Developing Tuck Shops

It is good health promotion practice that

provision of food is consistent with the
healthy eating messages taught.
Schools are required by law meet or
exceed the DfES standards as outlined
by the School Food Trust (SFT), these
standards include all school food
provision including tuck shops. Other
organisations may wish to use these
standards too.

As with any change or introduction of service reliant on children/young people

and parental/guardian support, it is important that any changes to an existing
tuck shop or its introduction follows a whole school/service approach.
Developing a tuck shop is a 2 way process, you must listen to children/young
people and parent/carer’s ideas as these are the future customers, and
children/young people and parent/carers need to appreciate and understand
services constraints and the health benefits of this change. Therefore you
need to inform them of the standards they must follow and reasons why. The
promotion of oral health is the key message behind the standards for tuck
shops as foods that are safe for teeth and /or of high nutritional value are
included.

Facilitation Ideas
The following seven points have been broken down into key questions and
discussion points that you may wish to use when developing a tuck shop, this
can be adapted when changing an existing tuck shop

1. Which children/young people

Use an existing group/school council or ask for volunteers for the formation
of a separate group.

2. The problem

Introduce the problem i.e. you want their help to develop a tuck shop

Why should we to develop a tuck shop?

What is appropriate to sell (good for body and safe for teeth)?

3. Deciding what to sell

From the SFT standards think about cost, storage, packaging, preparation,
waste and ease of eating within breaks.

Can it be ordered in or does someone need to purchase the goods?

Visit a school or the infant department to see the Free Fruit and Vegetable
Scheme that you can buy into, or trial.

4. Setting up

Where is the food going to be stored?

What preparation is needed, when will this be done and by whom?

When and where are you going to sell the food?

Who is going to sell the food (a rota may be required)?

What food and hygiene issues do you need to think about?

How much is the food going to cost the customer?

5. Promotion

Who do you need to tell?

What are you going to tell them?

How are you going to tell them?

Will you run some free taster sessions?

How will you spice things up? e.g. occasional exotic fruit, home made
smoothies.

6. Running the tuck shop

Trial run:
o Review how much food you need to purchase.
o Ask other children/young people (future customers) if they like it or how
it can be improved.
o Is the position of sale working well?
o Is there enough people running the tuck shop or too many?

What changes are possible? and make them.

Review again, may be set up monthly meetings for continuous review.

7. Follow on

Has the tuck shop made a difference (eating habits, behaviour).

Does anything else have to change to support the tuck shop e.g. snack
rules in what children/young people can bring in to eat at break.

N.B: The setting up, running and evaluation of a tuck shop could be linked to
an enterprise project, maths lessons, IT lessons in school.

Main Messages:

Eatwell Plate

Safe foods for teeth

Food Safety

SFT Non-Lunch Standards 2007

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 How to buy into the National School Fruit &
Vegetable Scheme:
To buy extra fruit from the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme (SF&VS)
distributors, you need to set up an account with them directly for the
service/school to be invoiced for the additional fruit. The distributor is called
Minor, Weir and Willis (MWW) and their phone number is 0871 2882096.
Prices are approx £1.10 per bag (10 pieces of fruit / vegetables in each bag
so roughly 11p per. It is useful for MWW if you can find out your nearest
infant school that receives this already so they can identify the delivery route
you will be added to.

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