Canteen operations ceased at both schools by Friday.
Libelle had been providing food services to more than 60 schools and supplying around 125,000 meals daily for the Government’s school lunch programme.
However, schools such as Rolleston and Ellesmere colleges remained unaffected, as they use different providers.
Darfield principal Andy England said the school quickly moved to bring the canteen in-house.
“It’s never good to get an unwanted disruption,” he said.
“We’ve spent the week setting up contracts for food supply and doing the employment processes and so on.
“All of that has been stretched and rushed in a way you wouldn’t normally want to operate, but you can’t not feed kids.”
England said the existing canteen staff have now been employed by the school.
As part of the liquidation process, England said the school was chasing some outstanding rent from Libelle.
“It is frustrating, however, our focus has been on finding a solution to getting our canteen up and running again as fast as possible,” he said.
Like Darfield, Lincoln’s new arrangement has also allowed the existing former-Libelle canteen staff to stay on.
Following Libelle’s collapse, Compass Group NZ, which had contracted Libelle to provide the Government’s free school lunch programme, stepped in to buy the company.
A new report from liquidator Deloitte shows Libelle Group owes more than $14 million to nearly 250 creditors.
The liquidation was the latest issue with the school lunch programme, which has been fraught with a range of problems, including substandard food, missing meals, and issues with the preparation of halal meals.
A survey by the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI), conducted before Libelle’s collapse, found widespread dissatisfaction with the programme.
Of more than 200 principals and area school teachers surveyed, 80% were unhappy with the meals provided by the School Lunch Collective.
Among those supplied by the Compass-led group, only 7.5% were satisfied.
- Additional reporting RNZ
