Background

The King's School is the north east's leading independent day school for boys and girls aged 4-18 years. The School, originally founded in 1860, it is one of The Woodard Schools - the largest group of independent Church of England Schools in England and Wales - and is one of the largest of all 23 schools.

In 1992 it was decided to make the school fully co-educational and this was achieved by September 1996. Currently there are nearly 720 pupils aged four to eighteen who can take the entire journey from Kindergarten to Sixth Form if they choose, but the school is divided into Juniors and Seniors.

Jacqueline Rennie has been the Catering Manager at King's for the past 14 years and she's found the many services and support that Pelican offers her to be extremely useful.

Why we use Pelican

Jacqueline says, "the reason I decided to use Pelican was because they were able to show me some real saving and their central billing service, as well as Relish - their nutritional analysis solution, saves me lots of time too. I think it's an excellent service and all together it is a fantastic package. As a person who is interested in producing nice healthy food, you want to be doing that, not shuffling bits of paper.

I like the flexibility that buying with Pelican offers. I buy everything from Pelican apart from raw meat, fruit and veg, and bakery items. I'm happy with my local suppliers for these things and when you're in local community some people rely on your business.

As well as saving money, Pelican offers a nutritional analysis service. I've always had quality food at the forefront of the operation and I was really pleased that Pelican introduced Relish, their nutritional analysis tool, to confirm that what I was meeting nutritional standards."

Her bursar at King's, Christine Dobson, agrees. "I see the support that Jacqueline gets. Pelican always seems to be there to offer guidance or point her in the direction of someone who can help. They're a company that really knows what they're doing," she says.

Christine says, "We're always looking at price comparisons and making sure the prices we're paying are competitive. Recently a company approached us and said they could help us make savings. We have a very open relationship with Pelican so I called our Purchasing Advisor Joanne Cartwright and explained that this company had offered us a saving. Joanne went through all the figures they provided us with and came back with a report explaining how they were proposing to make savings. From this report I was able to clearly see that things weren't quite as they seemed. Joanne just presented the information and left it for me to interpret without judging the other company. I'm really happy that Pelican represents great value for money for the school.

"Pelican always seems to be there to offer guidance, it is a company that really knows what they're doing"

Christine Dobson
The Bursar

Jacqueline Rennie
The Catering Manager

The King's School in Tynemouth