Located in the centre of the Whiteknights campus, The Square offers a variety of freshly prepared hot and cold meals from the three servery counters, and a coffee shop area serving barista made beverages and snacks.
Available every morning Monday – Friday from 7.30am, our breakfast menu includes traditional cooked breakfast, freshly baked pastries, and a fruit and yogurt bar.
Serveries
Enjoy meals from our serveries that are expertly cooked using the freshest ingredients, you will find stir fry and pan asian food available every day, with a range of other options changing on a daily basis.
Grab & Go
We have a range of Grab & Go options freshly prepared each morning, including sandwiches, baguettes, salads, fruit pots, pasta pots, and other deserts.
Coffee Shop
We serve a range of specialty teas and barista style coffees at The Square.
Our Roastology provides ethical and sustainable coffee, with every lot of beans fully traceable providing direct trade with the growers. We have a range of loose leaf tea from Brew Tea Co, which is also available to buy and take home from our Market Place.
Self-service coffee
Skip the queues and use our Frank the Barista machine! All you need is one of our eco-friendly reusable coffee cups and you can then purchase one of our coffee plans.
Freestyle location
The Sustain It bottle contains a RFID chip that allows you to pre-pay for drinks, choosing from different payment options as outlined below. The bottle is designed to pair up with our Coca-Cola Freestyle machines, offering well over 100 varieties and customisable mixes – the majority being zero and low calorie options.
Our Market Place at The Square sells a range of ethical and sustainable goods including food items, drinks and everyday essentials.
As part of our commitment to sustainability, bring along your containers and use our refillable service with our range of loose foods, including lentils, rice, and pasta.
We also stock a range of Suma items, delivering vegetarian, natural, responsibly sourced products to our community.
Our allergen information is displayed above every servery counter. If you would like more information on allergens, ask our staff. We’re happy to help.
We are open to all students, staff, and visitors.
We are committed to delivering environmentally sustainable activities.
All our eggs are from Nathan, a former student of ours. He is located on Beechwood farm only 13 miles away from the University.
Most of our meat, veg, fruit and dairy are sourced from the UK.
All of our tea, coffee and bananas are Fairtrade.
Often you can – we serve smaller portions to help prevent food waste and encourage you to ask for more if you feel portions are too small. Exceptions to this are generally items that are sold by the item such as a Burger, a piece of fruit, pre-made sandwich, a Chicken Kiev etcetera or sold by weight or by container size. Our team are happy to advise you.
We definitely do! Please request a face to face meeting letting us know what you want to talk about and we’ll send the most appropriate and senior member of the team to talk to you. We are always happy to work with you to ensure you eat how you want to.
Many of the food items we sell take several hours to cook, and as they don’t come out of a packet, this does mean we run out of certain dishes. Our team use their knowledge of what sells and what doesn’t sell as well to try to get the numbers correct but this doesn’t always work.
We cook our food from scratch each day from the freshest ingredients we have available to us and are reducing the number of deep fat fryers across our sites using seasonal ingredients avoiding processed foods, bases, pastes, preservatives and so on. Our teams don’t like fryers as they are unpleasant to use and make you smell so we keep frying to a minimum. Currently this is very few items such as fried fish or chips. If you want to know if something is fried please ask the team.
All chicken we cook with is Halal and is slaughtered in a humane manner that is approved by the RSPCA. Lamb and Beef are not currently certified as Halal due to local sourcing. Please ask the team for more information on Halal options. Park House and the Dairy are unsuitable for those following an Halal Diet due to cooking methods.
Please ask to speak to a member of our team who’ll be able to help you. We cook from scratch in kitchens handling multiple allergens so there is a risk of cross-contamination so those with severe allergies should ask before eating. If you are on a Clever Cuisine Eating Plan please book a time to see our Head Chef so we can tailor our services to you. You are also welcome to ask our staff to change their gloves or wash their hands before serving you due to your allergies.
Park Eat, Wantage, St. Patrick’s and The Dairy have nut free kitchens that won’t take products that list nuts as an ingredient however, there remains a risk as many products used say they may contain or are produced in areas that handle nuts. Please remember we cannot stop people bringing products that contain nuts into our outlets and that Park Market sells pre-packed and sealed (off-site) items that contain nuts.
We love all feedback as it helps us improve our services. Please provide as much detail as possible, including where and when, as it really helps us. All our team members will give you their name if requested. Certain staff in some areas may only give you first name and initial for privacy reasons. Feel free to drop us an email mealplans@reading.ac.uk , or we have feedback forms on our outlet pages.
Opening at 8:00 am
Food, drink, & marketplace located in Park Place
Find out more Opening Hours
Closed
Located within Northcourt halls, open to fully catered and self catered students
Located within Wantage Hall, open to fully catered and self catered students
We absolutely love all feedback regardless of what it is as it helps us improve our services.
