Even the best cooks often don’t have a detailed understanding of early years nutritional planning, allergen control and food safety. At Nursery Kitchen, we employ a team of experts who specialise in preparing the best meals for young children.

When a cook is employed to work on-site, nurseries will inevitably face periods of absence, which require cover. Typically, this falls onto the nursery team which can put tremendous pressure on the nursery and take the team away from their primary focus – the children.

By partnering with Nursery Kitchen, nurseries can ensure that children receive consistently safe, healthy, and tasty meals and snacks.

We provide nursery meals for over 140 happy customers across England. You can find lots of delightful reviews from some of our Nursery Partners.

There are no additional fees when you are a Nursery Partner with us. You’ll have access to our ordering platform where the prices of all our prepared meals and snacks are clearly shown and the cost of delivery is included in your plan. We include lots of options for special diets, so you can choose the meals according to your budget and the needs of the children in your care.

Some special requests, such as a delivery outside of the assigned route, may be subject to availability.

We are always looking at ways to be kind to our planet and reducing waste is part of this. All waste packaging is sent to a local Materials Recycling Facility (MFR). Here it is sorted so it can either be used again or, where recycling isn’t possible, converted into fuel.

We donate any excess meals or fresh ingredients to The Felix Project. This food redistribution charity delivers surplus food to foodbanks, schools and charities across London, helping families in need.

We have an excellent communication system with our Nursery Partners. In the unlikely event of a late delivery, we will contact the nursery to keep them informed. We encourage our Partners to always keep a full day’s supply of meals in their freezer to cover this type of eventuality.

If, for any reason, we are unable to fulfil an order, we will let the nursery know and will provide a substitute with the closest available alternative. If the substitution is not acceptable, the nursery must contact us via our Customer Portal and we will offer a refund.

Absolutely! Keeping children safe is something we take very seriously. We are SALSA (Safe and Local Supplier Approval) accredited, which requires us to undergo rigorous food safety inspections, including approval of our HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) plan. These checks exceed the minimum food safety standards required by law.

Our team of expert chefs prepare meals by hand in our professional, SALSA accredited kitchen. We meticulously follow recipes created by our Development Chef and approved by our specialist Early Years Nutritionist to ensure that we provide consistently tasty and nutritious meals for children.

Once cooked, our meals are packaged into recyclable foil trays, sealed, and chilled (not frozen). We keep the meals at the same temperature from that moment onwards, moving from our kitchen, into our bespoke temperature-controlled delivery vehicles, right up to carefully packing the meals away into the nursery’s fridge.

Nursery Kitchen lovingly prepares fresh, tasty, and nutritious meals and snacks specially for nursery schools, using only the best ingredients. With a wholesome menu packed with flavours from around the world, nurseries can take children on exciting taste adventures, where they can develop a love for healthy food for life.
nurserykitchen.co.uk

Our meals are made by hand using the best, fresh ingredients, and then quickly chilled to preserve the nutritional and sensory quality of the meals. We deliver meals to nurseries chilled, not frozen, as we believe that fresh is best! Our meals have a 7-day shelf life, which is rigorously tested to ensure our meals stay safe, fresh, and healthy. We do not add preservatives to any of our dishes.

We source ingredients from farms that share our vision on animal welfare and reducing environmental impact. All our fish is MSC Certified, and we use pole and line caught tuna and salmon as this has a better environmental impact. To minimise the risk of fish bones, we only use the premium tail end of the salmon fillet. All our meat is Red Tractor, higher welfare.

Our meals are not organic; however, we do use some organic ingredients such as coconut milk, coconut oil, gluten free oat flour, gluten free plain flour. We also offer some organic products on our grocery menu, such as, rice cakes and corn cakes.

We believe that young children shouldn’t consume sugary foods, as sugar can lead to tooth decay and health problems in later life. That’s why our menu does not contain any added sugar. We’re very proud to say that we offer a delicious and healthy range of puddings without any sugar, including, rice puddings, fruit crumbles, natural yoghurt, and a variety of fruits. Our menu does contain naturally occurring sugars from fruit.

Learn more about sugar.

