Devon Norse, working in partnership with Devon County Council, is a highly successful and fast-growing facilities management and contract services provider, now operating across five counties in the South West.
As part of the UK’s largest commercial Local Authority Trading Company, the Norse Group, Devon Norse is ideally placed to deliver first-class services that customers value and trust.
The company delivers a range of cleaning, caretaking and catering services to private and public sector clients including Devon County Council, schools, NHS sites, housing associations, leisure centres and civic buildings.
Please see below to find out more about our primary school catering.
We are the largest provider of school meals in Devon, supplying over 15,000 meals every day. We take this responsibility very seriously and ensure our menus are compliant with school food standards. During the pandemic, we have continued to ensure that children attending school receive hot nutritious meals, and last term provided over 8,000 food parcels to children who were eligible for free school meals.
COVID-19
We know this year has proved very challenging for everyone, as we adapt to new ways of working. We have taken great care implementing stringent operating procedures to ensure our services remain COVID safe. If you are a self-performing school and are struggling to provide school meals or require support with providing food parcels this term, please contact us. We can help, even if we don’t cater for the children at your school. However, we are not an employment agency and cannot supply temporary staff.
We employ a permanent team of fully-trained DBS certificated personnel to provide cover across the schools we cater for, so you don’t need to worry if a member of the kitchen team can’t attend work.
Special diets
With a growing number of children requiring special diets, please be assured we cater for gluten free, dairy free, soya free, egg free, vegetarian and vegan diets as standard. All other special diets can be catered for. If your child is attending a Devon Norse school and has a medically confirmed dietary need, please contact us at info@devonnorse.co.uk and we will send you a special diet registration form to arrange a suitable and safe dietary plan for your child.
Supporting children’s learning
Devon Norse can support your children with food related educational support. We are also proud to support Farmwise Devon and take part in a number of events. Come along and meet the team and our local suppliers and have fun learning and enjoying our educational activities.
We also have our smoothie bike which our customers can borrow free of charge for school events, activities and fundraising efforts. Please contact us to check availability and make a booking.
Caring for the environment
We are proud to be recognised by Kids Against Plastic as a plastic clever business. One of our Devon Norse school kitchens was also the first school in the country to be accredited with Surfers Against Sewage plastic free status.
If you would like to find out more about how Devon Norse catering can help your school, contact us today for an informal, no obligation chat.
We also provide audit, compliance and support packages for self-performing schools. Please get in touch with us for more details.
The Devon Norse Menu and Allergen chart displayed on our website is a guide to our standard menu only and it is important to note that schools may make menu changes on a local level, therefore we always recommend that you liaise closely with your school and our kitchen manager to ensure you have the latest and most accurate information from our suppliers.
Please be aware the information in the allergen log is based on recipe information and supplier specifications. Please be aware that this allergen information is subject to change.
At Devon Norse, we take the safety of the children we cater for very seriously and want to ensure all their dietary needs are catered for safely. If your child has a particular dietary need or allergy please ensure you speak to your child’s school and make an appointment to see the kitchen manager and our area catering manager who will happily discuss a suitable diet plan with you.
At Devon Norse, our food ethos has always been based on high quality ingredients prepared by well-trained catering teams.
As caterers based in the South West, we are blessed to have such a fantastic selection of local produce and suppliers.
Local produce, organic food and healthy eating are fundamental to us. This has helped us achieve Silver Food for Life status across all our schools and Gold Food for Life status at Blackpool Primary and Buckfast St Mary’s. We are currently the only school caterer in Devon to hold Gold status, an achievement we are extremely proud of.
We’re also approved by Devon and Somerset Trading Standards’ Buy with Confidence scheme. Trading Standards check all our local procedures and provide us with food testing to confirm the provenance of the products we sell. This includes important elements within the food supply chain such as meat DNA content and allergens. You can find out more here.
All our meat and poultry is British, which is sourced from farms across Devon and Cornwall to high welfare standards. Much of our produce is organic and we adopt the Red Tractor Assurance as a minimum standard.
Our meat and poultry is then processed and distributed across our network of schools by Scorse Foods Ltd. All the meat in our Devon Norse menu choices is traceable right back to the farms on which the animals were raised.
We only use free range eggs and have held a Compassion in World Farming Good Egg Award since 2016.
All milk comes fresh from farms across Devon and we work closely with Total Produce to ensure we are always using the best local and seasonal fresh fruit and vegetables. See their growers supplier maps here.
Our delicious ice cream is made by Langage Farm with milk from their Jersey cows just outside of Ivybridge, on the edge of Dartmoor.
Wykes Cheddar produces our cheese at its Somerset farm and over 50% of our fresh fruit and vegetables are grown on farms in Devon and Cornwall. Please see our suppliers maps highlighting the growers and produce.
All our fish are also responsibly sourced and approved by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).
As a Gold Food for Life caterer, we are committed to using local seasonal produce at every opportunity. We take pride in serving children with nutritious, freshly prepared meals which they enjoy, helping them to develop a healthy relationship with food.
We support a number of Fairtrade suppliers across our business and are delighted to serve Owens Coffee in our café, which is organic and Fairtrade, and roasted locally in Devon.
If you would like further information about any of our services, please get in touch today. We’re always more than happy to chat about how we can meet your needs.
