Alliance

Alliance Healthy Lunches

Alliance is a trusted food service partner that delivers fresh food and friendly service across several industry sectors.

Ka Ora, Ka Ako Healthy School Lunches Programme

Kia Ora and welcome to the Alliance healthy lunches hub! We’re a proud supplier for of the Ka Ora, Ka Ako Healthy School Lunches Programme, feeding kiwi kids nutritious and delicious lunches every school day.

Delivering Healthy lunches to Kiwi kids

New Zealand’s Ministry of Education runs Ka Aro, Ka Ako - a Healthy School Lunches programme to reduce food insecurity by providing access to free nutritious lunches in schools every day. The programme provides kai to help tamariki learn and develop. We are committed to deliver 7,000 healthy lunches daily, which go out to tamariki (aged 5-12) across 22 schools in Auckland. Providing school children with nutritious food helps facilitate learning. Our team has created a healthy and nutritious menu including nutritional value, sugar content and all four food groups to meet specific requirements. To deliver those healthy lunches, we employ 75 people based in the Auckland’s community. Every day, our team produces and delivers lunches from our production facility at the North Harbour Stadium located on Auckland’s North Shore. The team has a multitude of skills, and comes from diverse backgrounds, which helps strengthen the quality of the service we provide to schools.

With focus on fresh food, exceptional service and customers, Alliance, a Spotless company, has grown to become one of the largest food service providers in the southern hemisphere.

With 60 years of food service experience, our amazing team specialises in the distinct needs of the education, business, healthcare, and retail sectors. Each day we satisfy over 180,000 individuals across Australia and New Zealand.

In 2021, we were awarded as an approved Ka Ora, Ka Ako Healthy School Lunch provider for Auckland schools. 75 people are working as part of our team to deliver healthy lunches. Our team is anchored in the local community and culturally diverse.

Choosing Alliance as your service provider for Ka Ora, Ka Ako

In choosing Alliance as your provider for the Ka Ora, Ka Ako programme, you will receive services from a team that will be part of your community of families and teachers, making a difference to the wellbeing of ākonga in schools. Key features of our service delivery include:

A multi-disciplined dedicated team that includes:

  • An in-house New Zealand Registered Dietitian
  • An in-house Relationship Manager.
  • Experienced chefs and support staff
  • Our menus meet the Ministry of Health, Eating and Activity Guideline 2020, and the Ministry of Education Ka Ora, Ka Ako Nutrition Guidelines.
  • Tailored and targeted educational material that support the teachers and students’ programme engagement.
  • An environmentally sustainable service

At Alliance, sustainability means sustainable and profitable growth, providing value to our customers, delivering our services in a safe and environmentally responsible manner, helping our people be better and advancing the communities in which we operate. Our environmental sustainability reporting follows the GRI Standards, and we have clear sustainability indicators and targets, including to be net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. 

In our delivery of the healthy lunches programme, we use recyclable and sustainable products. We use compostable paper food wrap, or the sustainable Detpak GO range of food packaging. Made from high quality, uncoated brown board, the GO Range is 100% recyclable and features the Australasian Recycling Label (ARL).

Meet the team

Danielle has over 8 years’ experience in customer service. Having completed a BA (hons) at Northumbria University majoring in Human Geography, Danielle moved to New Zealand from the UK in 2013. Here she gained experience in Customer Service and Contract Management in both the Utilities and Transport sectors. From here she joined the Alliance team in 2021. In Danielle’s spare time she likes to explore New Zealand, going on trial walks and camping overnight.

With 35 years of experience within the industry, Andras is a hospitality professional who is passionate about his work. After graduating Otago Polytechnic with a Bachelor of Applied Sciences, Food and Beverage, over the years, Andras has led teams in the preparation and presentation of food; design and construction of kitchen and restaurant operations, right through to development and implementation of plans and budgets; hygiene and quality management, human resources management and staff training. - Andras is a wealth of knowledge and is an asset to the team having worked for the Spotless team for the last five and a half years.

Paula has 25 years’ industry experience and holds a BA in Applied Management Otago and Diploma in Hotel and Catering. Paula is currently studying a Master of Quality Systems at Massey University. She is experienced in championing the delivery of the Ka Ora, Ka Ako food in school’s programme. Paula is responsible for establishing the QA systems that verify that quality school lunches are delivered to expectations. She also leads the Food Safety and Health Safety requirements.

Download Our Lunch Menu for weekly meal summaries

Download
Alliance Lunch Menu

Alliance provides allergy friendly meals for students with allergies or therapeutic dietary needs. All our menus are created by chefs and unlike other healthy lunches providers, are reviewed by in-house registered dietitian. We cater to all dietary, religious and allergy requirements with strict protocols in place, so meals are prepared as respectfully and carefully as possible by our teams.

Our healthy lunches are produced in our commercial kitchen on Auckland’s North Shore and delivered to schools at lunchtime each day. Each lunch is individually served in a compostable paper food wrap, or the sustainable Detpak GO range of food packaging. Any allergen or special dietary lunches will be clearly marked on each lunchbox. Our onsite Catering Assistants offer an end to end service and manage the removal of food waste alongside our waste management partners, Envirowaste.

