With the summer holidays in full swing, supermarkets have debuted and relaunched a slew of initiatives aimed at providing support for families.

From free meal initiatives to summer activities, we round up and compare what supermarkets are offering during the holiday period.

The UK’s leading supermarket has launched a raft of free meal offers aimed at families to help tackle hunger over the summer holiday period.

Waitrose has refreshed its kids menu in 128 cafés to include a variety of new nutritious meals for families. The new menu will run alongside a Waitrose summer campaign that sees myWaitrose shoppers that spend £5 in one of the supermarket’s cafes offered a free kids lunch bag or hot meal for their child.

Sainsbury’s offers free kids hot meals or kids lunch bag alongside the the purchase of any adult hot main meal from £5.50. The meals are available in all of the supermarket’s cafés until 3 September.

Asda has also reminded customers of a “lifeline available” for families during the school holidays with the return of its ‘Kids Eat for £1’ café meal deal at over 205 Asda Café’s.

The initiative, which comes without any spend requirement, follows its refresh of the kid’s café menu earlier this year, to include more nutritionally balanced offers.

Morrisons continues to offer its Kids Eat Free Initiative, which is available seven day a week for any child aged under 16 in Morrisons Cafés nationwide.

Morrisons has partnered with Heinz to bring back the ‘Ask For Henry’ initiative, offering anyone who who mentions the word Henry a free meal of a jacket potato topped with Heinz Cheesy Beanz – no questions asked.

Previously running in 2022 and 2023, this year’s initiative sees Morrisons Café colleagues trained on the code word ‘Henry’ and will understand phrases like “Is Henry here?,” or similar expressions.

Morrisons Café senior buying manager Chris Strong says the supermarket knows how “busy summer months can add to customers’ financial pressures, especially with extra mouths to feed”.

The supermarket has also teamed up with Warburtons to bring back the ‘Ask for Ellen’ initiative, offering free toasted crumpets to shoppers.

Morrisons also launched free breakfast clubs in cafés across the UK in partnership with Kellogg’s.

Offering popular branded cereals, such as Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, or Coco Pops, and a portion of fresh fruit, the supermarket added that this campaign was aimed at supporting families during the summer holidays, when many term-time subsidised breakfast clubs are unavailable.

Morrisons has introduced new kids activity stations in cafés across all stores to keep children entertained throughout the summer.

In collaboration with National Literacy Trust, ‘Kids Corner’ aims to boost literacy for children and includes a book swap, games and puzzles, and follows supermarket giant’s Little Libraries initiative, which was launched in 2021.

It comes as Morrisons has launched a series of child-friendly initiatives in recent months, such as child-friendly checkouts and child-sized trolleys.

Meanwhile, Asda has teamed with BBC Tiny Happy People and BBC Children in Need to offer summer holiday activity ideas that customers and colleagues can enjoy both in-store and at home, including new colouring and craft activity sheets are available in selected cafés.

Earlier in summer, Aldi offered children free sessions of an Olympic or Paralympic sport in their local club.

Shoppers that spent more than £30 in store received a voucher which could be exchanged for a child to be gifted a free taster session of sports, spanning from gymnastics to wheelchair basketball.

In partnership with Team GB and ParalympicsGB, the initiative was born from a survey that showed some shoppers would have to make financial sacrifices to pay for their child to attend a sports club this summer.

Sainsbury’s, meanwhile, has embarked on a joint mission with Comic Relief to support children through nutritious food and free enriching activities over the summer break.

The £2.5m investment will also help launch five new food club hubs which run all year round and provide long-term solutions to help improve families’ access to food during the holidays.

Aldi and Lidl are both offering full school uniforms for £5 in a new campaign that look to help parents save on back-to-school essentials.

Aldi has frozen the price of its Specialbuy uniforms for the third year in a row, in a promotion that offers low prices for school clothes, shoes, stationery and accessories, while fellow discounter Lidl also offers a £5 uniform set.

Aldi has also launched a back-to-school lunch box range, and claims that the promotion will save parents up to 59% compared to branded or “pricier alternatives”.

Products featured in the campaign include smoothies, crisps, yoghurts, sandwiches and various snacks.