Family-Run Caterer for Schools, Workplaces and Events
We’re The Pantry: a family-run, award-winning caterer cooking fresh every day for over 170 schools across England, plus offices, events and parties.
Hot lunches cooked fresh in your kitchen, menus pupils look forward to, careful allergen management and free food lessons, from the Education Caterer of the Year.
Fresh desk lunches, meeting platters and event days that beat a supermarket meal deal, made that morning and delivered by our own team.
Birthdays, christenings, weddings, BBQs and banquets, plus personalised hampers for every occasion. Tell us the date and we’ll plan the menu with you.
Book, change and cancel your child’s school meals, top up their account and set their allergens, all in one place.
Education Caterer of the YearFoodservice Cateys 2024
School Meals
Primary and secondary schools, academy trusts and independent schools hand us the whole lunchtime: the kitchen team, the menus, parent ordering and allergen care. Pupils get food they want to eat. You get one less thing to worry about.
Lunch is the main event, but it’s never the only thing on the tray.
Christmas lunch in one of our schools: over 50,000 festive meals served in December 2023.
Your kitchen team cooks every meal fresh on the day, with a hot vegetarian choice and jacket potatoes every day. Our development chefs refresh the menus every September and February half term, so lunch never gets stale.
Fresh salad every day, a seasonal Super Salad each month in participating primary schools, and fresh fruit as an alternative to pudding.
Special diet menus are planned from a doctor’s note with our nutrition team, and we treat every ‘may contain’ label as ‘contains’. That team won the 2026 Allergy Management Award from The School Food People and the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation.
Parents book a day, a week or a whole term online, cancel before the cut-off for an automatic refund, and link brothers and sisters in one login.
Knife and Fork, Sugar Smart, Eat the Rainbow and Fruit Tasting sessions, run in school by our Craft and Engagement team, free of charge.
Primary pupils who book lunch for every school day of the month go into a monthly prize draw. Past winners have taken home a bike, an iPad and a book hamper.
Glebe Primary School in Southwick tripled its school meal sales within weeks of our team taking over in 2021, then opened a second servery to keep up with demand.
Our kitchen team are very kind and caring toward all of the children and they go out of their way to make sure children are happy with their meal each day.
The fact my daughter now opts for school dinners over a packed lunch speaks volumes about the service it provides.
Chosen by schools and trusts across England, including the seven schools of the Mossbourne Federation in Hackney and the 18 schools of the Diocese of Sheffield Academies Trust.
Five of our own street food brands give older pupils something to look forward to, with the classics they ask for on the days they expect them.
Wings, burgers, filled pittas and halloumi sticks, with sauces from soothing to sizzling.
Kormas, masalas and fragrant Thai curries with all the accompaniments.
A different roast every week, with the full supporting cast of trimmings.
Kung pao chicken, Vietnamese-style stir fries and the creamiest katsu curry.
Crisp battered fish, fishcakes or battered veggie sausages, with chips and peas.
Whether you run your kitchen in-house today or your contract is coming up for renewal, we make the move feel easy for pupils, parents and staff.
When Amadeus Primary Academies Trust moved five schools to us mid-term in October 2024, every one of those kitchens had a 5-star food hygiene rating by Christmas.
Pupil numbers, your kitchen, your budget and when your current arrangement ends.
Menus to the School Food Standards, pricing, parent ordering and a calendar of free food lessons.
Your cooks are welcomed into Team Pantry and trained in our recipes, processes and standards.
Parents set up accounts before day one, and your Area Operations Manager keeps checking in.
Awards
Ours keeps filling up, three years running at the Growing Business Awards alone. Every one belongs to the 700-plus people who make Pantry lunches happen each day.
Foodservice Cateys 2024
“Standout innovation and a culture that genuinely cares.”
What the judges said when they named us Education Caterer of the Year.
Workplace Catering
Why settle for supermarket sandwiches? We hand-make lunches every morning in our own kitchen and deliver them to your door in our refrigerated vans, from a sandwich for one to a buffet for a hundred.
