9/11/09
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August 9, 2009
Serena: Could you provide a brief overview of the daily routine at Revolution Foods in terms of how the food is prepared, packaged and shipped to local schools?
Kristin Richmond (Photo courtesy of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business)
(For sample audio - scroll down to the bottom of the interview).
Kristin: Our kitchen opens at 3am and we’re working throughout the day. It’s a combination of prepping fresh and then heating the meals in the morning, and any time between 6 am and 11 am, trucks are going out the door to serve meals fresh in schools. And we’ve got a couple different formats depending on whether schools are right at our back door of whether they’re a little further away. One format is to deliver food fresh and hot to schools that are very close by. For schools a little further away, we do a cook, chill platform where we cook every thing fresh then chill it, not freeze it, but chill it then send it out to school sites who then heat it up on site. That’s a really high-quality platform. We have a really great partnership with Whole Foods and that’s similar to the platform they use for their prepared foods department. We offer family style, which is a bulk platform where you’d get a large serving that you would serve to students at the site, and we also offer individually packaged meals. But the trick with our individual packed meals that we’re really proud of is using all sustainable packaging so it’s all 100 percent compostable. We just want to make sure that if schools are opting for individually packaged food that we’re using a green, sustainable solution. We serve a really broad range of schools; we serve districts; we serve charter schools; we serve head start programs, and it totally depends on the format. The younger students often do family style while the older students like more grab-and-go individual service, but it depends on the structure of the school. If the school has a lot of food service workers who are able to scoop and serve the food, then family style is a lot more realistic than if they’re very thinly staffed.
You could have a meal prepped at 4 pm, chilled and then warmed up in the morning. You could have meals that are prepared at 3 am and sent out at 5 am. It really depends on the exact menu, but certainly there are several stages of prepping. There’s the actual grating the cheese and chopping the potatoes. That’s often happening the day before just because we have a lot of prep to do. We’re chopping herbs; we’re getting vinaigrettes ready. We make a homemade pico de gallo for our healthy grande burrito and that can be chopped and prepared the day before. So it kind of depends on the menu and the size of the operation.
Serena: What happens if there’s an accident on the freeway en route to a school district?
Kristin: We give ourselves plenty of time and it’s amazing to say that in four years we’ve never had major complications on that front. Obviously, we haven’t had any natural disasters in the past four years, knock on wood, but we give ourselves a lot of time. We have very experienced drivers. We’ve been doing this for a while. We look at our route planning very carefully. We don’t overload our trucks and our drivers to the point where they can’t get to where they need to go. Of course if there’s an accident or something, we might inform our schools and say ‘hey, we may be a couple of minutes late.’ But we deliver early enough so that we’re not infringing on lunchtime. We might be a little late for our delivery, but it’s not going to stop kids from eating. Districts have been really smooth since the day we started. We invest a lot of time and training into that.
Serena: I’ve talked to several food service directors who are trying to incorporate stricter health standards into their meal programs, but they face some major challenges. I’m wondering if you’ve run into similar issues upholding your requirements to serve rbST and hormone free milk, hormone and antibiotic free meat, no high fructose corn syrup and scratch-cooked food that is local and organic whenever possible. What are the main challenges? What advantages does Revolution Foods have over most local school districts in meeting these criteria?
Kristin: We always face challenges; I’ll be totally honest about that. It’s not easy. One of the biggest pieces that’s challenging for Revolution Foods is that we set out to serve all students. What I mean by that is a very broad economic spectrum and broad demographics. Santa Cruz is case in point. Their population is just around 40 to 50 percent free and reduced lunch. These districts and schools operate on incredibly tight budgets and we have to make our foods as affordable as possible while meeting our health standards, which we’re very proud of and committed to. I know for instance that we’ve used a ton of local produce in the last 30 days. We’ve used plums, pluots, white peaches all from the Growers Collaborative, but we’re also in the middle of summer. In the spring, fall and summer, it’s much easier to access local, organic fruit and produce than it is in January. You really have to have great partnerships like we do with the Grower’s Collaborative. We’ve had a partnership with them from day one and they know that when they have a product at a certain price we will buy it. So it’s about letting your suppliers know that when they have seasonal organic produce that can be at an affordable rate, you are there ready to buy as many units of white nectarines as possible. So I think the secret is really establishing those great partnerships and letting your suppliers know that they can take a risk to get more product in house because there’s a market for it. Revolution Foods is a bigger operation now — not big compared to a big school district but compared to a small school district — so we do have some economies of purchasing there that certainly help us out. As you grow, you’re able to access higher quality goods at lower prices typically. We have a track record of building these partnerships. We’ve always had this partnership with Whole Foods, which introduced us to local suppliers. A perfect example is Joan Diestel at Diestel Turkey Ranch, where we’ve been buying local turkeys. She knows the names of her turkeys. That’s how personally it’s grown. So suppliers that are willing to take a risk and say, ‘hey, I support this cause of getting healthy meals out to all our kids and really increasing the quality of school [food].’ And we try to reciprocate and say, ‘hey, we’re getting bigger and bigger and now this business is going to be better for you.’ So I would say we face a lot of the same challenges. We’ve also gotten good at what we do in terms of building those relationships and really telling the story of what we’re doing and why it’s so important.