We do not add salt to our meals, however, some stocks and gravies that we use do contain a small amount of salt. Any cheese used in our meals will also contain a small amount of salt. We ensure that the nutritional values of our meals meet or most often exceed government guidance, outlined in the Eat Better Start Better guidelines.

Our menus are designed to include a variety of delicious dishes for children with allergies or food intolerances. Each day there are five tasty dishes to choose from, so nurseries can tailor their menu for the children in their care, ensuring there is a safe and healthy option for everyone.

We always provide expert allergen support to help ensure that children are kept safe at mealtimes.

Young children can be unsettled by change in their diet, particularly if they have experienced patterns of suddenly disliking foods in the past. It is widely understood that a child often needs to experience a dish or new food between 10 and 15 times before they begin to feel confident with it. For this reason, we support our nursery partners to encourage positive eating experiences for children, and strategies for developing children’s palates to relish the taste of healthy and diverse foods.

We provide recipe cards for each of our dishes so that parents can make our meals at home – they’re delicious and healthy for the entire family!

Check out our health & nutrition page for the latest recipes.

We deliver to your nursery twice weekly. We prefer to deliver when your setting is closed, this avoids disruption in busy settings and ensures your fridge is packed correctly. However, we will deliver at a time that suits you, so please talk to us about your delivery preferences.

Absolutely! We would be proud to give you a tour of our kitchen, meet the Chefs, taste our freshly prepared meals, and of course, hear your feedback. We exist solely to provide tasty, healthy, and nutritious meals for children, and we welcome any visit. If you would like to visit us, please contact: hello@nurserykitchen.co.uk.

We use pure olive and sunflower oil for cooking in our kitchens. In the case that palm oil is used in a sub ingredient or by one of our partner suppliers (bakery etc), we are committed to sourcing from RSPO certified sources only. This ensures that growers commit to principles of environmental responsibility and conservation.

Nursery Kitchen is unable to provide short-term cover for nurseries, as we prefer a six-week implementation process to ensure a smooth and successful transition.

To ensure a smooth transition into your nursery, we recommend a four to six-week implementation process. During this time, we’ll help you to prepare your team, children, and parents for the exciting change to mealtimes. We’ll also support you to create your own nutritionally balanced menu and help with allergens and preferences and ensure you have the right equipment in place. Education is a critical part of implementing a change to your food service, which is why we provide a whole host of resources to ensure a successful transition.

We work on a three week menu cycle. Each week is fully customisable and we can help and advise our Nursery Partners to design a varied weekly menu.

Our Development Chef and Early Years Nutritionist are always working on creating new tasty and nutritious meals. Each month we have either a new dish or an improved recipe, giving you even more choices for your nursery menu and exposing children to lots of variety throughout the year.

Yes, we know how important this information is when choosing meals for children. You will find that all our dishes are delivered with information clearly printed on the packaging. This includes necessary details about ingredients and allergens.

Each meal also has a QR code which links to our website. Here our Nursery Partners can access a portal where they will find the nutrition and allergen information, along with additional resources available for that dish.

We understand that some families may have specific food requirements according to cultural and religious preferences. Our wide choice of tasty meals includes vegetarian, vegan, fish and meat dishes. With this variety, nurseries can find many options which are suitable for different cultures.

Our expert staff are always available to help you tailor you menus to ensure all cultural preferences are catered for.

We love to help make Christmas special for all our nursery partners. Each year our talented Chefs create a festive taste adventure, serving thousands of Christmas dinners to little ones in nurseries across the country.

And it doesn’t stop with Christmas. We celebrate special events with food throughout the year, such as Chinese New Year, Holi and Diwali. We offer related early years learning resources to support Cultural Capital learning and sometimes we create a whole menu for children to experience the tastes and textures of the celebration. We choose different occasions each year, but Christmas is always on the menu!

Seeing and tasting our meals is an excellent way to appreciate the freshness and quality of our food. We are always happy to arrange a tour of our kitchen where you can taste our dishes and meet our team. We are  also happy to arrange a visit to your nursery for a tasting session.

Yes! We believe in sourcing with kindness, and using recyclable packaging is one more way we can be kind to our planet. Our meals are delivered in fully recyclable aluminium trays and we are currently working on finding a recyclable film to seal them. Our goal is for all our packaging to be 100% recyclable.