Our interactive and engaging education programme is available to support kids, staff and teacher understand the nutrition guidelines and our commitment to meeting these. Check out more in the Education Programme section.

We’ve gained lots of experience over the past year to help deliver positive outcomes for schools and kiwi kids through the Ka Ora, Ka Ako Healthy School Lunches programme.

Get in touch if you have any questions, we’re here to help. If you require amendments to your original order, please contact your customer liaison manager.

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Supporting teachers and ākonga (students)

Created by our Registered Dietitian, the education programme supports staff and teachers to be positive facilitators of the programme, whilst providing fun and interactive materials to engage and inform students about the importance of healthy eating. The programme is centered around the health benefits of each of the five food groups: vegetables, fruit, grains, dairy and protein.

Recognising that simply providing a free healthy meal isn’t enough to drive students to eat what’s in front of them, the team set about creating a number of resources to show students that healthy eating doesn’t have to be boring! Supported by our awesome mascot Rea, the programme features:

  • Eight short videos covering key nutrition points
  • Further information on the Ministry mandated nutrition guidelines
  • An exciting new Mascot, Rea, who will be the face of the programme – find out more and meet them below
  • Ten posters which address the recommended number of servings and the health benefits of each food group 
  • Activities and competitions including colouring pages and word searches

Teachers are provided a suggested learning plan to help highlight the key learning points hidden within the graphics, explain the relevance to the learning objectives and how to use the supporting activities to encourage further learning. We know that there is a wide range of ages and learning stages within each school. For this reason, our programme is designed to engage learners at all levels. You can see our Mascot Rea featured below in our posters and short video animation!

When you sign up to Alliance Healthy Lunches, not only will you receive all of the above resources, our team also deliver face-to-face tasting and information sessions, make regular visits to your school and keep you updated via their newsletters and updates. If you want to know more, please send an email via our ‘Get in Touch’ form below.

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What is Ka Ora, Ka Ako?

The name Ka Ora, Ka Ako is about being healthy and well in order to be in a good place to learn. Find out more about its meaning here.

Do you cater for special diets?

Here at Alliance Catering, we understand how important it is to support students with special dietary needs. That’s why we lead the way utilising our in-house registered dietitian and specialised allergy diet chef to ensure students needs are met to the best of our ability

Alliance Catering provides the following special diets to students with specific medical or cultural dietary needs, without requiring medical verification:

  • Vegan Friendly
  • No Ingredients Containing Egg*
  • No Ingredients Containing Dairy*
  • No Ingredients Containing Gluten*
  • No Ingredients Containing Gluten* & Vegan Friendly.

If parents or caregivers have any questions regarding special diets they can find out more here.

What if I require a special diet that isn’t listed above?

If a student has a dietary requirement not already listed above, and this is related to a medical condition involving a medically prescribed therapeutic diet, the students parents/caregivers would be required to get in touch with our Dietitian, via the get in touch form. They will then review the request and if accepted, every effort will be made to tailor a diet to suit.

Do you cater for cultural diets?

Yes, Alliance can cater for cultural diets including halal.

Alliance Catering does not claim to be a halal certified premises for handling and cooking of halal meals but prepares these meals under a “duty of care” philosophy which is underpinned by following key internal processes and protocols.

The production kitchen does not prepare any pork or pork related meals on the premises. This is reflected in the menu options available to schools and this policy provides another layer of assurance and confidence to its halal clients on any cross contamination risks.

“Halal only” meat as preferred option. When a meat product is on the main menu of the day, every effort is made to use certified halal meat and ingredients making the main meal as halal compliant. This avoids having to bring non-halal meat onto the premises.

How are lunches ordered?

Lunches are ordered via an online form once per term. Here at Alliance we understand that roll numbers constantly fluctuate so any changes can be communicated to the Customer Liaison Manager.

How is food waste managed?

As part of the Ka Ora Ka Ako Healthy Lunch Programme we use sustainable packaging for our lunch service. 90% of the contents of the lunchboxes can be composted. Alliance Catering provide the bins to be stored on school premises and our on site Catering Assistants manage the correct disposal of waste. Download our ‘What Goes Where’ poster

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What happens if a group of students are away at camp or on a school trip?

When there is a EOTC event, Alliance Catering can continue to supply lunches.

Alliance Catering can arrange for lunches to be delivered prior to school transport leaving school grounds

OR

Alliance Catering can allow a school representative to pick up the lunches directly from the production facility in Albany.

For a school camp the supplier can provide a combined delivery for the duration of camp. Long life shelf stable items/dry goods eg. tinned food and fruit, dried wholemeal pasta, rice, wholemeal sandwich bread. The supplier can provide the school a list of items that can be ordered that meet nutrition guidelines. Delivery of shelf stable items would be made one week prior to camp.

If a school camp is already catered for the supplier can provide a non-perishable snack box that can be delivered to school one week prior to camp.

How can I provide feedback?

There are a few ways to provide us feedback. The first is to complete an online feedback form here. This gets forwarded to the Customer Liaison Manager for reporting. Or you can contact the onsite Catering Assistants or Customer Liaison Manager directly.

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