When the summer holidays end, many parents will be relieved that school is back. However, the start of term means different stresses, like feeding the family under time pressure, juggling work commitments with school runs, and supporting children with exams or homework.

Your community centre kitchen can be a lifeline to busy families. Here is how you can support those who need it.

Breakfast clubs

Nutrition charity Magic Breakfast found that 30% of children and young people start their school day on an empty stomach, devastating their nutritional health and their ability to learn and concentrate. That number is also 30% higher in deprived groups.

A breakfast club can provide a place not only to get a meal, even if it’s just some fruit on the go, but it can support families who cannot afford the food that they need to feed their children.

Your breakfast club will need a kitchen that can support it. That means it needs to be durable and hygienic to stand up to heavy use. Choose a Zintec polyester powder coated mild steel carcass for maximum strength for your environment, or a robust wooden carcass with a tongue and groove system that outlasts screw joints.

After school clubs

Every parent knows that the school timetable does not align to the working day, and when schools release children back to their parents’ care at 3 or 4 o’clock, that can be inconvenient.

After school clubs can help relieve some of that pressure on parents, and offer young people somewhere to relax, make and meet friends, and build confidence and skills.

Similarly, if you want to offer refreshments or even light meals, then a well-equipped kitchen is essential. Speak to an expert at Steelplan about your ambitions for your kitchen, and they can suggest design and equipment solutions that meet your ambitions.

Homework clubs

Schools are overcrowded and under-resourced, and parents’ own work and life pressures mean they cannot always help with homework as much as they would like to. A homework club can provide a place to concentrate, peers to talk to about difficult assignments, and even adult supervisors who can provide guidance.

Snacks and drinks are always helpful for those studying, so make sure you are equipped to provide those at scale. A Steelplan kitchen is perfect for busy community centres and churches that provide food and drink at scale. Our kitchens are colourful, as well as durable and hygienic, which means that unlike cheap designs, ours are welcoming, make cleaning easy, and they last for decades.

To explore the design solutions that will help you serve the community as much and in a many ways as you want to, speak to one of our friendly team, who have decades of kitchen design experience, and have transformed the form and function of countless community groups’ kitchens. Email [email protected], or call 0208 254 0090.