Ciaran Jones- New Contract Director at Christ's Hopsital school
This article was written by one of our Young Reporters, a scheme that gives 14 to 18-year-old school students a chance to write for a real newspaper. Find out more at the Young Reporter website.
Christ’s Hospital School has recently welcomed the new Contract Director, Ciaran Jones to their Lodestone House catering team. He has many roles to fulfil, from overseeing service delivery and innovative menus to encouraging team development and client relationships. Ciaran has a very experienced background in the catering field and shows much enthusiasm towards the future of this school.
Ciaran started his career in the food and events industry, opening up his own restaurants in areas such as: London and Brighton before becoming a chef in one of his own enterprises. However, later this proved to be more of a challenge with the balance of work and family life.
In more recent years Ciaran comments, ‘I think I found my calling’ in response to the school catering environment, which had been warmly recommended to him by some of his other peers. This ‘calling’ was recognised during his time as Deputy Head of Catering at Lancing College and hopes to be continued at Christ’s Hospital.
During his short 2 weeks at school he has started to observe a few aims that he intends to focus on going forward. These include introducing a weekly newsletter, reducing food waste and encouraging more frequent feedback from students.
One way Ciaran has tried to implement responses from students is by running the school food committee meetings and encouraging student’s opinions on the recent change to the food distributed at break time. With this he intends to ‘take on all feedback’ and react accordingly.
The Contract Director also wants to stress the importance of communication by using a friendly and open manner, in which feedback can be responded to on a frequent basis rather than only over termly meetings.
As previously mentioned, Ciaran aims to combat food waste, which he has always been a promoter of throughout his career. In 2008 he worked for Clerkenwell kitchen in London, which received the most sustainable restaurant award and shows his passion for these issues.
Last week, the head also attended one of the school’s eco-society meetings called the ‘Green Blues.’ This gave the students and staff an opportunity to be introduced and discuss various ideas of how to raise awareness on problems such as food waste.
Although it has only been a couple of weeks, Ciaran Jones’s approachable demeanour and willingness to act upon recommendations shows much promise for the future of catering at Christ’s Hospital.