Serena: Would you say that you also have more money to spend than most school districts?
Kristin: We face a lot of the same challenges. We face the same reimbursement rate caps. The fact that we’re trying to provide this incredibly high quality meal for a very low rate [is a challenge in itself]. Federal reimbursement rates just went up to 2.68 but CPI adjustment for California is like $2. So think about putting together an incredibly healthy meal, with the cost of labor, food and every thing, and that’s going to pose serious challenges for any one trying to do it. So we’re a slightly different entity but all in all, we run such a cost-conscious operation where we’re trying to put as much as we can into our food for our kids and I think we probably face a lot of the same challenges and struggles that traditional operations face.
Serena: Do you use government commodity food?
Kristin: We have never used government commodities in our production. We’re certainly not opposed to using those commodities that meet our health standards, but we just haven’t used them to date.
Serena: How does Revolution Foods plan to boost meal participation in a district with historically low consumption like Santa Cruz City Schools?
Kristin: I think the number one thing is just serving fantastic food. We do a lot of work with our schools around menu development and feedback and focus groups, asking students ‘what do you want to see on your plate? What’s working on these menus? What’s not working on these menus?’ And we have a really quick turnaround time in terms of adjusting our menus and innovating, whether it’s a [spice] profile or a whole new menu, and really making sure that we’re listening to our students. I think that’s been the key to our success to date. I think a big part of what we do is getting food in front of people early in the year. That means coming to orientations with tastings so that parents are tasting the food and kids are tasting the food. Creating a really full-scale engagement around the food is a very important thing. We have a comprehensive nutrition education program that works really well to get students and families engaged. That includes health and wellness fairs where we do menu-planning sessions. We do chef demos. We do iron chef competitions. We do classic nutrition education demos like looking at how much sugar is in this product or comparing a rev foods grande burrito with a Taco Bell burrito and really getting hands on with students. That’s a big part of what we do and it really increases the buy in and engagement of the folks participating in the meal plan. So we’re hopeful and we’re going to put every thing we can into making sure that we engage families in Santa Cruz as much as possible and hopefully that will translate into higher participation rates. We have an onsite presence at our schools. We have school site teams. So there will be a team dedicated to Santa Cruz and that team will be on site frequently eating lunch with students. It’s a very hands-on partnership for us.
Serena: How many schools does Revolution Foods serve in the Bay Area?
Kristin: We served something like 75 schools last year, but we’re on the cusp of a new school year and don’t have numbers yet. There will be some increase. We’re supplying a portion of entrees to Palo Alto, we serve Mill Valley, Rock Valley, Roseland in Sonoma. We’re also going to be working with Los Gatos…
Serena: I read on your website that you don’t serve “overly processed” food. What does that mean? Is every thing scratch-cooked or are there some entrees that are processed?
Kristin: The only thing we’ve introduced in the last year [that’s processed] is a hormone, nitrate free hot dog. So it’s a clean hot dog on a whole-wheat bun with organic ketchup. I can’t tell you how many requests we’ve gotten over the years [for hot dogs], but for the longest time we couldn’t find a product that met our health standards. So we introduced this hot dog and what we said as a company was that we’re going to introduce this clean, all natural hotdog and we’re actually going to do some real education around it because we weren’t comfortable introducing that without the education. So we made sure that we went out to every school. We had sessions around how this hot dog was different. I mean we take this very seriously. If we’re going to introduce something in which versions of it have been unhealthy in our community, then we want to make sure folks know why this is a different hot dog. Another good example of Rev Foods is that we’ve been asked for chicken nuggets from day one, chicken nuggets, chicken nuggets, all these requests for chicken nuggets. So we finally sat down as a team and said look we don’t want to serve McDonald’s chicken nuggets or pre-processed chicken nuggets. How do we address this? So we basically figured out how to use all-natural, hormone and antibiotic-free chicken, cut the chicken, hand season and bread the chicken. We actually use the whole wheat bread we use for our sandwiches. We use the heels from those sandwiches and basically crumble that into panco and hand season those all natural chicken pieces with salt, pepper and whole wheat panco and then we bake them and serve them with organic ketchup. So that’s a good example of how we take a kid’s favorite and say yes we want to offer this but only if it’s done to our standards.
Serena: How many kitchen staff work at Revolution Foods?
Kristin: In the Bay Area, we have about 80 employees, 65 to 70 are our entire production staff, including the production chef, stew chef, drivers, janitors and every thing. It’s definitely a team of people.
