Leveraging SAF's Contracted Food Services and Cookhouse Models for School Meal Provisions

Mr Cai Yinzhou asked the Minister for Education (a) whether the Ministry is exploring a collaboration with the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) or its contracted food service providers to leverage their large-scale central kitchen and cookhouse expertise for providing school meals; and (b) whether the Ministry will consider adopting SAF’s "Design, Equip and Operate" kitchen model to increase meal capacity in schools facing canteen vendor shortages.

When developing the Central Kitchen Meal Model (CKMM) for schools, the Ministry of Education (MOE) engaged a range of food operators, including Chang Cheng Group, Neo Group Limited, the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) Foodfare, SATS Food Services and Wilmar International, to understand their operational capabilities. Some of the operators eventually participated in our open tender exercise for the provision of school meals. MOE also engaged the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) to learn from SAF's experience in working with food operators.

MOE's CKMM is designed with our students in mind, and our requirements differ from SAF's requirements in some areas. This includes allowing parents and students to independently choose and purchase meals and meeting the dietary and nutritional requirements of children. Where relevant, MOE's CKMM incorporates elements of the SAF's model, where operators are required to design, equip and operate school canteen facilities.

MOE will continue to explore different options that best serve our students' needs and continuously refine our CKMM. The intent is not to scale up CKMM to all schools, but to offer it to schools that have severe difficulties of getting stall holders to provide meals at the canteen.