Can serving school lunches provide a boost to rural pubs?

Last week pubs minister Brandon Lewis declared that struggling inns could remain viable by offering school meals at lunch time.

The move, he said, would not only provide wholesome food, but hold the pub up as a beacon of the community, which in turn might encourage parents to dine there at the weekends.

A number of taverns have cottoned on to this way of thinking. The Coach and Horses in Longborough, Gloucestershire has been supplying school lunches to Longborough C of E Primary School for the past two years. According to publican Wendy McDonagh, the school – which is two minutes away - approached her to provide the meals one day a week.

Every Tuesday her kitchen prepares home cooked school lunches, which she takes to the school and serves up herself.

Cottage pie and apple crumble are among the dishes on the menu. “It’s more a PR than money making exercise,” McDonagh said. “You’re governed at £2.20 a child but I cook all the food myself and make my own puddings so it’s cost effective. I love helping the local school out, enjoy meeting the children, the kids go back [tell the parents the food is good] and the parents use the pub.”

Financial sense​

The Battlesteads Hotel & Restaurant, Wark on Tyne in Northumberland is another venue that has embraced the concept. Richard Slade, who owns and runs the pub, began supplying the meals in February 2012 after being approached by Wark C of E First School.

The food is prepared, packed in hot boxes and collected by school staff. “Only 12 out of 34 children were taking up school lunches before,” Slade told the PMA. “Now the uptake is 33. This is something that pubs should do, it makes financial sense because you’re able to utilise all the products you have. Customers want good food, honestly prepared, properly sourced and not made in a factory somewhere. The children have Moroccan chicken, the odd curry – their tastes are quite sophisticated.”

One South West pub, which the PMA has agreed not to identify, experimented with pupils dining on site but impracticalities, which included closing the pub for an hour, contributed to the demise of the scheme.
However, encouraging children onto pub premises is not something John Longden, Pub is the Hub chief executive endorses. “We’re not trying to welcome children in the pub but pubs can use every day facilities, the talent, enthusiasm and inspiration of the staff to provide good food and take that to the school,” he said.

Strong ties​

Kevin Hillyer, head chef at The Black Swan in Ravenstonedale, Kirkby Stephen, AA Pub of the Year 2012/13, who has been making school dinners for Ravenstonedale Primary since last September shares the same view: “I disagree with having school kids in pubs.”

Hillyer prepares the food, which the dinner lady collects at 11.45am and it’s on the children’s plates by midday – before it was prepared by another school seven miles away.

“If a failing pub is being seen to be making an effort in their local community and putting a great service on, that will strengthen the pub,” he added.

The British Beer and Pub Association believes pub school meal provision is ‘a great idea’. “Schools and pubs are both vital to local communities; there must be hundreds, if not thousands of places where this would work well, so schools currently struggling with their school meals certainly should be exploring the possibilities,” Brigid Simmonds, BBPA chief executive said. “We need to learn from where this works well, and also encourage flexible local authority catering contracts, to enable schools to enter this relationship.”

Expert view​

Publicans who opt to provide school lunches in their pub should be careful about the conditions that are on their Premises Licence, according to Jonathan Smith, managing partner at Poppleston Allen.

“By law, any person under the age of 16 must be accompanied by an adult whilst in a pub when the pub is being used primarily or exclusively for the sale of alcohol for consumption on the premises. It’s arguable that by providing school meals a pub is no longer caught by this definition, but in any event no doubt a teacher would be with the children and this would constitute the children being ‘accompanied’ by an adult.

However, any condition on the Premises Licence restricting children under a specified age being in the premises at all will ‘trump’ that legal right.  The only way schoolchildren could therefore have their lunches in the pub would either be for the pub to vary the condition on their licence, apply for a Temporary Event Notice to cover the lunch period or, alternatively, to ensure that alcohol is not being sold whilst the schoolchildren are having their lunch on the premises – none of which may prove commercially.”