Serena: What’s the average salary of your cooks? I’m trying to compare and contrast your operation with an average school district?
Kristin: People are at different stages based on how long they’ve been with us, but what I can tell you is that we’ve had a commitment since day one to offering every one on our team, whether you’re a dishwasher or a line cook, above livable wage and above livable wage in Alameda County I think is $10.80 an hour. On top of that, we offer full health benefits, medical and dental. We also offer ownership to every one on our team so regardless of what position you’re in, you have access to owning a piece of Revolution Foods. That’s a really important part of who we are. Clearly our chefs and [head] cooks make more than $10.80 an hour, but I don’t know if I’m comfortable saying their exact salary. What I am comfortable saying is that every one on our team is offered above livable wage, full health benefits as well as ownership in the company.
Serena: Ownership in the company?
Kristin: Options. We’re a privately held social venture so it’s an employee stock option program.
Serena: I read on the website that you start your recruiting process with the school communities you serve. How do you respond to people who are wary about outsourcing because they fear it will take away jobs (and tax dollars) from their communities?
Kristin: It’s an individual decision for a district or a charter school or for an individual school. We’re out there saying here’s what we offer and we’re available to serve that. We’re also creating a ton of jobs, 125 jobs just in the Bay Area. That includes our headquarters team, but these are jobs that weren’t there before. I think it’s an individual decision in terms of what a school’s going to do. If they can create their own food service operation to look the way they want it to look, obviously I’m fully supportive of that. But in the case that they’re looking for an alternative, I think Revolution Foods is a great alternative. And I think if you’re going to support an outsourced solution, supporting a company that has the values and standards and commitment that we have to our people, our food and to our local suppliers, is definitely the way you want to go…We have incredibly strong standards around they way we operate and you know you’re working with a really good like-minded partner. That’s what I found in Santa Cruz…I think the reason we’ve had such good rapport with folks is that we have standards that reflect the values of the Santa Cruz community in many ways.
In the last board meeting, I really tried to make a point that we’re not a full-service solution; we’re not a food service management company with all of our contracts at this point. There’s still a very large role for the food service team in Santa Cruz City Schools. We’re not just coming in and taking over the food service. We’re still working with folks to go over the food safety practices, to serve the food, to interact with the kids. So much of the work that we’re doing is with the existing food service team. We can’t do our nutrition education alone. We can’t do any of that without the team that works there. I just want to be really clear that we’re not coming in and taking away jobs right now. We’re coming in to partner with the school and say ‘we’re going to be providing you with healthy entrees and meals, but you’re going to have a huge role in serving the food and working with us to make this successful.’ I think that’s really important for people to understand. We’re not coming in and outsourcing the entire thing. It’s just a portion of it. We can’t be successful unless we’re a really strong partner to the existing food service staff there and we will do our absolute best to work with every one there. I have every faith in the world that it’s going to be a great partnership.
Serena: Some community members I’ve talked to also worry about private control of food service. Are there any conflicts of interest that arise in trying to satisfy both school districts and families but also venture capitalists?
Kristin: You’ve gotta look really closely at who’s invested in Revolution Foods. There’s no right or wrong answer here; it’s about the organization. Our social values are written into our charter as a company. Our investors signed on because they believe in those social values. This would be a terrible investment for them if they were just out to make a profit and that’s it. This is not the company that they would be working with. And further, our investors are social venture investors so double bottom line investors which is our first investor that seeded us. Their entire investment criteria is to support companies that promote economic development in low-income areas. So they don’t invest in the company unless it is creating jobs for low-income people at above livable wage with full benefits and ownership for every one. So it’s really important to look at who is invested in these companies. I mean the City of Oakland just invested in Revolution Foods. They just made us a great loan at a very low-interest rate because we’ve created so many jobs for low-income folks in Oakland at much higher standards than where they came from previously or in some cases, people were previously unemployed…Every organization is different and we have founded ourselves based on a very socially-conscious platform. We had a commitment when we first started to serve at least 50 percent low-income students. We now serve well above 50 percent low-income students. You can probably do the math and see that’s not driven off of a profit; that’s driven off a commitment to the community and a social mission that Kirsten and I, the other co-founder, are extremely committed to. I want people to really educate themselves on that. It’s an important trend in our business and nonprofit community that wasn’t there 20 years ago. There weren’t a lot of companies like Rev Foods.
Serena: Do you have much competition? I haven’t heard of many companies doing what you’re doing.
Kristin: There are folks serving the quality of meals that we’re serving at the private level at much higher price points. I think Revolution Foods is unique in the sense that our entire platform is built around serving all students
Serena: What are your ultimate goals for the company?
Kristin: To transform school meals nationwide, to change the way we feed our kids and to raise the expectations for how we feed our students. And really just to recognize that school health and wellness correlate directly to academic opportunities and success for students. That’s a very important part of who we are.
