A new food delivery service in York has set up a vegetable garden to help supply its four restaurants.
School Kitchen, which last month started operating from the kitchen at Carr Junior School, created the garden in the grounds of Acomb school.
Their products will be used by the four School Kitchen restaurants, which currently offer Spanish, Mexican, Thai and Sri Lankan menus.
The products will also be used by students for the school’s cooking classes, with any surplus going to parents in need.
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The garden will also be incorporated into cooking demonstrations for students, when they can select their own ingredients for cooking lessons, with the aim of showing them where food comes from.
Cultivated vegetables include broccoli, onions, potatoes, chili, basil, zucchini, spinach, lettuce.
Nial Moran, commis chef at School Kitchen, is also the lead gardener on site, and was joined by a landscaper, Tom Brown, to establish the growing space.
The site was prepared for planting by cutting the existing turf, aerating the soil, and adding compost and lime to increase the pH.
The first crops have already been planted, including shallots and three varieties of potatoes, and the team has set up a large polytunnel.
As part of its sustainability ethos, School Kitchen has also installed solar panels in the school to generate electricity, as well as using electric bicycles or mopeds for all deliveries.
The school’s kitchen also sends compostable bags with every order, in which customers can place biodegradable packaging, ready for delivery drivers to collect the next time they order takeaway. The collected bags will then be composted in organic matter for the garden.
David Nicholson, general manager of the school’s kitchen, said: “We came up with the idea to create a vegetable garden during the tasting session for Pirivena, Sri Lanka. restaurant, back in February. The menu includes a Seasonal Vegetable Curry, so we discussed how to get fresh seasonal vegetables and Neil (Meyer, Head of Operations) suggested creating a vegetable garden on a piece of land near the kitchen that the school was not using .
“It was clearly a great idea – not only would we have the freshest possible ingredients to put on our dishes, but we would be able to teach school students about growing food, tying in well with cooking lessons that we have”. run for them.
“It turned out that Nial (Moran, commis chef) was an avid gardener and was keen to develop his gardening skills, so we asked Vicki (Kerr, director). She loved the idea, so we took Tom (Brown, landscape gardener) got involved and started making it happen.”
School Kitchen also offers apprenticeships. All staff, from chefs to delivery drivers, are paid at least the current living wage of £12ph.
For more information, visit www.schoolkitchen.com.
