Aspens is a growing, independent, contract catering company which specialises in providing catering and cleaning services for schools, colleges and business clients across England and Wales. They have recently introduced two fresh-faced recruits to its UK catering team
– Bubble and Squeak, the company’s new school meals characters who are helping infant, primary and junior pupils eat more healthily.
Edmundson Design was asked by Aspens to design and illustrate the children’s characters which they could use in their advertising and marketing material.
Aspens design-brief was to try and keep the characters very simple, happy, fun and appealing to children between the ages of 6-9 without being too gender-specific. After initial concepts were created, they were then shown to school pupils at St Andrew’s Primary School in Congresbury, North Somerset.
“Our experience tells us that making healthy-eating fun, enjoyable and exciting is the key to helping pupils to eat well,” says Aspens Services managing partner John Roe. “We wanted to introduce characters that children would like and find fun, so during the design-process we asked the pupils at St Andrew’s Primary School to help us select the new characters.”
“The children responded to them instantly and very positively. Pupils said the characters made them feel happy and made them laugh which was perfect, as our approach is all about making school meals a happy and fun experience. We’re delighted to have brought Bubble and Squeak on board, adding to the work we’re already doing with pupils, parents and schools to help children and young people enjoy healthy school meals and understand the importance of eating a balanced diet.”
The characters feature on Aspens’ menus, posters, competitions and promotions, telling pupils about their menu choices, helping children understand more about how to eat healthily and why it matters and generally making school meals even more fun and enjoyable. Brand guidelines and client toolkit were also created for Aspens to use internally. Bubble and Squeak will appear throughout 2013 in schools across the UK.