Serena: Why is scratch cooking such an important component of the company?
Kristin: I think bringing real food back into schools is so important as we try to build lifelong healthy eating habits amongst our students. I think the fact that they can see the food they’re eating and identify it is so important. So you’re not serving a taco pocket that’s packaged, processed food but you’re actually serving a homemade quesadilla that’s been hand rolled that they can identify all the ingredients. They can say, ‘hey, I can cook this at home or I could make this for myself. And the fact that you know where your food comes from so it doesn’t come from the package. It doesn’t come from a freezer at a fast food [restaurant] or a convenience store. You can identify, ‘wow, this is brown rice and this is where it came from.’ I just think continuing to connect students with real food is so important… right now we’re talking about today and this school year but the ultimate goal is that students will walk away and know how to prepare healthy meals for themselves or be interested in preparing healthy meals and fresh meals for themselves. So I think it’s just a really critical learning piece for families and students.
Posted by Spot. Us on 09/11/09 7/31/09
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Follow up to Case Study: Santa Cruz City Schools and the Fight for Revolution
By Serena Renner
Last night’s school board meeting marked two drastic changes for food service at Santa Cruz City Schools: the entering of a new nutrition services director as well as the hiring of Revolution Foods for meals served at the elementary and middle school level.
The nutrition services director, James “Jamie” Smith, was hired in closed session before the meeting began. Smith comes from a culinary arts background and most recently worked in institutional food service as the head chef at UC Santa Cruz.
Several lunch ladies in the audience murmured at the announcement of the district’s new hire, many of them still upset over the resignation of the former food service director, Denise McGregor, after her job description was changed to include expertise in culinary arts, nutrition and budget management.
Superintendent Gary Bloom halted the commentary just as one woman was about to stand up and speak, saying that the item was not up for discussion having been decided during closed session.
The board also approved a new food service contract with Revolution Foods to provide elementary breakfast and lunch as well as middle school lunch. The Oakland-based company is dedicated to offering scratch-cooked meals and fresh, local produce as opposed to the largely processed food currently served.
The consensus came after Board Member Rachel Dewey-Thorsett introduced an amendment to the proposal requiring the new food service manager to conduct a report by November assessing the cost-effectiveness of the program.
“The challenge is when you have something that isn’t working from the food point of view or the budget point of view,” Dewey-Thorsett said. “We want to improve the food now but also be careful about the budget simultaneously.”
Dewey-Thorsett echoed the sentiment of Board Member Don Maxwell who was hesitant to support a more expensive meal program when teachers are getting laid off and academic programs are financially strained.
The 2009-10 contract with Revolution Foods will cost the district an estimated $740,000 for daily food preparation and delivery, an increase from the current food program although Bloom was unable to give an exact figure because the cost could be offset by factors such as increased participation, which the district is anticipating. However, if the board decides the program is not cost-effective, the contract can be terminated with a 30-days notice, Bloom said.
Wellness Committee Chair Cynthia Hawthorne, who has been pioneering the changes for the past year and a half, was eager to cut through the debate and approve the contract once and for all.
“This isn’t the year to look at numbers,” Hawthorne said. “That was three, four years ago. We’re trying to turn direction…I don’t want to pick this a part with soft numbers.”
Now that the contract has been approved, meal prices will increase from $1.50 to $2 for breakfast and from $2.50 to $3.25 for lunch at elementary schools starting this fall. Middle school lunch will go from $3 to $3.50 while the high school food program will remain unchanged.
The district had originally planned to offer free breakfast through a Universal Breakfast program, but Superintendent Bloom decided it wasn’t affordable at this time.
The opposition to the contract is mostly made up of current food service staff who worry about additional costs as well as reduced hours and layoffs. While Superintendent Bloom said layoffs aren’t planned, he also made no guarantees.
“We can’t provide any definitive on [the impact to staffing] now but the new manager will be making recommendations soon,” Bloom said.
Others like food service employee Gina Navaroli question the logic in hiring a new culinary arts manager and then contracting out school food, especially since most board members agree that the district should eventually return to scratch cooking.
Food service employee Kim Jorgensen said the district tried outsourcing elementary meals in the past with a vendor named Preferred Meals and ended up losing money.
Jackie Henry-Russell’s main gripe with the whole decision-making process is that food service workers have been largely left out of discussions. She thinks the current staff is capable of preparing healthier meals if given the direction and resources to do so.
“We can do it, but we’ve never been given the opportunity,” she said.
Dewey-Thorsett agreed that ideally the district would prepare its own meals, but she admitted that the district doesn’t have the infrastructure to do so at this time.
“There’s an intuitive feeling that we can do this in house and it would be more affordable,” she said. “But the real goal is having kids in school having eaten breakfast and having access to a healthy lunch. This is the first step in doing that. It’s a step by step process.”
