School Lunch Provider's Boss Says It's 'Mission Critical' To Meet KPIs

Wednesday, 26 February 2025, 8:44 pm
Article: RNZ

Checkpoint

The head of one of the government's free school lunch providers says his company is providing numbers of wasted school lunches to the Ministry of Education on a daily basis.

Compass Group boss Paul Harvey told Checkpoint, it was "mission critical" to meet KPIs.

Compass is one of the three companies that make up the School Lunch Collective, which is responsible for running the scheme.

"We are starting to track [wastage] now, school by school, we are sharing that information with the ministry and again that information will be made available," Harvey said.

"We are going to listen we are going to learn we are going to work with our teams to ensure that the menus turn up in a way that they enjoy eating everyday."

Harvey said he cared that kids did not eat the meals, but would not share with Checkpoint how many daily meals were wasted.

A senior nutritionist with the programme for the ministry sent an email that reported a 50 percent daily wastage at west Auckland schools.

Harvey said that was not the figure they saw.

Checkpoint this week reported more issues with the revamped programme, including one school getting 11 days of butter chicken.

That came after, separately, Compass admitted halal meals it delivers to schools are not halal certified.

Principals have called the revamped menu substandard and nearly a third of schools getting free lunches have contacted the Ministry of Education with queries and complaints.

A Ministry of Education Nutritionist raised a litany of issues with menu, including massive wastage, the concerning quality of meals and the safety of supposedly halal lunches.

Harvey told Checkpoint, every day Compass was improving but it was "not where they want to be".

He said the Lunch Collective was providing meals to 125,000 students at 443 schools.

Harvey would not be drawn on whether his company would face financial penalties on not being able to consistently deliver nutritious and healthy lunches.

"We know what our KPI's are and we're focussed on delivering that."

Harvey did not give an as answer to how long it would take to fix the repetitive menus.

The School Collective's PR company told Checkpoint in a written response that they would be using Pita pit for a "short-term" and that is to help the school lunch collective get on top of it's "food production".

Checkpoint has been inviting the School Lunch Collective to speak since the beginning of the year.

Associate Education Minister David Seymour last year unveiled a school lunches reboot, rolling out a new menu it said would save more than $130 million a year.

The coalition announced plans to scale back the cost of the Ka ora, Ka ako free school lunch programme in intermediate and high schools in May last year.

Speaking to media in Auckland on Wednesday, Seymour said the programme was suffering from "teething problems".

"To be really honest if someone gave me butter chicken 11 times in two weeks, I actually wouldn't complain."

However, he said they were working towards changing this as it was not the "end goal".

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