Profile - Dan Curtis: Don't mention Jamie Oliver to this school catering pioneer

The managing director of schools catering company Dolce believes the celebrity chef did more harm than good with his campaign to improve school dinners.

"It was a sensational scare story followed by a TV programme and celebrity fame. The whole thing has been a disaster," he said.

"There were a lot of people doing good work and a few local authorities, down South in particular, procuring a rubbish service. So when the rubbish service was discovered, instead of blaming those who procured the service, they blamed those who delivered it.

"We were all tarred with the same brush, numbers pancaked and consequently the Government had to set up the Schools Food Trust, which was a useless quango."

He added: "When the school dinner virgins started taking over, they got all nut cutlety so the move to healthy eating got quite extreme and for a lot of children it was too much too quick. The numbers fell away fast.

"We're now in a situation where two-thirds of school children are eating rubbish out of a packed lunchbox.

"High-minded public health ideals have pushed a lot of children into a bad diet and we can now piously say we have the best menus that nobody

ever wanted."

York-based Dolce provides catering and domestic services in 130 schools, mostly primary, across the country. It has a 4m turnover and employs 500 staff. In Yorkshire, it works with six primary schools in York and employs 30 staff.

The majority of schools have their own kitchens where food is prepared from scratch every day.

But it is perhaps Dolce's innovation and use of technology that sets it apart from some of its larger competitors.

The family-run firm has introduced a specialist pre-ordering lunch system, which lets pupils to choose their meals in advance, minimising waste.

The system also allows parents to pay by direct debit and to see what their children are eating, and lets the school management view up-to-the minute reports on how their business is performing.

Dolce comes up with the menus which are then nutritionally analysed using specialist software.

The system has been a success, particularly in Cumbria which has seen take-up rise to an average of 61 per cent in the 29 schools for which it caters.

Mr Curtis's quest to improve school dinners began at the age of 10 when at boarding school he delivered a 200-signature petition to the headteacher complaining about the food it provided.

Instead of changing the system, he was given six of the best in front of the whole school but it motivated him to try to make a difference as an adult.

"I've always had a dislike of authority," he said. "It doesn't help when you're dealing with headteachers because the idea that you side with the pupils and not the administration upsets them.

"If in my dining halls they are shouting at children, I try to

stop that. I want it to be a nice, peaceful lunchtime with nice food the way any adult would expect it."

Mr Curtis grew up in Kenya where a previous generation of his family had settled but at the age of 18 he moved to Blackpool to study for a HND in catering.

After years of working in the private sector, providing sustenance to the likes of miners and oil rig workers, he took on the task of setting up a catering and cleaning division at Dumfries and Galloway Council in 1990.

One of the first things he did was sample the dinners at his sons' school. He wasn't impressed.

"I went home and I said, 'Tight, that's it, they're not having school dinners'," he said. "My wife said, 'But you're in charge of them'. I said, 'Yes, and they're rubbish', I'm not serving them to my kids', and I set about making them good."

While working for a high-profile school caterer in the late 1990s, Mr Curtis became ever more disillusioned with the compulsory competitive tendering process which he said was driving standards down.

The last straw came when the procurement team struck a deal with a processor for a two-and-a-half pence fish finger containing virtually no fish.

He left, taking with him his best operations manager Jean Stockhill.

In 1999, he and his brother Robert bought a cleaning company – DCS – and along with Ms Stockhill, they began investigating the feasibility

of producing freshly cooked meals from raw ingredients in schools.

By September 2000 they had secured their first catering contract at Tang Hall primary school in York.

The company became Dolce in 2001, extending from its North West base, moving its headquarters to York and securing contracts with a further seven schools.

"Long before Jamie Oliver came along you could see the talent you had in the workforce," said Mr Curtis. "It wasn't (difficult in the beginning) because the cooks that we were employing wanted to go back to cooking proper food."

There are three divisions within the Dolce group. Schools catering makes up more than half of the business but there is also an industrial cleaning division and a dangerous cleaning division run by Robert, which works in hazardous and toxic conditions.

"One of the things we did accidentally was keep three different divisions but it means that when the private sector is under pressure the public sector keeps it going and vice versa," said Mr Curtis.

Dolce plans to double its turnover to 8m in the next two years by targeting large contracts in areas such as Derbyshire.

"We're very good at middle England schools so we're looking for some good local authority contracts in areas where they like their shepherd's pie and the good old English food that we provide," said Mr Curtis. "We look for authorities that aren't very well run where the food isn't very good."

Mr Curtis, who lives in Boston Spa, has three sons, one of whom works on the IT side of the business.

In his spare time he flies a microlight aircraft which he built himself using a lawnmower engine for which he won an innovation award from the British Microlight Aircraft Association.

"I got into it about eight years ago," he said. "I was driving in my car and I thought, 'I can't stand this' and I saw a microlight and thought, 'That's what to do'.

He added: "I've had a few scrapes but it's the most liberating thing you can do."

DAN CURTIS

Title: Managing director of Dolce

Date of birth: December 31, 1953

Education: Prince of Wales School in Nairobi, Kenya. HND in catering at Blackpool Catering College

First job: Waiter

Favourite song: Another Brick in the Wall, by Pink Floyd

Car driven: Seat Ibiza

Favourite film: Life of Brian

Favourite holiday destination: Blackpool

Last book read: The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien, when I was younger. I don't read books.

What I am most proud of: A million things I have done