Working with local food suppliers

We all know that Tayside is recognised - both nationally and internationally - as a place that produces the finest food and drink.

What you may not know is that Tayside Contracts is the largest catering organisation in the Tayside area and provides over 6.5 million meals to schools and communities in the Angus, Dundee City and Perth & Kinross areas every year – that’s nearly 30,000 meals every single day.

We take great pride in our meals service. Our meals meet the highest standards of nutritional requirements, and we are dedicated to ensuring our young people have the best start in life through the healthy meals we serve, to fuel their learning.

Creamy ham pasta with crusty bread, and vegetables

(soup was an option but not taken here)

Pizza, pasta, sweetcorn, salad

Chocolate cookie and fruit

Pasta Bolognaise, Sweetcorn, salad

Chocolate cookie

Because of the high quality of food produced in Tayside, it makes great sense to team Tayside Contracts up with local food suppliers through our supply chains. This helps the local economy, in securing jobs and businesses within Tayside. It’s also good news for the environment, as using local produce will cut down on thousands of food miles.

And there’s the opportunity to connect our local young people with the farming and food production that is going on in their local community, so they choose to ‘buy local’.

Several local food producers already supply Tayside Contracts, and we are looking to extend that local approach, to ensure that more sustainable, high quality and local products are used as much as possible in the safe, healthy, nutritious, and delicious meals we serve.   

We have teamed up with NFU Scotland and several local food producers to bring together food suppliers across Tayside, with Tayside Contracts and some of our big food contractors, to explore how we can work together to increase the levels of locally grown and produced food, being part of the meals served by Tayside Contracts.  

As we produce 6.5 million meals a year we do need large quantities of food to keep our service going.

However, smaller scale local food producers can still join our supply chain, for example by supplying to our large-scale contractors such as Brakes Scotland, Campbells Meats and Total Produce. 

Alternatively, we would welcome bids from local co-operatives of local food producers banding together to supply our food supply needs.

If you are a local food producer and you’d like to know more about supplying to Tayside Contracts and our local schools, the following information should help. 

Q&A - where we answer some of the questions you may have about supplying us

Working with our existing suppliers

In March 2022, we had an event with local suppliers in Forfar, and in October we held the same event in Perth, here are the presentations for the event: 

A recording of the meeting held in October can be watched by clicking here. 

Here are two examples showcasing local food suppliers working with Tayside Contracts and our main suppliers.

		Calum McDiarmid, Mains of Murthly, Aberfeldy, provider of blueberries to Mark Murphy Foodservice.
		Tayside Contracts supplier for fresh meat produce is Campbells Prime Meat, a Scottish based company.  ABP abattoirs based in Perth are one of the abattoirs used by Campbells for the supply of beef.  ABP currently purchase cattle from farms throughout Tayside.

If you want a chat about how we can help you work closer with us, please contact:-

Lesley McLauchlan, Procurement Manager – Lesley.McLauchlan@tayside-contracts.co.uk or 01382 834075

Ibukun Strachan, Facilities Business Development Manager – ibukun.strachan@tayside-contracts.co.uk or 01382 834086