Community Menu

Grove Catering

Grove has its own independent catering service - Grove Catering - managed by Claire Murray. In addition to providing meals for students and staff every lunchtime, the catering staff also run a very substantial tuckshop at breaktime and before school, run the snackbar in Grove College, provide ad-hoc catering services for meetings and conferences held on Grove Campus and are able to cater for private events held at Grove.

By operating our own catering service we have been able to:

  • Retain skilled and well-qualified staff
  • Increase training given to staff
  • Keep prices lower
  • Buy produce locally where possible
  • Have the freedom to choose suppliers                                              The new Healthy Eating Menu for September
  • Reduce the amount of fizzy drinks and unhealthy snacks              is available.  Click here to see it.
  • Secure the gold ‘Healthy Eating’ award

The kitchen opens at 7.30am daily offering hot drinks, filled bacon and sausage baps, yoghurts and breakfast muffins. There are several areas to choose from at lunchtime. In the main dining room there is the traditional home made food and salad servery which offers a large selection of items including lasagne, roast dinners, spinach and feta cheese pie with a hot pudding or a choice of home made cakes and cookies. A full meal and dessert costs £1.70. The salad counter offers a wide selection of salads – a pot of salad costs 65p. "Le Bistro" serves a wide selection of rolls, sandwiches and wraps with pasta pots and fresh fruit salad and cold drinks whilst an outdoor servery offers hot and cold snacks, including wraps, baked potatoes pizza and sandwiches.

Special diets can also be catered for. International healthy eating theme days have been held in the main dining room throughout this year, and we are always open to ideas and suggestions.

Grove Catering fully supports the efforts being led by celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver, for healthier school meals, This was one of the many reasons why Grove Catering was launched in 2000. The media has put great emphasis on the 37p cost of a meal. We agree that this cannot produce a good quality meal. The cost of Grove Catering meals is the same as the government is now saying should be spent: 60p to 70p per head. Because of the large volume of customers to be served in a small space of time, we do offer fast food snacks but the food is sourced from the local butcher, and farm sausage producer. Pizzas are made using fresh ingredients.

If you are interested in using Grove Catering's services, please contact Claire Murray on 01630 652121.