We’re pleased to announce that Bridges has completed the sale of Impact Food Group to THI Investments, a pan-European family-owned investor in high growth businesses that are leaders in their niche.

Impact Food Group is a leading UK school catering company focused on providing healthier food to children and promoting a positive food culture among pupils.

Bridges created the business in 2018 by bringing together two leading caterers to form IFG, with the mission to provide high-quality, nutritious food to children in the UK.

With one in three 11-year-olds now overweight, school catering offers a clear opportunity to improve health outcomes and improve educational performance. IFG is constantly working to make its recipes healthier: this year it was able to reduce the fat, sugar and salt in its food by 13%, 11%, and 41% respectively. It also works closely with parent and student groups to promote healthier eating habits. IFG drives measurably better throughput in schools when they take over a service, simply because the quality of the food is the main focus of the IFG team. This means that more students are eating better food, every day.

The combined group now provides high-quality, nutritious food to over 300 schools and is focused on feeding more students, better food.

Emma Thorne, partner at Bridges, said:
“IFG has shown that a focus on high-quality, healthier food is a win-win for schools: it enables pupils to make better food choices, supporting better health and educational outcomes and reducing the environmental impact of their diet, while also improving uptake and creating revenue for the schools themselves. This is reflected in the strong customer feedback by schools that are now using IFG’s services.”

John Hamill, CEO at Impact Food Group, said:
“We are hugely grateful to the support and partnership of Bridges over the last five years, which has helped the business become one of the leading educational caterers in the UK. We’re looking forward to continuing this progress in partnership with THI: for our customers, it will be very much business as usual once the schools are back in September.”

Tarquin Wethered, Director at THI Investments, says:
“We are delighted to partner with IFG, which is a fantastic business, at a time where providing nutritional school food has become more important than ever. We look forward to supporting IFG, John and the team to feed more students better food by focussing on the quality of food to enhance uptake at IFG’s school customers and therefore educational attainment by students.”

Rob Burden, Partner at Clearwater International, says:
“IFG is a true market leader in the school catering space with a differentiated value proposition, absolute focus on quality and led by a fantastic management team. IFG has gone from strength to strength under Bridges ownership and we are looking forward to seeing IFG’s success continue with support and further investment from THI. We are delighted to have advised the shareholders on this successful transaction and I’d like to wish the management team and THI all the best as they move forward into this new and exciting phase.”