Not Your Parents’ School Lunch: Districts Innovate With Food Trucks, Smartphone Apps

September 5, 2014 8:50 AM

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Students from the Boulder Valley School District order lunch at a food truck that rotates among high schools in the district. (credit: Boulder Valley School District)

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 Adams 14 Public Schools, Ann Cooper, Aurora Public Schools, Beth Wallace, Boulder Valley Public Schools, Cherry Creek School District, Denver Public School, Douglas County Public Schools, Jefferson County Public Schools, Jim D. Rowan, Mona Martinez-Brosh, Nutrislice, Paula Hans, School Lunches, Theresa Hafner,Tim Skillern, Yuri Sanow

DENVER (CBS4) - If you attended public schools, you likely remember the lunches you stared down as a student: Options were often unappetizing, institutional in appearance and probably unhealthy.

Sometimes, on lucky days, there was pizza.

But if you don’t have kids in public schools today, the meals served now are likely unrecognizable, at least as a school lunch. Although the staples — pizza, hamburgers, chicken nuggets — remain, they’re joined by chorizo quesadillas, harvest sweet potato bakes and Asian crispy chicken bowls, just to name a few. Schools are also rolling out new features like food trucks, student chef competitions and smartphone apps.

Playing a significant role in menu creation is the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which drastically reduced the amounts of fat, sugar, salt and calories in meals and gave the USDA the authority to set nutritional standards in schools. Those restrictions do squeeze what districts can offer, but they also stir creativity in chefs.

To get a sense of some of the new, interesting and gee-whiz creations schools are serving, CBS4 talked to several large and small school districts this week.

Here’s a look at some of the strategies they’re testing and how they approach the philosophy of school lunch.

One Jefferson County Dish Is ‘Dessert For Your Vegetables’

Yuri Sanow, the executive chef for Jefferson County Public Schools, eagerly describes his award-winning recipe he’ll be serving students this school year.

His Harvest Apple and Sweet Potato Bake is a simple mélange of seasonal fall foods: sweet potatoes, dried cranberries and apples with a hint of brown sugar. It won a school-lunch award from McCain Foods.

“The thing I always liked about it is it’s like dessert for your vegetables,” he says.

The catch?

A bunch of adults bestowed the award. Until students try it, hold the accolades, he says.

“The prize is going to be when our (schools) make it that first time. Maybe there is a handful of kids who haven’t eaten sweet potatoes before and then they love them and they will eat them for the rest of their lives. That’s my prize. That’s what I’m hoping happens,” Sanow says.

Sanow’s Harvest Apple and Sweet Potato Bake

Another concept Jefferson County is trying this year is called underground subs, a take on the Which Wich franchise where customers build their sandwiches by marking ingredients on a paper bag. In the morning, students ink an order card and hand it into the cafeteria manager. The sub is ready at lunch.

“The other nice thing is kids like choices,” Sanow says. “This gives them a choice from four different breads, several meats and loads of toppings.” The custom sub program debuted this week in all high schools and middle schools.

The district has forged a partnership with Boulder Natural, a local poultry company to provide occasional meals (including healthier options like barbecue chicken legs and thighs, and ground chicken chorizo quesadillas) from Colorado companies. That offers competition to the age-old cafeteria foods like pizza, chicken nuggets and corn dogs.

Sanow says part of his job is to consider parents’ feedback and understand there is a lot of scrutiny.

“Our job is not easy, but the stuff they’re seeing on the menu is getting better all the time,” he says. “It’s like turning a battleship. You can’t do it all at once.”

Meal Customization Is Key In Adams 14

If you want to learn how students might eat at school, observe how they eat outside of it.

“I am a big proponent of spending time out in the public and truly seeing where kids are eating, what are they eating and why are they eating that,” says Jim D. Rowan, who is in his first full year as the nutrition manager at the Adams 14 School District.

That doesn’t mean kids should be snacking on Chipotle-style burritos or chowing down on pizza all the time. But restaurants’ concepts, structures and strategies should clue schools into how to they can attract more customers.

And students are indeed customers. They’re more “food-aware,” Rowan notes, and if schools can’t provide students a compelling reason to eat their food, schools fail. Students watch Food Network programs, and they know how amazing food can be.

“We have to follow that trend or we’re going to die. We are no different than any concept restaurant out there. If you aren’t developing and changing and growing, you’re not going to stay viable,” he says.

Rowan wants to experiment with a Mongolian-style bowl concept in which students can control most aspects of their meal — even the spicy preference. At middle schools, he believes students can handle the same structure with fewer choices, and elementary school students should see several different entrée options.

“Your choice before was take it or don’t,” Rowan says.

The 2010 federally mandated nutrition guidelines have made it tough on school lunch programs because healthier foods don’t always, of course, draw interest. Sometimes, it seems to Rowan, only students on free-and-reduced lunch programs will eat school food because they feel like they have to.

“I don’t want kids to feel like they have to come eat with you. I want them to be excited about coming to eat,” he says, noting that food service employees adopting a “Disney mentality” to customer service would help. “I don’t want students to come to the cafeteria. I want them to come to the café. I want that structure.”

Better Nutrition Means A Better Education In Aurora Schools

Cooking from scratch is the key to healthy student meals, the director of Aurora Public School’s nutrition services says.

“We are in our fourth year of cooking from scratch,” Mona Martinez-Brosh, who is also a registered dietician, says. “We make our salad dressings from scratch, our marinara sauce from scratch — which absolutely tastes wonderful. We bring in raw meat. We bring in raw chicken.”

Over the last three years, the district has phased in all-you-can-eat salad bars, in which it primarily offers fruits and vegetables, at most of its 59 schools.

For four years now, the district has also offered breakfast in the classroom at 16 schools and is adding another 10 sites this year. Six more will be added in 2015. And the district’s central bakery provides next-day service.

“Our mission is that we help support education by providing high-quality nutritious meals,” Martinez-Brosh says. “The more we can cook from scratch, the more we can control what the students are eating — the fat, sodium and sugar. And it must taste good as well.”

The school also features cuisine from a wide variety of cultures to match the tastes of its incredibly diverse population. More than 100 different languages are spoken by students within the district.

Despite the menu variety, Martinez-Brosh says the old standbys parents remember — pizza and hamburgers, for example — are still very popular among students, and they meet nutrition guidelines. As she’s added choices, she’s noticed changes in eating habits: “We have discovered our students really like fresh fruits and vegetables.”