School Meals And Packed Lunches

Our school lunches are provided by The Kids Lunch Company, a local independent business with over 20 years of experience in delivering nutritious meals to local primary schools. In June 2025 The Kids Lunch Company introduced a variety of hot lunch options which are available for parents to order. Sample menus can be found on The Kids Lunch website: Sample Menu

Alongside the hot meal options, there are also a selection of sandwich/roll fillings for parents to choose from. All meals include a dessert of yoghurt and fruit, with a special cake/treat on Fridays. Children with specific food allergies/intolerances are catered for individually on a daily basis.

Parents need to order their child’s lunches via The Kids Lunch Company website: kidslunch.co.uk The menus are updated each half term and orders can be placed weekly or for the entire half term. Cut-off for orders is midday on the Friday for lunches required the following week.

All Reception and Key Stage 1 children are entitled to Universal Free School Meals. Parents wishing to take advantage of free school meals need to pre-order them.

Little Chestnuts children who come for the afternoon or stay for the whole day may choose to have packed lunches or school meals. Preschool children are not entitled to Universal Free School Meals, but parents may order and pay for them.

Packed Lunches

If your child is bringing in a packed lunch the following tips may be useful:

Lunchboxes need to be clearly labelled.
All children should bring a full, named water bottle to school every day. This will be taken to lunch with them. We will refill it if required.
Food should be easy to unwrap and eat (e.g. peeled oranges).
Please provide a small plastic plate or paper napkin on which to place food.
We will send uneaten food home in the lunch box so that parents know how much has been consumed and can adjust the amount if necessary.
In our experience, flasks with hot soup are not suitable for this age group.
Nuts, or any food contain nuts, are not allowed at Chestnut Lane School as we have several children who are highly allergic to nuts.
To promote healthy eating and nutrition sweets and chocolate bars are not allowed.
Small round fruits like grapes, cherries, strawberries and cherry tomatoes are recognised by the Foods Standards Agency as potential choking hazards for young children. Therefore please cut them in half lengthways if you are including them in packed lunches. For further information on Early Years choking hazards can be found here: Early-Years-Choking-Hazards