Kristin Richmond, founder and CEO of Revolution Foods, was also present at the meeting and spoke up saying the company has a proven track record of high meal consumption and that she is committed to creating a successful program through collaboration with the district.
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Have questions about the Revolution Foods contract? Serena will be interviewing founder and CEO of Revolution Foods, Kristin Richmond, next Thursday 8/6 at 7 a.m. If you have any questions you’d like Serena to ask, comment here or email her at serena [at] spot.us .
Posted by Serena Renner on 07/31/09 7/17/09
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At 7 a.m., blurry-eyed food service workers were arriving at Pajaro Valley Unified School District’s central kitchen to prepare the daily lunch shipment. The central kitchen in Watsonville is surrounded on all sides by agricultural land — lush green lettuce fields butting up against the parking lot, orange orchards across the street and shaded rows of raspberries and blackberries on the opposite corner.
Inside the central kitchen, however, were stacked trays of chicken burgers awaiting their journey through the plastic wrapping machine before being loaded onto a delivery truck and shipped to various schools where they are heated and served. The food service workers, dressed in aprons and hair nets, moved to the steady chug of the packaging machine as they stood in assembly line fashion, removing frozen patties from their boxes, sandwiching them between two buns and placing them along a conveyer belt where they are wrapped in shiny plastic to preserve them for the trip to local schools.
While cooking used to be done in the kitchen years ago, all the food served today requires minimal preparation; Frozen entrees are paired with fresh produce and sides like dehydrated beans and mashed potatoes. Kitchen manager Paula Barajas said the switch is mainly due to funding, where the district no longer has the money to pay for the labor required to cook. During the year, the district employs 32 food service staff, which don’t have capacity to produce thousands of lunches a day, she said.
“I could never, even with that amount of people, put out that amount of lunches if we had to start cooking them,” Barajas said.
The kitchen churns out about 4,000 lunches a day during the summer compared to the 5,000 to 6,000 in the regular school year. Another 3,000 are delivered during the year directly to schools that have their own storage and refrigeration facilities. The district uses the packaging machine twice a week while the food comes frozen and prepackaged the other days.
The chicken patties for this particular meal were trucked from Kings Delight, a processor of USDA commodity foods based in Gainesville, Georgia. The semi-whole wheat buns came from Wonder Bread, which Barajas believes are baked in Southern California. Additionally, baby carrots, milk and fruit from a Watsonville-based company, Coast Produce, are delivered site to site to accompany packaged entrees.
Unlike the regular school year, breakfast and lunch are free for all students and even community members 18 and under who live nearby. Schools that meet a certain free-and-reduced lunch threshold are subsidized through the federal Seamless Summer Feeding Program and the district picks up the tab for the higher income schools so they’re not left out.
While some criticize the prepackaged food served by the district, it’s different than what meets the eye, says Barajas.
“Our hamburgers are not what you would find at McDonalds,” Barajas said. “They have to meet certain fat requirements and so do our chicken burgers. We are using semi-whole wheat buns and things like that. So when people see a corn dog on our menu, they’re thinking ‘oh my God, that’s terrible,’ but it’s not deep fat fried, it has some whole grain corn meal in it. We’re using a chicken or a turkey dog. So we’re trying to be as healthy as we can in those areas.”
Sometimes healthy alternatives backfire, though, because kids often won’t eat what their not used to, Barajas says.
“They’re so used to having other types of food,” she said. “[Wheat buns] looks too healthy to them. They’re used to seeing chicken on wheat buns, but nobody out there has a hamburger on a wheat bun so it’s foreign. Some of the kids will take the bun off, throw it away and just eat the hamburger.”
She has also noticed that fruit consumption increases when it’s sliced and more accessible to students. The district bought an apple sectioner for a volunteer at Alianza Charter School who stands at the end of the food line to slice apples. This simple preparation makes a big difference, says Barajas, but it requires an extra person which is not in the district’s budget.
Along with financial constraints which have limited access to fresh food, both Barajas and Food Services Director Nicole Meschi cite nutrition education as another missing link in encouraging kids to consume more fruits, vegetables and healthier menu items.
Stay tuned to hear about some of the nutrition education programs bringing farm fresh produce into the classroom at Pajaro Valley and other school districts in Santa Cruz County as reporting on Sustainable School: What’s for Lunch? continues.
Posted by Serena Renner on 07/17/09 7/3/09
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While researching school food programs in Santa Cruz County for the sustainable school pitch, one district in particular — Santa Cruz City Schools — immediately stood out for being in a tumultuous time of change.
In the past year alone, the district has undergone an extensive review of the food services department, a superintendent change, and the resignation of the current food services director, Denise McGregor, after her job description was changed last month to include a background in nutrition and culinary arts.
