A STROUD business has teamed up with a community interest group to provide schools with food. 

Knight’s Artisan Butcher - based at the Five Valleys Shopping Centre - has teamed up with community interest group, The Great Plate, to provide schools with locally sourced, made on the premises sausages for school dinners.

Working together they aim to improve the quality and impact of school meals. 

The team at The Great Plate - who have a range of experience from years of chef work to nutritionist training - pride themselves on sourcing local ingredients and in this case the meat comes from the heritage breed, Gloucester Old Spot pig.

Once the meat is processed at a local abattoir, Knight’s then make sausages out of the pork and deliver them to a number of schools in the area, including Cirencester, Minchinhampton, Nailsworth, and Cranham.

The team at The Great Plate then create healthy, nutritious meals from them, which are served up to youngsters.

Jack Knight, of Knight’s Artisan Butcher, said: “It is a brilliant project to be involved in and helps to teach children about initiatives and concepts such as low food miles.

“The pig will go from the city farm at Gloucester, to the abattoir, to us and then into schools.

"It shows how we can work together locally to produce high-quality meat.

“It is environmentally friendly farming as we are not having to transport the meat large distances.”

Maisie McBagley, director of The Great Plate, said: “Working with Jack at Knights ensures that we know exactly where our meat is coming from and that the quality is tip top, we can guarantee that all our meat is locally sourced, has low food miles and is sustainably farmed.”

Kelly Winkworth, assistant centre manager at the shopping centre said: “It’s great that our talented artisan traders are doing good work in our communities sharing their knowledge with our younger generation to encourage an appreciation of well-sourced, good quality food – something we very much champion at our centre.”

Knight’s can be found at the Indoor Market at Five Valleys.

Opening hours are Monday to Saturday, from 8am to 5pm, and Sunday, between 11am and 3pm