Testimonials/Case Studies

Testimonials

From the moment we spoke to the team at the Healthy Food Company we knew we were doing the right thing. They promised a smooth transition, support and most importantly great quality food that was healthy, that supported all our students with their special needs and they have delivered.

Vranch House

Vranch House School Exeter

Case Study : Vranch House School Exeter

The Children’s Healthy Food Company were contacted one morning in March 2024 by The Chief Executive of Vranch House – Kate Moss.

She explained that she was not very happy with their current lunchtime offering and had found us via a Google search for healthy children’s food.

In the first instance we sent over a small presentation about our company and what we can offer, along with our current range and prices. After a week or so Kate called and asked if we would go along and do a presentation and a tasting session.

This was arranged for Wednesday 27th March 2024 .
Vranch House is a centre for the treatment of over 2,000 outpatients with physical difficulties, a provider of various therapies throughout Devon and an independent day school in Exeter for children with significant physical difficulties.

Exeter is a 4 hour drive from our office in Brentwood Essex, so we set off the night before and got to the school around 10am after the students had all been dropped off. We set up in the board room and had a little chance to look around the school, considering the students various disabilities the atmosphere in the school was happy and calm, we were able to talk to some of the students and meet the staff and what struck us the most was the smiles and the happiness from the students and the staff.
We even met the Easter Bunny!

We presented to Kate and her Executive Team Senior Administrator Tracey ( AKA Kate’s right hand woman !) and a few other members of staff .

They enjoyed the story of how we got started and they were really interested about the correct nutrition for children and the science behind our meals. They had no facilities as such for reheating the food, as their current system was a hot delivery, so we had to reheat our meals in a microwave in the board room, it wasn’t the best way but it worked and everyone loved them!

They made the decision then and there that they were going to change to our meals.

However, it wasn’t that simple and straight forward, they had no way of heating the food and as our food comes in frozen they needed freezers. None of this made them change their minds , they wanted their children to have the best food they could have so , on our advice they contacted Falcon who make and supply regeneration trolleys , they preset the machines for you , so that the machines work on a ‘ cook freeze ‘ cycle , the machine takes 90 minutes to bring the food back up to temperature , so the staff could just load up the trolley set it and walk away from it .

Once this was on order, they then had to purchase freezers, these were duly ordered.

Finally, they set up a Yearsley account who are our storage and distributors, this was easily done in less than 48 hours.

We worked with Vranch House to work out their first order as this was all new to them so once we all agreed on the menu, Sarah here worked out what their first order should be to see them over the first few menu cycles, working with Yearsley allowed Vranch
House to also get all of their vegetables and sides like garlic bread as well as desserts from the Yearsley range direct. Everything could come on one delivery so it was easy and very convenient.

There was a gap while we all waited for the trolley to be delivered and the new freezers to arrive, once they were all set up Vranch placed their first order with Yearsley.

The stock was delivered and sheer panic ensued! They didn’t have enough freezer space!

Kate and Tracey managed ( we don’t know how !) to borrow another freezer to put the extra stock in – so we all calmed down a bit and another freezer was ordered .

When the school wanted to go live with our meals , Kay and Sarah went back down to
Exeter for a couple of days and were on site for the first day of serving our meals for lunch .

Tracey had retrieved the meals for that day out of the freezer but was stressing that the Trolley would not go back into the gap in the worktop that it was to sit in , and she was not sure where in the trolley each meal should go ( the trolley has 2 ovens , 1 set
for a full 90 minute cycle and 1 set for a half cycle for 45 minutes ) Between us we got the trolley back into the gap – so first item of stress was sorted !.

Then trolley was loaded with Tracey making a chart that told her where everything goes in the trolley ie , full cycle at the top for browning items such as cottage pies and lasagnes and 45 minutes cycles for smaller trays and so on .

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief – then the electrics tripped out!

A quick call back to Peter in our office, our resident know it all about trolleys, made it clear that both ovens being plugged into one socket was not a good thing ! Peter called Adam at Falcon back to double check he had instructed the electrician at Vranch to make sure they were not plugged into the same socket and he had but the electrician bless him thought it would be OK.

We ran an extension lead and plugged one oven in another socket and we were away!

It didn’t trip any more and the electrician was lined up to pop another plug in as soon as we had finished serving.

Since then the system has now settled down with the students loving the new meals.

While we were on site for the launch we were able to talk to some of the students and we met Libby who was able to let us know she would like to have some garlic mayonnaise and tomato ketchup with her meals, we promptly sent some sachets down to keep in
each classroom, she seemed pleased !

This is what Kate and Tracey have to say:
From the moment we spoke to the team at the Healthy Food Company we knew we had done the right thing. They promised a smooth transition, support and most importantly great quality food that was healthy that supported all our students with their special needs and they have delivered.

When looking for a new provider we were concerned about costs, especially being such a small school and have some families on low incomes. With not being able to buy in bulk and not having the facility to cook from scratch ourselves and as food could be considered an alternative medicine, especially for our vulnerable pupils we couldn’t just go with any company. Another consideration is as we have a very small serving space so cannot follow a complex process.

Kay and Sarah from the initial phone call reassured us that this would not be a problem, in fact they were confident that our costs could go down and that the process would be simpler- and they were right.

Kay and Sarah have become part of the wider Vranch House family so it’s easy picking up the phone if we have a query, nothing is too much trouble, together we have problem solved the minor hiccups e.g. tweaking the temperature as the falcon warmer is so efficient we could run it at a lower temperature, or when the pureed meals came in round dishes when we were expecting rectangular dishes so we ran out of freezer space. We worked through these minor setbacks together.