There are many institutional, economic, social, and psychological barriers when it comes to implementing high-quality criteria into the public procurement and catering services. StratKIT+ project addressed these challenges by providing new additions to the previously developed Public Meal Toolkit, which helped implementing healthy and sustainable food into the public sector within the Baltic Sea Region while providing a community platform for the stakeholders.

Public meal organizations need support, guidance, and networks in incorporating environmental targets and strategies to their main task of serving nutritionally adequate meals. Addition to this, stakeholders need more support and tools to tackle different crisis situations that affect the public kitchens. The new Sustainable Public Meal Toolkit+ provides practical examples and support for sustainable public meals with good accessibility for everyone in Baltic Sea Region and beyond.

Public meal stakeholders lack multiple resources (e.g. time, knowledge, funding, support) in the sustainable development of public meals. With the toolkit, public meal actors were able to cooperate by sharing knowledge and ideas related to different public meal solutions through practical pilot testing organized by the StratKIT+ project partners. These pilots were a successful way to share knowledge with stakeholders for example through organic farm visits, cooking trainings and workshops.

Practical testing and implementation of the toolkit helped the BSR public meal actors to commit to the sustainability goals that are challenging to reach with the limited resources. Through the StratKIT+ project, public meal stakeholders were able to tackle challenges related to legal regulations, social challenges and crisis situations and become local pioneers in providing sustainable public meals. Regarding resilience, one of the outcomes of the project was a Guide to build an Action Plan, which helps food actors managing public meal provision in a crisis situation.

Addressing it all, StratKIT+ contributed with a variety of ways to increase sustainability of public meals in BSR and beyond.