Official UK procurement notice
Best Start Free Breakfast Club Programme Food Partnership - Academic Year 26/27
Authority: Department for Education (Central government)
What is being bought
Published requirement descriptionThis notice is not a call for competition.
Could your organisation partner with the Department for Education’s (DfE) Best Start free breakfast clubs programme to help pupils start the day ready to learn?
The Best Start free breakfast clubs programme supports the government's aims of giving every pupil, regardless of their background, the best start in life. Free breakfast clubs break down barriers to every child achieving and thriving at school and in later life, by ensuring they are ready to learn as well as supporting families with cost of living, and tackling poverty.
The first Best Start free breakfast clubs opened their doors in April 2025, with 750 early adopter schools across the country. Our early adopter schools offer pupils a nutritious breakfast and a supportive start to the school day. National roll out of the programme begins in April 2026, with more than 500 additional schools set to benefit from the Best Start free breakfast clubs.
In a landmark move, last October the government joined forces with four industry partners who are providing the 750 early adopter schools with discounts and/or free deliveries as part of a test and learn phase. These partnerships are helping schools to serve up more affordable, varied breakfast options whilst saving time for busy school staff. We have recently extended these arrangements to cover the additional 500 schools opening their free breakfast clubs in April. This initial set of agreements will remain in place until July 2026.
We are now exploring opportunities to build on these successful partnerships, looking forward to putting new arrangements into place from September 2026 when over 3,000 schools will be offering the Best Start free breakfast clubs, and 680,000 children will be benefitting from the programme.
Our partnerships have demonstrated that collaborating with industry can streamline delivery, help schools make the most of their budgets, improve access to nutritious food options, and enhance the programme’s impact across schools of all sizes. We would like to open up this opportunity again as the programme expands.
As part of this initial market engagement, we welcome interest from organisations that would like to contribute to the continued success of the Best Start free breakfast clubs programme.
We are particularly seeking offers from food providers that can help participating schools maximise the value of their food budgets through preferential deals on healthy breakfast food which meets the school food standards, and ensure that sourcing food is as easy, reliable and flexible as possible.
The Department will be conducting a webinar via Microsoft Teams on 12th February from 11:00-12:00 for organisations interested in this opportunity.
To register your interest in attending this event please email [email protected] by 5pm on 10th February 2026 with the names and email addresses of proposed attendees.
If you cannot attend the Teams webinar but would like to express your interest or have any questions, please email [email protected] with your name, organisation and contact details.
Please note that this notice is for early market engagement and exploratory purposes and is not a call for competition. The Department reserves the right not to enter any formal processes or agreements. Accordingly, the Department will not be liable for any bid cost, expenditure, work, or effort incurred by a provider in acting based on this notice.
CPV: School meals
The lotProcurement structure
single lot · no lot value publishedLot #1Planned
Pipeline intelligence · planning stage: how this market runs before the tender is published
How Department for Education buys Miscellaneous food products and dried goods (CPV 1589), and who usually turns up
Department for Education’s published record next to the market for the same work. Frameworks and DPS are left out: they draw different bid counts. Whole-market view: Miscellaneous food products and dried goods (CPV 1589) →
How the contest usually goes
Winner shares use published awards; bid and price charts use contested lots.
i
How often small and medium firms win.
Share of awards where the winner’s size is known.
The counts under this question show how many awards have a known supplier size.
Small firms have won here. Neither number says whether you qualify; it describes who has been winning.
i
How often local firms win similar work.
Winners with a registered address in the delivery region, out of awards with a known address.
Local means the winner is registered in the region where that award was delivered.
A local branch does not count if the registered address is elsewhere.
Most of this buyer’s recorded winners were registered in the region where that award was delivered.
i
How long buyers here take to decide after bids close.
Middle value in days from the bid deadline to the award date, on competitions that published both.
Only decided tenders count, so slow ones still waiting are not in.
Half of these awards have an award date within 50 days of the bid deadline.
i
How often work is awarded with no recorded rival.
Direct awards and tenders where every published lot count shows one bid.
Both shares are minimums: some awards have no bid count.
Thin markets produce this too; it is not proof of a tailored specification.
Direct awards or one recorded bid are common here. Check the route before spending time on a bid.
How many bids did past lots attract?
i
How many bids past lots received.
Each colour is a bid-count range. Only competed lots with a published count are included.
Past bids do not predict this tender.
1 bid9% / 22%
2–335% / 28%
4–624% / 50%
7+31% / 0%
How did awards compare with estimates?
i
Where winning prices landed against estimates.
Each colour shows awards below, close to or above the published estimate, one lot at a time.
Past prices are a guide, not a bid price.
Below estimate39% / 25%
Within ±2%50% / 63%
Above estimate11% / 13%
Assess each lot i
What past awards tell you about each lot.
