Introducing Ground Up at Petty Pool College

We’re excited to welcome learners back to College and introduce our newly refurbished canteen – Ground Up at Petty Pool College.

Over the summer, we’ve transformed the canteen to create a more modern, welcoming dining environment and an improved lunchtime offer for our learners.

The refurbishment has been shaped by feedback from learners through our Learner Council, who told us they wanted more choice at lunchtime and a better dining environment. We’ve listened, and the new Ground Up canteen will provide a wider and more varied range of lunchtime choices, with additional food outlets and improved facilities.

Learners will have access to:

These changes are designed to create a dining experience that better reflects the needs and preferences of our College community, while continuing to provide good-quality, nutritious food.

Ground Up is Petty Pool’s café and catering offer, providing quality food while creating opportunities for young people to develop skills, confidence and independence.

Bringing the Ground Up approach into College means the canteen can provide more than a lunchtime service. The new environment will also support our wider educational aims by giving learners opportunities to make informed choices, understand value for money, budget effectively and manage their spending responsibly – all important skills for adulthood and greater independence.

Learners who are entitled to Free School Meals will continue to have a range of choices available each day. They will be able to choose either a hot or cold meal from a designated selection within their Free School Meal allocation, ensuring they can continue to access a balanced lunchtime meal.

As part of these improvements, we have also reviewed some of our food and drink prices.

We know affordability is important to families and have worked hard to keep catering costs as low as possible. Many of our prices have remained unchanged for more than ten years, despite significant increases during that time in the cost of food, ingredients, utilities and catering operations.

For many years, Petty Pool has absorbed these additional costs. However, the catering service is now operating at a substantial loss and continuing to absorb these increases is no longer sustainable.

As a result, some prices will change from the start of the new academic year. Prices within the canteen will range from £3–£6, providing learners with options at different price points and flexibility over what they choose to spend.

These changes will help ensure we can continue to provide high-quality, nutritious food while maintaining and improving the service available to learners.

We will also gradually move towards a cashless payment system during the academic year.

Cash will continue to be accepted during the transition period, so learners and families will not need to make an immediate change.

We will encourage families to begin using our online payment system wherever possible. This will provide a more efficient, secure and convenient way for learners to purchase food and will also support them in developing skills around managing their money and spending.

Further information about the payment system and what families need to do will be shared as we move towards the new system.