergen awareness and the corresponding labelling were very useful.

The fortnightly ‘core skill awareness’ programme is embraced by the catering team because it allows them to keep up to date with the smartest and most effective ways to work.

And the ‘Tools of the Trade’ pack has been vital for us. The tools have allowed us to quickly put systems in place for cost controls on production, a financial control system for the department, quality measurements on pupil feedback and purchasing benchmarks.

Winning a Gold CAP Award has been so beneficial for the catering department at Stafford.

We’ve put better systems in place, improved the food on the menu, celebrated our hard working team and had something very positive to shout about. We look forward to striving for Gold for many more years to come.