Richmond High School canteen achieves balance between healthy and tasty

Kurmond resident Cathy James has been working at the Richmond High canteen for 10 years, and has mastered the art of feeding this notoriously-picky age group.

“The most popular food is butter chicken or pasta. Anything chicken - they love chicken here! They love when we do special days, like we have nachos on Fridays,” Ms James told the Gazette.

She works four days a week from 7am until 2pm, alongside Annette Cassar who also works four days, and Louise Young and Kathleen Gatt who do a day each.

While some canteens are run by P&C Associations or are privately-owned (with the business leasing the space), Richmond High’s tuckshop is run by the school, and its staff are employed by the Department of Education.

Clifford Ralph, the school’s principal, has worked with each of these types of canteens, but said the school-run model allows more control over what’s on the menu.

“By being school-operated there’s more of a genuine customer service through the canteen - they’re always looking for ways to provide food that our students want to eat, but is healthier than the alternatives that they might buy down the road,” he said.

The NSW Healthy School Canteen Strategy stipulates prepared food must meet Australian Dietary Guidelines and make up at least 75 per cent of the menu, and packaged or ‘occasional’ food must meet a minimum Health Star Rating of 3.5 stars.

Plus, just like any other retail food business, school canteens need to meet the food safety standards in the NSW Food Authority’s Food Standards Code, and pass annual council inspections.

This year, Richmond High was issued a five-star Food Safety Result, which is the highest rating available and indicates excellence in food safety controls, skills and knowledge, and premises construction.

“We maintain the canteen to a standard of any other business that serves food. We have installed a new stove, new commercial-grade benchtops, and a handwash station, and we’ll work our way around and upgrade it to a commercial kitchen,’ said Mr Ralph.

His favourite menu item? A sweet chilli chicken and salad wrap. He vouched for the food, and said he often asks the canteen to cater when he has visitors to the school - other principals have even commented on how good the food is.

“The age our students are, they’re walking to and from school, and they’ve got several opportunities between home and here for them to actually go and buy any food they like from any of the fast food chains in Richmond,” he said.

“Our challenge is really making the food attractive to the students to want to buy their food from the school canteen.”

How do they do this? “The kids are like anyone else: if the food is good quality, if it looks good, tastes good, smells good, they’ll buy it,” said Mr Ralph.

Communicating with the students is the key, and taking requests is important - if it’s suited to the strategy, they’ll trial it. “We’ll give anything a go - but it can’t be hot chips!” said Ms James.

All drinks are now sugar-free, and icecreams are no longer available. In the past week, the team has trialled healthy muffins and thai salads.

“Breakfast is normally hash browns. Cheese and bacon rolls are hugely popular at the moment - we order about 15 to 20 of those a day. We warm them up for the children. If they want bacon and eggs, we’ll do bacon and eggs for them. Last term we did BLTs and they were really popular, just for something different,” Ms James said.

They’ve tried curries, pastas, burgers and salads - they even made a special burger called the Boxer Burger, at the request of a student who was into boxing.

Prices are very competitive. Students can get a burger for $3.50, butter chicken with rice for $4.50, and a fruit salad for $2.50.

A number of local suppliers are used for produce, including a farmer at Agnes Banks, the deli at Kurmond, and bakery at North Richmond.

The canteen also taps into the education side of things, teaching practical service skills to students undertaking the Duke of Edinburgh's International Award program. This includes stocking shelves, rotating stock, customer service, and monetary transactions.

Ms James and the canteen staff know most of the students by name, and have become minor celebrities outside school hours.

“When you walk up the street and students introduce you to their mum, it’s nice that you have that input. Because we’re not teachers,” Ms James said.

“Wherever you go, people say ‘there’s the canteen lady!’ We’re given cards, presents. It’s lovely.”