Now the district’s Wellness Committee has its eyes set on overhauling the cafeteria program, starting with the hiring of Revolution Foods, an Oakland-based company dedicated to sustainable and nutritious meals, for a universal breakfast program at Gault Elementary and Branciforte Middle School as well as providing healthy lunch programs at these two schools along with Bay View, Delaveaga and Westlake elementary.
According to Wellness Committee Chair Cynthia Hawthorne, contracting with Revolution Foods is an attempt to move away from the heat-and-serve-processed-food model while the district gradually returns to a scratch-cooking system.
Food service workers prepare and package chicken burgers to be sent out to Pajaro Valley Unified School District cafeterias.
Such efforts have been prompted in part by the recommendations from an extensive review the district commissioned earlier this year. The review, which cost the district $30,000 for two consultants who worked on the assessment for four to six weeks, included several short-term goals from boosting leadership, to redrawing the wellness policy to menu reform.
The new wellness policy seeks to address the disconnect between what’s served in public schools versus trends in the larger community, according to Hawthorne. One of the policy’s guiding principles is “the promotion of family health, physical activity, good nutrition, sustainable agriculture and environmental restoration.”
“Schools are absolutely key in changing our national health crisis and providing the educational tools for students, families and communities to pave the pathway to wellness,” Hawthorne said.
The Current Heat-and-Serve Food Model
Like many districts, the Santa Cruz City Schools menu is comprised mostly of processed government commodities from the United States Department of Agriculture government surplus program, according to Beth Collins, one of the sustainable foods consultants who worked on the extensive departmental review that came out last January.
Hawthorne said that over the last eight years many districts across the nation have been lowering food costs to balance budgets, which have been plagued by cuts in recent years. As a result, food services departments have had to rely on lower-quality foods, like the D-level government commodities sent to U.S. schools and prisons.
USDA Commodity Chicken Patties, shipped to California from Gainesville, Georgia.
According to Hawthorne, the district even received beef from “downer cows” last year, which were the subject of a 143-million-pound-beef recall, the largest in U.S. History.
“[The government] needs to stop sending downer cows to school lunch programs and dumping the lowest quality products in school meals,” Hawthorne said. “We can do better than that.”
Additionally, the cost-cutting efforts of the school district have led to deconstructed facilities, which are more conducive to pre-packaged food.
“[The district] has non-approved facilities,” Collins said. “They no longer have anywhere for the kids to sit down and eat, the kitchens are in very poor condition, if you can even call them kitchens. You can only divest for so long, and they have been divesting for a long time.”
The Case for Revolution Foods
Considering these limitations, the district needs a healthier way to reheat and serve food before the facility upgrade needed for scratch cooking can take place. That’s where Revolution Foods comes in, says Hawthorne.
“What’s brilliant about Revolution Foods is the opportunity to reheat organic, healthy meals,” she said. “That’s not a fad; that’s a gift.”
Revolution Foods prides itself in providing children with access to healthy, fresh food, which is prepared daily at its Oakland-based kitchen and then shipped directly to participating Bay Area schools. The company’s food standards require organic and locally produced ingredients when possible, hormone and antibiotic-free meat and dairy, and the absence of high fructose corn syrup and trans fat.
Meals are packaged in plastic-free recyclable and compostable material, and the company works to collaborate with school districts to meet individual needs.
Quality food does come at a cost, however. Meals would increase an estimated $.75 for elementary students and $.50 for middle school students while the universal breakfast program would be free to all students.
The Hold Up
On Tuesday night, district trustees decided to wait on approving next year’s food plan until a new food services manager is hired and a financial impact report is conducted by the end of the month.
Opponents of the plan argue that the district can’t shoulder the additional costs amid the current budget crisis.
However, Hawthorne cited the $750,000 “Food for Needy Families” funds the district receives as evidence that there is money to pay for improved food. The money currently goes into the general fund and is paying for salaries instead of healthy food, she said.
“Yes, there would be more money going toward food, correct, hallelujah,” Hawthorne said. “Then we could provide better meals for our students.”
Increased participation — which is currently low — would also raise revenue.
Food service workers worry about possible mass layoffs due to the new structure of the food program, but trustees said deep cuts are not planned because employees could be retrained for new duties.
The community at large has had a mixed response.
Stephanie Raugust, Nutrition Coordinator at Pacific Elementary School District, who runs the “food lab” program which brings students into the kitchen to learn nutrition education as they prepare daily meals for students and staff, said she is wary of the private ownership of school food, and thinks the move is not addressing the real problem of deconstructed facilities and organizational support.
“You can’t get rid of the need for schools to have kitchens,” Raugust said. “[Revolution Foods] is like a bandaid that hides the real problem, a distraction by flashy packaging.”
Other school districts in the area are waiting to see how the revolution pans out.
“Maybe, it’ll turn out to be a good model that we’ll adopt later,” Cindi Black-Nicholson, Nutrition Services Director at the Live Oak School District said. “But we’ll let [Santa Cruz City Schools] try it out first.”
