Five new factory kitchens for schools will be built in Ukraine
Ukraine plans to build five new central kitchens to prepare meals for schoolchildren. The prepared meals will be delivered directly to schools.
This was announced by Mykola Kalashnyk, Minister of Recovery, Infrastructure, and Transport. The European Investment Bank will finance the projects, covering everything from construction to the purchase of equipment. The combined projected capacity of the five new facilities will be 65,000 meals per day.
The new food complexes are planned to be built in:
- Vyshneve in the Kyiv region;
- Lebedyn, Sumy Oblast;
- Vinnytsia;
- Zaporizhzhia;
- Sheptytsky, Lviv Oblast.
The central kitchens will operate on the principle of centralized food preparation. Meals will be prepared at specialized facilities and then delivered to schools. For this system to function properly, communities will also need to renovate their school kitchens and arrange for the transportation of prepared meals.
The main outcome of the project is the ability to provide hot meals for a significant number of children using unified, modern approaches to food preparation and delivery.
The national strategy for reforming school meals calls for the renovation and modernization of cafeterias, as well as the development of the “factory kitchen” model. Among the stated goals is providing students with high-quality, safe, and varied meals.
For children, this should also reduce dependence on the condition of the kitchen at a specific school: the main cooking process is transferred to a specially equipped facility, while the school is responsible for organizing the receipt, distribution, and consumption of prepared meals. New operating rules for such facilities stipulate clearer responsibilities for operators regarding food production and delivery, as well as the equipment of food service areas and the process of serving prepared meals.
At the same time, the central kitchen does not replace the school cafeteria. Educational institutions must have properly equipped facilities for receiving and serving food. That is why the project calls for the parallel modernization of school cafeterias.
In Sheptytskyi, there are plans to build a central kitchen capable of providing meals for about 10,000 children. The project also includes the modernization of 40 school cafeterias and the organization of meal delivery to educational institutions.
According to Kalashnyk, Ukraine already has experience with this model: the central kitchens in Bucha and Lozova together serve about 20,000 children.
“We already have the experience; the next step is to expand the model to other communities,” the minister said, adding that they are currently searching for partners to help communities with the renovation and modernization of cafeterias, as well as with equipment and logistics. Kalashnik’s goal is to establish a total of 17 central kitchens by 2029.
The government is currently expanding its hot meal program: starting September 1, 2026, students in grades 1–11 (12) at public schools—whether attending in person or in a blended format—will receive free hot lunches. According to the Ministry of Education and Science, the program covers approximately 3 million children.
The development of central kitchens is intended to support this system in areas where school cafeterias require extensive renovation. In 2026, the government allocated 1 billion hryvnia for the modernization of school cafeterias. According to the Ministry of Education, as of the start of the new school year, 2,023 cafeterias had already been modernized, and work was still underway at 272 additional schools.
Ukraine plans to continue expanding the network. The target announced by Kalashnik is to establish a total of 17 central kitchens by 2029.
We should add that Ukraine is reforming high school education, which will affect students in grades 10–12.
The Verkhovna Rada is proposing to retain four subjects on the 2027 National Multidisciplinary Test (NMT-2027).
As a reminder, the Ukrainian Center for Educational Quality Assessment has published the results of the additional sessions of the National Multidisciplinary Test (NMT-2026).
