This project has built upon insights from ongoing Nesta work in Wales focused on engaging and sharing information with parents and pupils about free school meals that could encourage more families to take up this offer. However, we focused on how food is situated within the school food system, specifically how menus are designed and how food is served to pupils.

These are all things that our previous work has suggested have an impact on decisions about whether a child eats a school meal, but are also important in ensuring that those that do take up the offer of a school meal eat as healthy a meal as possible.

We wanted to discover examples of great work being done in Wales and internationally on school meal delivery to identify potential ways to share and scale best practice. Our aim was to understand the potential benefits and challenges of these practices being scaled across Wales - and to identify ways in which we could achieve wider scaling, in partnership with Welsh Government, councils and other stakeholders.

Through a combination of reviewing the existing literature on school food policy in Wales, academic research and existing programmes, alongside deep dives and conversations with stakeholders, we used our learnings to help inform the Healthy school meals project.

After an open tender for experienced teams and individuals across the UK including Wales, we identified the independent food policy and practice consultancy Bremner and Co. We appointed them as residents for this project.