Canteen

Welcome to The Retreat @ St Joseph’s 

We are extremely proud of our in-house catering service, known as “The Retreat at St Joseph’s”. Our experienced and dedicated catering team offer a wide variety of nutritionally balanced, delicious and healthy meals daily. 

Our meals are freshly produced every day in our school kitchen by our catering team. All our dairy, fresh fruit and vegetables are from local suppliers and all our meat is Red Tractor certified.   All our meals are nutritionally compliant the Government Standards for Food Served in Schools.  

We strongly encourage all students, and especially students on Free School Meals, to access the wide variety of healthy and delicious meal choices available every lunchtime. 

Our Menu’s 

We offer a wide selection of hot main meals daily, including vegetarian choices, with a choice of sides. Popular ‘Grab and Go’ items like hot wraps, homemade soup, jacket potatoes, or choose sandwiches, toasties, salad or pasta pots from our ‘Deli Bar’. Also available are healthy snacks, homemade cakes, and a range of drinks. 

Our 3-week menu rotation ensures variety and choice to meet all tastes, and students love our regular themed days.

All our catering staff have received food allergy training and our team are happy to discuss any special dietary requirements and food allergies with parents/carers. 

Lunch Arrangements 

Students access the canteen in their year group at a set time, on a rota basis each lunchtime.  Year 11 are also allowed in the canteen at break time.

We welcome healthy eating packed lunches and students on packed lunches use the canteen with their year group. 

Payments  

We operate a cashless catering system. Parents/Carers are asked to complete a Biometric Consent Form when students join us, allowing them to have their fingerprint scanned to use our Biometric cashless system.  School lunch accounts can be topped up by parents/carers using our App, or students can put cash on their accounts using the cash loading machine in the canteen.  Parents/Carers can monitor what students are purchasing using the App, and can put daily spend limits on accounts if they wish.