FEBRUARY 2021 UPDATE

Dear community,

We now know that this lockdown - England's third - is likely to continue into March, with schools staying closed for many weeks yet.

This will result in some pupils physically attending school for just 13 weeks for the past year - a situation that our teams fully recognise is challenging for all concerned, as we too continue to adapt to the changing needs of our own families, while continuing to support the community through the work that City Catering does.

As we have already seen, schools being closed is likely to have a huge and varied impact on pupils across the country. For our charity, our focus is firmly on those who rely on school support to help protect a childs access to good food. We know from discussions with our Member schools, that the impact of lockdown on food availability is great, and diverse.

Now more than ever, schools are vital to children's nutrition, giving access to Free School Meals, Breakfast clubs, the National Fruit & Vegetable Scheme, emergency food banks, and more...

With many children learning at home, fewer pupils are enjoying a hot school meal; currently, we are serving a fifth of pre-Covid numbers, at just 9,500 meals a week, but are grateful to still be operating in schools and supporting pupils' nutrition; it is our purpose, after all. There are many well-known benefits for all who tuck into school meals, and especially those who, for many reasons, a school dinner provides the only reliable hot meal that they can access.

The impact on our organisation of such a massive fall in school meal numbers - and income - is keenly felt. I doubt any organisation can withstand an 80% fall in revenues for any sustained period. For us, it results in our charity having less ability to recover from the long-lasting impact of closures and the adapted service we have needed to deliver since September. We are still cooking. We will continue to cook. We are continuing to fundraise, adapt and utilise the Government support mechanisms.

To continue to weather this lockdown 'storm', we need the support of our community:

- support to protect our school-meal service, so that we can continue adapting to the ever-changing needs of our Member schools and their communities;

- support to continue our Lunch Crowd and Cooking at Home programs for those most in need;

- support so that our ability to be there, every weekday, serving our vulnerable and elderly residents a hot meal at home, is protected;

- support to continue to advocate, to feed, to serve, to help.

We are again in a position of unknown longevity.

This is why we are, again, appealing to you in our local community, to support us, donate and fundraise for us. Be it the cost of a school meal, a meals-on-wheels delivery, or more, we'd be so grateful.

If you can't donate just now, we would be so thrilled if you'd fundraise on our behalf.

Others have:

-completed challenges to keep themselves active, calm, or motivated this lockdown, and raised money for our charity in the process

-reached out to their employers and colleagues, to see how they can help

Whatever contribution you can make to City Catering - your local school-meals and care-meals charity - all 230 members of our team thank you. Together, we can make a difference.

Rachel Hall, CEO

JANUARY 2021 UPDATE

We start the year in a new lockdown, new challenges, and new demands. We have learnt a lot since March 2020, and received wonderful support from our community. We continue to respond to the challenges of the pandemic. We are:

- cooking hot meals in those schools that require them for vulnerable and key worker children

- organising provision, through packed lunches and/or grocery boxes, for those pupils not in school and eligible for Free School Meals as required, during term time

- continuing to grow our Cooking at Home program, and online support for healthy home cooking, whilst supplying recipe-led grocery boxes to families in need during the school holidays

- taking referrals and serving hot meals to vulnerable and elderly residents at home across the City

- serving meals at Erksine Court, a local residential home, continuing to provide an essential service to their residents

As we continue to respond, under challenging financial climate, we continue to ask our community to support us. If you are willing and able to donate, we'd absolutely love that and please know that how thankful the whole team is.

Thank you!

Rachel Hall, CEO

SEPTEMBER 2020 UPDATE

Six months after lockdown and a lot has changed, however the needs of those in our community continue to grow and change. We have been working hard to constantly adapt to this changing need for both our school meals and care meals service. This however, comes are considerable cost to the charity in order to continue to serve nutritious meals every day, whilst remaining Covid-19 secure and responding to the still changing environment. We'd welcome, gladly, any assistance our community can provide. Thank you!

Rachel Hall, CEO

Supporting City Catering through Covid-19: Response Fund

For 25 years, we have served nutritious meals to Southampton's youngest and oldest residents, cooking 1.8m school lunches each year, and delivering 32,000 hot dinners a year for the vulnerable and elderly - in their own homes, and at lunch clubs - with care. We also fuel-up business customers with corporate catering right across the city.

Every single one of our 250 Southampton employees are dedicated to feeding the city and supporting its families, communities and organisations through these unprecedented times.

We are adapting our business model daily, to make sure everyone receives the nutritious meals they need. But the financial challenges are tough, with many of our income streams disappearing overnight, and with additional costs associated with delivery. To protect the service please we appeal to you, as a community, to donate to our Covid-19 Response Fund.

Here's what were doing with the money we raise, currently. We know that as time goes on, we may have to continue to adapt - however, we will continue to utilise funds to support the community access good food:

SCHOOL MEALS

- Update from Sept 2020 - we are now back to school! And managing the changing environments of school meals, and working flexibly with schools to serve Covid-19 safe meals. This unfortunately, comes at quite a considerable cost to our charity.

- Producing and delivering to schools healthy packed lunches/grocery boxes for families entitled to Free School Meals

- Delivering bags of essential groceries, for schools to distribute to families that will struggle financially

- Delivering bagged groceries for those families already affected by food poverty that we would normally cook for in the school holidays, for free, as part of our Lunch Crowd project.

This is an area of limited funding, with an increasing demand. Where funding allows, we may be able to extend the offer to more schools and families.

We recognise that this period places unexpected and additional pressures on families; and everyone deserves quality food.

CARE MEALS

- For our elderly and vulnerable care-meal customers, were making sure hot meals and welfare checks continue to go out. And were adding in delivery of some household essentials, free of charge, to help keep customers safe and happy this is dependent exclusively on donations and fundraising.

- Due to increased self-isolation, and through referrals from our friends at SCiA, Communicare and the Council, we are seeing a potential 100% increase in customers. We require vital funding to ensure we can meet these demands.

CORPORATE CATERING

- We have temporarily paused our corporate catering offer. Our corporate chefs are now fully focused on serving care meals across Southampton, but our revenues and profits from corporate catering are nil.