Brentry Primary School have been members with FareShare South West since May 2019, and provide a breakfast club every weekday for 20-40 children. They also use food from FareShare South West to give as food parcels to parents for an extra helping hand. We went to the breakfast club to speak to Annette about how FareShare helps children at the school, and what being a member FareShare South West means to them. 

How do you use food from FareShare?

“Food from Fareshare is used at our Breakfast Club facility to provide a variety of options for the children throughout the week. We receive a range of food from Fareshare including bakery, fresh produce and pantry items. A supply of food including fruit, cereal and cereal bars is also kept aside for teachers to access if a child has come into school without having breakfast in the morning or without a snack for break. We also offer a food bank service to parents who maybe struggling with food costs at home.

The children’s favourite breakfasts are on pancake or sausage sandwich day. This is served alongside fruit and yoghurt to ensure they’re provided with a balanced diet.”

How important is FareShare food to your school? Would your beneficiaries use your services without the offer of food?

“FareShare food allows us to save money on our weekly shopping and therefore this money is put towards additional staff. This allows us to offer all our pupil premium children a free space at breakfast club including a healthy breakfast and full tums to start the day. We have recently just moved back into a completely refurbished school after being in temporary accommodation for a year. Part of the refurbishment included an expansion of the cookery room, which we are looking forward to using with the children in the future as well. We are hoping to use some of the food supplied by FareShare during cooking lessons with groups of children to encourage and teach the children the benefits of a balanced diet.”

We anticipate that over a year period we will save approximately £3,000 which will and has allowed us to increase our staffing at Breakfast Club!

What difference does using food from FareShare make to your school and families?

“The food delivery is sometimes quite random and not necessarily what we would serve on a regular school menu! However this keeps things creative and we are always coming up with interesting menus and food for the children to sample. For example, this week we had a large quantity of pomegranates and passion fruit which we included in our fruit salad, which was a first for many of our children to try.”

Having the weekly delivery from Fareshare has meant that we have seen an increase in children attending the breakfast club and getting a good start to their day.

Do you see any long term changes in your pupils through eating food with you?

“We believe by providing the children with a balanced healthy breakfast at the start of the school day, it gives the children a wealth of benefits including enhancement of attendance and punctuality, and an improvement to their health through a balanced nutritious meal. Having a breakfast Club provision at our school also helps the children with social development and allows them to take part in a range of activities in a fun and safe environment.”