Posted by Serena Renner on 07/03/09 6/25/09
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Yesterday I heard that Santa Cruz City Schools may join several other Bay Area school districts in contracting out their school meals to Revolution Foods, an Oakland-based food service and nutrition education company, which, according to a March 9 Business Times article, plans to take California and other parts of the country by a storm.
Revolution Foods wants to "start a revolution" by integrating healthy, organic fresh food into the school system to impact student wellness, education and productivity. In just three years, the company has grown to serve 100 schools from the Bay Area to San Diego, and Santa Cruz may be next.
While the company's mission is a noble one--to offer healthier more sustainable alternatives to the typical heat-and-serve school food model, there are several questions prompted by this potential switch:
- What are the tradeoffs involved with contracting out school food services in terms of nutritional content as well as the financial, social and environmental impact?
- Revolution Foods' lunches cost $3-$4 while current full price lunch cost about $2.50. The price increase is 20 to 40 percent. How do districts plan to pay the additional food costs (especially a district like Santa Cruz City Schools whose Food Services Department is running a deficit) and what is the impact on families who don't qualify for government subsidies?
- Revolution Foods is already a venture capitalist enterprise. Former State Controller Steve Westly's firm--The Westly Group--led the most recent venture capital roundup which was $7 million in March 2008. Do any conflicts of interest arise in satisfying school districts as well as investors?
- Given the requirements to ensure fair competition through competitive bidding, are any other companies bidding on these lucerative contracts or does Revolution Foods have little to no competition?
- Who will regulate nutrition content, federal and state requirements and what's being served now that the school district has no local control?
Stay tuned for the answers to these questions and to find out whether or not Santa Cruz City Schools is joining the Revolution...
Posted by Serena Renner on 06/25/09 6/20/09
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In many aspects of Bay Area life, the sustainable food movement is taking over. From restaurants to grocery stores to fast food, we’re seeing “organic,” “local,” and “natural” food options everywhere. But if you swing by a local K-12 school around lunchtime, you’ll see mostly processed and packaged food. What exactly is being served and where does it come from? What are the challenges in introducing more nutritious meals? That is what Spot.us is working to investigate in the “Sustainable School: What’s for Lunch?” pitch.
I have taken on the pitch along with Fionnola Villamejor, award-winning journalist and concerned mother, who will be the peer-review editor for the story. So now that the team is in place, we’re proud to announce that reporting is underway!
So far, I am researching school districts in Santa Cruz County, an area rich in agriculture and localist values. How much of the region’s abundant produce and sustainable ideals are incorporated into local schools?
Last week, I interviewed Nicole Meschi, Director of Food Services at Pajaro Valley Unified School District, which runs 32 National School Lunch sites in Santa Cruz County. I learned that while Pajaro Valley has made a lot of progress in serving healthier meals by cutting out candy, soda and fried foods mainly as a result of the passing of Senate Bills 12 and 965, which set requirements for food and drinks in 2005, there are still many obstacles in introducing healthier, more sustainable menu items. From my early research, the main challenges seem to revolve around the following issues:
BUDGETARY CONSTRAINTS
Food services departments at K-12 schools work on tighter budgets than any other type of food programs in the nation, according to a sustainable food specialist who conducted an extensive review of the Santa Cruz City Schools district.
“Even prisons spend more money on food than schools do,” she said, “so schools are really the most challenged in their feeding programs.”
As a result, a large portion of school food is supplied by the government commodity surplus program, which provides allocations to districts based on the number of reimbursable meals served. Commodity and purchased food items usually come from large suppliers like Sisco, Ed Jones, IBC and Pepsi that fulfill the district’s bidding calls.
In addition, Pajaro Valley pays a processing company like Tyson to turn all their raw chicken and beef into finished products like patties and meatballs. The district used to prepare meat itself but no longer has adequate man power or food preparation facilities to do so.
“It’s definitely a value to us because our labor is the biggest cost,” Meschi said. “Space is another issue. Even if we did have enough money to pay every body, a lot of our kitchens are like closets.”
Further challenges have resulted from the state budget crisis, which has cut state reimbursement for meals from about 22 cents to only six cents per meal, slashing the department’s budget from about $53,000 to only $15,000 for last May and June. Consequently, the department has lost five employees and the remaining food service workers are doing more with less to accommodate the increasing number of kids on free and reduced lunch.
MISSING NUTRITION EDUCATION PROGRAMS
Pajaro Valley’s most popular menu items are chicken, pizza, grilled cheese, breakfast-for-lunch and nachos. While some would argue that the menu still looks similar to that of a fast-food restaurant, the director said it’s mainly an effort to serve what kids like.
“We really try to menu stuff that kids like because we want them to eat lunch,” Meschi said. “For some of the kids, that’s the only meal they’ll have for the day.”
