Lambeth Cook of the Year announced

Thursday 10 December 2009

We recently held the 5^th annual Staff Conference for the hard-working staff of our Lambeth Local Authority contract, through which we provide school lunches for primary and special schools across the borough. The conference, held at the Michael Tippett School, is designed to give Harrison's catering staff a broader picture of the work Harrison do in Lambeth and to reward them for their contribution to our success. We also announced the results of the annual ‘Team of the Year' and ‘Cook of the Year' competition - but more on that later...

Earlier this year Harrison retained the contract for school lunches in Lambeth, and did so by a considerable margin against our competitors. The Head of Children and Young People's Service Contracts Unit (our main client contact) Sue Farr was there to outline the reasons Harrison were successful, and also praised the partnership approach that Harrison and Lambeth Council have created - the results of which are clear to see: a 68% take-up of school lunches across the borough is the highest of any of Harrison's local authority contracts, and one of the highest in the UK. This represents over 10,000 children eating a Harrison school lunch every day in Lambeth - a staggering figure.

In addition, Lambeth has achieved Healthy Schools status in many of its primary schools, has had a string of high quality OFSTED reports, and was recently voted Local Authority of the Year. We at Harrison are delighted to be in partnership with, and contributing to, such a highly-praised organisation.

From a Harrison point of view, we also had further successes with a number of our staff graduating from ‘The Harrison Academy' (our own internal training program) many of whom have gone from being General Assistants to running their own kitchens and staff. We also had a number of NVQ graduates from across the borough: these were Elizabeth Wright, Nickema Brown, Hayley Campbell, Maria Viveiros de Freitas Carvalho, Emelyn McGill, Jennifer Lecky and Rosette Katambayi.

We also had our annual ‘Team of the Year' and ‘Cook of the Year' awards - a hotly contested and highly sought-after competition which not only relates to the quality of food on the plate, but also to the quality of team building and the management of their kitchen's budget. This year's Team of the Year was won by Heathbrook Primary School, and Cook of the Year was won by Karli Radford - also from Heathbrook Primary School (photographed above with Heathbrook Primary School head Jenny Woodrow and Dermot Enright from Sheringhams Catering).  Many congratulations to the whole team and our thanks to Sheringhams, one of our key grocery suppliers, who kindly sponsored both the Team of the Year and Cook of the Year awards.

As always, the best bits were saved until last with a fabulous (and generously supported) raffle - in which winners walked away with such stellar prizes as a TV/DVD combo and an iPod Touch - and a delicious supper with drinks prepared by the team at Michael Tippett under the leadership of Lambeth's dedicated craft Trainer Ian Marshall.

Well done to all our committed and high-achieving staff in Lambeth - you help make Harrison the company it is.

Posted by Giles Cooper

«Back to Blog page