Nursery using outside catering - good or bad?

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The nursery I will be sending my DD to at age 1 has just switched from preparing food in house to buying it in from a company called Nursery Kitchen (nurserykitchen.co.uk/). They are dressing it up as a positive feature (benefiting from input of nutritionist, ensuring the correct intake of calories and nutrients etc) but I would guess it's also cost cutting. Would you be concerned? Any experiences with nurseries using a similar setup?

Why would it be bad? Surely it frees up the nursery workers time so then can spend more doing activities with the children rather than preparing food?

I think it's better in terms of variety

I’ve never come across a nursery that cooks in house but we’re in a city so space is at a premium. It’s healthy age appropriate food so I don’t see an issue unless DC won’t eat most of it or something.

Our nursery has done this recently and I had similar reservations to you. It's a recent change so I can't really comment on the quality of the food, although they did invite parents to a tasting beforehand and the quality seemed good - hard to know if that's what they'll actually serve though! I think one of the issues for our nursery was managing multiple dietary needs, and this allows them more flexibility. But I think the main issue is many nurseries are in a funding crisis and I imagine they are looking at any way possible to reasonably cut costs. We are looking at significant fee increases here in London and if managing these costs means bringing in an outside caterer I'm ok with that.

The food the nursery was using already will have been the cheapest quality they could get, so an outside company is unlikely to be much of a drop in quality - it will just be cheaper as it's on a bigger scale plus the nursery saves staffing and energy costs.

This particular company delivers frozen meals, which have to be heated up onsite. It might work out cheaper overall, I suppose, but the food will still need to be heated and temperature checked, so the nursery will still have to employ someone to work in the kitchen.

My experience of meals like this (and I have used them during holiday clubs) is that there is limited choice and the kids don’t like them. You save a bit of money, but no one eats the food so you may as well not bother.

Where I work we find that buying in food from tesco and employing a cook is cheaper than using these type of companies.
So I doubt it's cost cutting.

But it's really hard to employ cooks at the moment, we have been advertising for months, so have to use delivered in food for now.

The meals are good and nutritionly balanced, but not as flexible as cooking on site.

I personally wanted a nursery where food was cooked on site for several reasons. My son has a dairy allergy and I wanted to be totally clear what was going into his food - of course catering companies will be careful but when your child can go into shock if he eats the wrong thing, you need to be clear and nothing beats being able to speak to the chef directly whenever you like. Fellow parents of children with nut allergies for example agree. I also don’t like the idea the meals are preserved and frozen. Are they as nutritious? Is the lunch made that morning for example or the day before? Do they use extra salt to preserve? Our chef also does cooking classes with the kids - granted another worker can do this but I like it’s him.

im sure someone will come in saying that my opinions is wrong but like all things parenting (childcare especially) you do you!

@Nearlyamumoftwo it's definitely personal preference. My son has food allergies too and I personally found it more reassuring that his meals were prepared in a big facility rather than being dependent on one cook in the nursery.

Not trying to say you're wrong, just different opinions