There’s also a vegetarian option every day and each meal is served with milk and a choice of fruits and vegetables, which often end up in the trash, especially at the elementary level, she said.
That’s where nutrition education comes into play to teach kids what different fruits and vegetables are, how they’re grown and why they’re good for the body.
The district does have a fresh fruit and vegetable grant at two schools, where they’ve been serving every thing from leeks to collar greens.
“Saying these are all the ways you can prepare it, these are all the ways you can eat it, this is where it comes from, there’s more buyin about [eating fruits and vegetables],” Meschi said. “That’s really the missing link–the nutrition education.”
One program trying to address this growing need is the national farm-to-school program. Pajaro Valley tried to implement the program as a district several years ago, but it fell a part due to delivery issues and committed teachers who left.
DISTRIBUTION AND PRODUCTION PROBLEMS FOR LOCAL FARMERS
So why can’t schools just get contracts with local farmers to supply more fruits and vegetables? Seasonal availability, liability insurance and lack of distribution networks are just a few things standing in their way.
Meschi mentioned strawberries grown in Watsonville being shipped to Sacramento before being distributed back to Watsonville. This is just one small example of the complicated distribution process for shipping to local schools, which we are investigating further.
NATIONAL SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAM LACKS NUTRITION GUIDELINES
The current National School Lunch program requires that a district either adopt a “food-based system” or a “nutrient-based system,” neither of which enforce nutrition standards. Pajaro Valley has a nutrient-based system, which ensures that children receive the right number of calories. Children must choose three out of five items from different various food groups to get funding for reimbursable meals.
The National School Lunch Program is up for renegotiation this fall and nutrition guidelines are something Meschi hopes will be addressed.
Stay tuned to learn more about Pajaro Valley Unified School District and other districts grappling with how to offer healthier meals amid budget cuts and rising food costs.
If any one has any ideas, tips or leads about this story, please leave comments here or on the Sustainable School pitch page. The story is $380 shy of its goal, so pass this update along to any one you think may be interested in donating to make this piece possible.
Posted by Serena Renner on 06/20/09 6/17/09
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Greetings Spot.us Community!
Hi! I'm Serena, the reporter working on the Sustainable School Lunch pitch along with Fionnola Villamejor, award-winning journalist and concerned mother, who will be the peer-review editor for the story. Fionnola is very interested in school issues; she’s also working on an investigation into the monitoring of teacher behavior in Millbrae where she lives. Needless to say, we’re very excited to have Fionnola on board!
So now that the team is in place, reporting on “Sustainable School: What’s for Lunch?” has begun!
Last Friday, I interviewed both the Director of Food Services at Pajaro Valley Unified School District, which runs 32 National School Lunch sites in Santa Cruz County, as well as a sustainable foods specialist who conducted an extensive review of Santa Cruz City Schools Food Services Department. We thought Santa Cruz would be an interesting region to investigate because it’s rich in sustainable agriculture and localist values. We want to know how much of the area’s abundant produce and sustainable ideals are incorporated into local schools?
I learned that while Pajaro Valley has made a lot of progress in serving healthier meals by cutting out candy, soda and fried foods, there are still many obstacles to introducing healthier, more sustainable menu items — the most pressing being time and money.
Due to the state budget crisis, state reimbursement for meals has been cut from about 22 cents to only six cents per meal, slashing the department's budget from around $53,000 to only $15,000 last May and June. Consequently, the department has lost five employees and the remaining food service workers are doing more with less to accommodate the increasing number of kids on free and reduced lunch. Pajaro Valley’s most popular menu items are chicken, pizza, grilled cheese, breakfast-for-lunch and nachos. There’s also a vegetarian option every day and every meal is served with a choice of fruit and/or vegetables and milk. While some would argue that the menu still looks similar to that of a fast-food restaurant, the director said it’s mainly an effort to serve what kids like.
“We want to make sure they eat lunch,” the director (who I’ll name in the published article) said.
Most of the food comes from large suppliers that fulfill the district’s bidding calls. Many of the distributors are based in the Bay Area; however, the director wasn’t sure of where the food is actually produced. She mentioned strawberries grown in Watsonville being shipped to Sacramento before being distributed back to Watsonville. This is just one small example of the complicated distribution process for shipping to local schools.
Why can’t schools just get contracts with local farmers? Seasonal availability, liability insurance and lack of distribution networks are just a few things standing in their way, but this is a complex issue we’re working to investigate.
More in-depth posts about the Pajaro Valley Unified School District and insight from the Sustainable Food Specialist to come!
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Here’s an investigative article about a school district in Washington that I think is a good example of where I'd like to take this story. Would you readers like to see something like this about local school districts? Let me know what you think and if you have any ideas, tips, leads, etc. We look forward to working with you all!
Posted by Serena Renner on 06/17/09 6/17/09
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Serenna Renner is taking ova!
Posted by Serena Renner on 06/17/09