See the forecast, this buyer’s earlier suppliers and firms with relevant wins.
No supplier is confirmed as a bidder.
i
What past awards tell you about each lot.
See the forecast, this buyer’s earlier suppliers and firms with relevant wins.
No supplier is confirmed as a bidder.
Open a lot for its forecast, this buyer’s previous supplier and possible competitors, from published award history, not a bid list
Lot #1CPV 1589No real estimate
i
How many bids this lot may attract.
The forecast uses similar past competitions. The bar shows either that forecast or past bid counts; the line below says which.
Each lot shows its own forecast based on its own category; forecasts for different lots of the same notice are not comparative. The bar shows 18 past lots.
A forecast, not a list of bidders.
1 bid22%
2–328%
4–650%
7+0%
i
Where the award price may land.
The forecast uses similar awards and the buyer’s estimate. The band covers the middle half of likely prices.
No comparable awards for this lot yet.
A statistical guide from past awards, not a price to bid.
Who has supplied this buyer on similar work? i
Who has done similar work for this buyer.
Past contracts are matched by buyer, title and type of work.
A past supplier may not bid again.
i
Who has done similar work for this buyer.
Past contracts are matched by buyer, title and type of work.
A past supplier may not bid again.
No earlier contract of this buyer matches this lot on the published record.
Who could compete for this lot? i
Who could compete for this lot?
Firms with relevant past wins. On a framework, we show firms on that agreement.
None is confirmed as a bidder.
i
Who could compete for this lot?
Firms with relevant past wins. On a framework, we show firms on that agreement.
None is confirmed as a bidder.
Candidate suppliers for this notice have not been worked out yet, so this is not a verdict that nobody fits.
About this data
- Source. Official UK public procurement notices (Find a Tender), reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. New notices arrive through the day; the figures are rebuilt nightly.
- Two views, kept apart. The authority’s own track record and the wider market for the same kind of work sit side by side and are never mixed. Where the local picture is too thin, a figure widens to a broader market and says which one it used.
- Forecasts are labelled. The price forecast and its range, possible competitors and the earlier-work matches are our estimates from past awards: not published facts, not win chances and not price advice. Official notices do not say who is bidding.
- Every figure shows what it rests on. Not every notice publishes a bid count, a value or a delivery region, so each figure carries the number of records behind it, and one built on few records is marked as such. The on a figure explains it; the counting rules are in the methodology. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.
Procedure terms & legal framework
From the official record- Legal basis
- UKPGA · 2023/54 Procurement Act 2023
- Procurement category
- Goods
- Notice status
- Planned procurement
- Procurement threshold
- Below threshold
- Regulatory regime
- Standard
- Commercial structure
- Stand-alone contract (no framework)
- Competition type
- Competitive procedure
- GPA / WTO covered
- Unspecified in notice
- Recurring procurement
- Unspecified in notice
- First published
- 4 Feb 2026, 13:01 GMT
- Last source update
- 4 Feb 2026, 13:11 GMT
- FTS notice number
2026/S 000-009972- Latest notice
- Preliminary market engagement notice (UK2)
- Classification (CPV)
- Delivery area
- Official registry OCID
ocds-h6vhtk-0646e9Find a Tender
How it was run
Official notice- Submission deadline
- —
Timeline
4 Feb 2026 → 4 Aug 2026 · 3 dates- Planning notice published267 days ago4 Feb 2026, 13:01 GMT
- Market engagement232 days ago10 Mar 2026, 23:59 GMT
The Department will be conducting a webinar via Microsoft Teams on 12th February from 11:00-12:00 for organisations interested in this opportunity.
To register your interest in attending this event please email [email protected] by 5pm on 10th February 2026 with the names and email addresses of proposed attendees.
If you cannot attend the Teams webinar but would like to express your interest or have any questions, please email [email protected] with your name, organisation and contact details.
Please note that this notice is for early market engagement and exploratory purposes and is not a call for competition. The Department reserves the right not to enter any formal processes or agreements. Accordingly, the Department will not be liable for any bid cost, expenditure, work, or effort incurred by a provider in acting based on this notice.
- Contract starts86 days ago4 Aug 2026, 00:00 BST
Notice history
2 events · 2 releases on Find a Tender · since 4 Feb 2026- Preliminary market engagement notice published4 Feb 2026, 13:01 GMTUK2
- Preliminary market engagement notice published4 Feb 2026, 13:11 GMTUK2
Commercial outcome & contract awards
Pipeline notice- Awards (0)
- No award published
- Contracts (0)
- No contract published
- Bid statistics
- No aggregate bid statistics published
Contracting authority & participating public bodies
Official documents & specifications (2)
Official links; attachments are not copiedNotices published for this procedure
- Preliminary market engagement notice Preliminary market engagement notice on Find a Tender
- Preliminary market engagement notice Preliminary market engagement notice on Find a Tender