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ESS has partnered with Mackie Academy to deliver the creative Voyagers initiative, which sees members of the company’s management and culinary teams support schoolchildren to design and market a new street food offer.

Under the Voyagers programme, S3 students are tasked with designing a contemporary street food concept, recognising the popularity of this dining style and the diversity of cuisines and formats it incorporates. 

As well as creating the product, taking into consideration factors including consumer appeal, ingredients cost, pricing, presentation and packaging, participants are required to develop marketing collateral to maximise its appeal. They then exhibit their concepts and explain their decision making to their peers and a team of ESS senior managers and culinary leads for judging.

Voyagers has been designed collaboratively as a skills-focused programme that helps students develop key elements of their school leaver profile, incorporating creativity, innovation, teamwork and problem solving.

The programme is now in its second year, with winners so far including the ‘Bite and Beyond’ wrap and ‘Poke and Roll’ sushi concepts.

The recent winning group, Scarlett, Amy, Matt and Jacob, who created ‘Bite and Beyond’, commented:

“It was amazing to be given the opportunity to work collaboratively and have all our hard work recognised by ESS. We learned how important it is to plan thoroughly and listen to each other’s ideas. We chose our idea after doing a lot of research and realising that one meal wouldn’t suit everyone, so having a customisable menu with different options gave people the freedom to choose what they wanted. Being chosen as a winning group felt really rewarding and made our efforts feel worthwhile.”

Megan Douglas, Business & Community Support Officer at Mackie Academy, commented:

“Mackie Academy is delighted to mark the second successful year of our partnership with ESS as part of our Voyagers course. We’re incredibly grateful to their team for their continued support, inspiration and real-world insight — and we couldn’t be prouder of our pupils for their enthusiasm, creativity and hard work in bringing their ideas to life.”

Ronnie Kelman, Managing Director – ESS Energy, Government & Infrastructure, added:

“We’re delighted to be working with Mackie Academy on the Voyagers initiative, building on the great partnership we’ve developed through delivering the Snackie Mackies project. As well as asking the students to create a contemporary street food concept, we task them with producing exciting marketing collateral and presenting their ideas to our senior team – we hope these skills will help them in their future academic and work careers. It’s a brilliant opportunity to support the next generation and I’m proud that our team are embracing it!”