We have been a customer of The Pantry for over 10 years. They provide excellent service, nothing is ever too much trouble for them and they have never let us down.
Pick what you need and we’ll send it straight to our team with your enquiry. Already a customer? Log in to order.
A one-off desk lunch for up to 10 people.
Send to Our TeamEvents and Hampers
Private functions take a lot of planning. Hand it to us, so the only thing you need to worry about is your guests turning up on time.
Our chefs and managers plan every detail with you, from the menu to the team serving on the day, whatever your budget.
We pack thousands of hampers every month, from a single birthday surprise to bulk orders for our corporate clients, with personalised touches in every box.
Why We Do It
“We’re leading a new way forward at The Pantry, not just with a fantastic food offer, but with the kind of company support and engagement that shows that we’re More Than Food.”
Free sessions that help pupils eat well, from tasting new fruit to learning to use a knife and fork.
With brand partners including Weetabix, Tilda and Soreen, we fill hampers of store-cupboard essentials for families going through a hard time.
We joined the Local Authority Catering Association’s delegation to Parliament to press MPs for fairer school meal funding in England.
Leftover food goes to a local church to feed people who are homeless, and spare bread feeds the animals on a local farm.
Our Story
In 2006 Luke Consiglio took on a small sandwich shop on Hayes High Street. Within six months we were catering for local companies and events. A year later, a local school asked us to make its lunches.
Twenty years on, we’re one of the UK’s largest independently owned contract caterers, and still a family business. Luke still drops into schools to hand over the Pantry Prize in person.
An exceptional business, doing incredible things that go way beyond just being a business.
For Parents
Book and cancel meals, top up and tell us about allergies in your child’s Pantry account.
Our Customer Service Team
Call 020 8813 7040, Monday to Friday, 7.30am to 5pm.
Or email office@thepantrycatering.co.uk with your child’s pupil ID.
Free School Meals
Every child in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 in England can have a free school lunch. From September 2026, children in every household that gets Universal Credit qualify too: ask your school to check and register your child. Free meals still need booking in your Pantry account each day.
Any time up to your school’s ordering cut-off. After the cut-off, orders go to our chefs, who cook every meal fresh to order.
Your child still gets lunch: a jacket potato with baked beans, vegetables of the day and fruit for dessert. We’ll email you, and the meal is charged to your child’s account.
Book a day, a week or a whole term at a time, whatever works for your family.
Untick the day in your child’s account before your school’s cut-off and the refund is automatic. Remember to cancel for sick days and school trips.
Set your child’s allergens in their Pantry account and confirm you have medical documentation. Our Customer Service Team will call you and, if needed, refer you to our nutritionist. A special diet menu can take up to three weeks; until then your child can have a suitable jacket potato or a packed lunch.
Yes. There’s a hot vegetarian option every day, plus jacket potatoes, and sandwiches in some schools.
Twice a year: in September and at February half term.
Yes. A salad bar is available daily alongside the hot meal, and fresh fruit is offered as an alternative to dessert.
Choose Top Up in your child’s account and pay with a debit or credit card registered to a UK bank account. We don’t accept American Express.
Yes. Use the same email address for each child at the same school and the accounts link automatically, so you can switch between them.
If the new school is a Pantry school, we’ll transfer the account. If not, we’ll close it and refund any balance to your original payment card.
Email office@thepantrycatering.co.uk with your account details, or call 020 8813 7040 with your payment card to hand.
No matching answers. Call 020 8813 7040 and our team will help.
Careers
Over 700 people make Pantry lunches happen: in school kitchens, in our own kitchen, on the road and in our Uxbridge office.
We’re always looking for enthusiastic people, with a choice of start times, contract types and locations.
Every Christmas our office team hand-writes a card to every member of our kitchen teams. In 2024 that was more than 800 cards.
Get in Touch
Tell us a little about what you need, and our team will come back to you with ideas, menus and a price.
It takes about a minute. Fields marked optional can be left blank.
