Citywide Services takes our responsibility to our communities and our environment seriously.
Social value
One of Citywide Service’s main aims is to provide living wage paid, reliable jobs for our community, where employees will be given the skills and training to develop. Most of our employees work within a 10-minute walk of the building they work in, providing work and training opportunities for the local community. We are currently a workforce of over 300 members of staff, 85% of which are female and have childcare or caring responsibilities.
Citywide currently provides meals to some of the most vulnerable children in the northwest, so we actively work with schools to ensure no child leaves the dining hall hungry. As a non-profit making organisation, we try to keep our meal prices as low as possible to encourage uptake, from speaking to schools and parents we know that a lot of family’s finances are tight and although they don’t meet free school meals criteria the cost of school meals can be a costly expense especially for multiple children.
Citywide is currently working with local community and council partners on the Healthy Holiday scheme, the scheme takes children who qualify for free school meals and provides activities and food during the school holidays. Citywide has been a partner of the scheme for several years, supplying food, members of staff and expertise. During the 2021 summer holiday we will provide over 1500 meals every day to some of the most vulnerable children as part of this scheme.
Citywide also supports various charity events in our schools by producing cakes, biscuits and other goods for Comic Relief, Children in Need and school fundraising events. Our school cooks love getting involved in these events and always go above and beyond. We have also got ongoing projects working with school’s allotment plots, helping to tend the plots and then using the produce in the school kitchens.
Environmental impact
Citywide tries to ensure we are as environmentally friendly as possible.
A Citywide school meal provide many of our children with most of their daily nutrition. Accordingly, we want to secure maximum health benefits for them and that the food we serve has been sourced and produced in the safest and most ethically responsible way possible.
Citywide has strong working relationships with all our suppliers, through these relationships tries to ensure we are as environmentally friendly as possible. When procuring food suppliers, we ensure that all our ingredients can be certified and traceable.
We have also been looking at our all our food miles and working with suppliers to find more locally produced ingredients for our menus. Over 75% of all the food we purchase produced in the UK, with 100% of our suppliers classed as local. We are constantly looking for local producers and exploring new products.
Our fish is certified by the Marine Stewardship Council, this means that it has been sourced responsibly and comes from certified sustainable fishery which protects and safeguards seafood supplies.
Our eggs we use in our cooking and baking are from free range hens and certified by the ‘Good Egg Scheme’.
Animal welfare is important, we only used meat that is classified under a farm assurance scheme such as Red Tractor Assured.
Wholegrain products are used in our recipes wherever possible.
No genetically modified ingredients are used.
All fruit and vegetables served are stored and cooked to preserve optimum nutritional value.
No salt is added to vegetables and potatoes during cooking. Instead, herbs, spices and lemon juice are used to enhance natural flavours.
We have used technology such as a cloud-based kitchen management system and our preselection meal selectors to reduce the over production of food, which has dramatically reduced our food waste. We work with our schools to distribute any leftover fresh produce that would go off during school holidays or weekends to families in need or local food banks to ensure nothing goes to waste.
How to contact us
If you have any questions about any of our services please let us know