At Heronshill School, we have recently contracted Stir Food to provide cooked meals on site daily. Stir Food are proud supporters of local and regional farmers. This has lots of benefits, including supporting the local economy, safeguarding local jobs, telling important stories about local farming families and of course, ensuring we’ve got the best, freshest ingredients on their menus!
Important:
For those children with allergies, intolerances or special dietary requirements, please could parents/carers complete and submit the Allergy and Photographic Consent forms need to be sent to the following email address: info@stirfood.co.uk The forms attached are:
- Special Diets-Allergy Form: Stir_Special Diets _Allergy Form
- Consent Form for child photographic image form: Stir_Consent Form for child photographic image
Please note that these forms are only required for students with specific allergies or dietary requirements; otherwise, you do not need to complete the forms.
It is also a timely reminder to ensure these details are up to date in MCAS.
Booking meals for your child is a simple and easy process. Meals are booked via the Swift Kitchen App or Kitchen Management Software - SwiftKitchen
Please see useful video and guide below:
swiftkitchen-guide-for-parents
If you would like your child to have school lunches, please email school-office@heronshillschool.co.uk who will provide you with a Swift Kitchen Key for you to order your child's lunches. Please see guidance and information below:
Please note: Your account will not be activated until your child's first day with us, so please make provision for a packed lunch on your child's first week at school. You will then receive an email from the school with your child's unique Swift Kitchen Key and guidance on how to order meals, view recipes, allergens, ingredients and make payments.
Important: You MUST place your order BEFORE 9am on the day that you would like the meal for your child. Ordering is disabled after this time and you will not be able to order a meal for that day i.e. if you want your child to have a meal on a Tuesday, you must order the meal BEFORE 9am on that Tuesday.
If you miss this deadline, a packed lunch must be brought in for your child.
Meals are FREE for all children in Reception to Year 2 but must be PAID FOR for all children in Nursery.
Applying For Free School Meals:
If you receive any of the following support payments, your child may be entitled to receive free school meals:
- Income Support
- Income-based Jobseekers Allowance
- Income-related Employment and Support Allowance
- Support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999
- The guaranteed element of Pension Credit
- Child Tax Credit (provided you’re not also entitled to Working Tax Credit and have an annual gross income of no more than £16,190)
- Working Tax Credit Run-on - paid for 4 weeks after you stop qualifying for Working Tax Credit
- Universal credit if you apply on or after 1 April 2018 your household income must be less than £7,400 a year (after tax and not including any benefits you get).
- Children who get paid these benefits directly, instead of through a parent or guardian, can also get free school meals.
Please follow the link below to see if you qualify:
https://www.cloudforedu.org.uk/ofsm/sims
Even if your child is in Reception, 1 or 2 and receiving Universal Free Infant School Meals (UFISM), or if you have applied before and do not think you are eligible, please do apply. In doing so, you will help us to find out whether we can claim Pupil Premium for your child. This is additional funding to spend on resources such as extra staff, books, extracurricular activities or school trips for eligible children.
Packed Lunches
Packed lunches must be brought into school by your child at the start of the day in a suitable lunch box clearly labelled with your child’s name.
Please provide water in a named plastic bottle (no fizzy drinks or glass bottles allowed). If you provide a yoghurt please include a spoon as we can only supply cutlery to children having hot school meals.
Please provide your child with a healthy balanced packed lunch, we ask that children do not bring chocolate bars or sweets into school. Here is a useful link for healthy packed lunch ideas for your child-Lunchbox ideas and recipes – Healthier Families - NHS
We would like to remind you that children should NOT bring nuts of ANY kind including:
- Whole or chopped nuts
- Items specifically containing nuts, such as Snickers bars or some types of cereal bars
- Sandwich spreads containing nuts, such as Nutella or store own brand equivalent
This is to protect any members of our whole school community who have potentially life-threatening nut allergies.
A little about Stir Food...
We offer a choice of menus per term, operating on a three-week cycle and served with a selection of healthy side dishes, bread and a well-stocked salad bar. All our menus are nutritionally analysed to make sure they are compliant with the School Food Standards. Our fruit and vegetables have the benefit of being fuller, fresher and more locally sourced. Buying in season also makes produce cheaper to procure and helps keep the meal cost down.
We change our menus twice a year, keeping the children’s traditional favourites on but also adding in some new dishes that they might not have tried before.
We also like to introduce our customers to new flavours and textures to help broaden their taste horizons!
Inspiring Future Core SS2026 Core Primary Menu - FINAL
Parent Information Booklet HSN - MAR 2026
We use Swift Kitchen for our parents to order online, this has many benefits to you, enabling you to place an order using a smart phone, laptop, tablet or computer. Some of the benefits are:-
- No more paper, meal orders getting mislaid
- Eliminate the need for cash
- Reminders for orders will be sent
- Orders can be placed during holidays , just 1 full week in advance order
- Multiple week orders can be made
- Confirmation of orders
- You only need to register once
Contact Details for Stir Food:
Head Office Address:
Censeo House,
6 St Peter’s Street,
St Albans,
AL1 3LF
0333 207 2420
Contact Details for Swift Kitchen: