School lunch revolution
Kathy Scott removes the meals from the oven at Willowside Middle School before lunch.
JEFF KAN LEE/ PDPublished: Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 2:12 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 2:12 p.m.
As anybody who has been to elementary school can attest, school lunches can be underwhelming at best.
Now, however, thanks to an East Bay company specializing in organic foods, four school districts in Sonoma County are striving to make lunchtime more appetizing to students and faculty members alike.
The company, named Revolution Foods, delivers tasty meals to more than 100 schools in Northern California, Southern California, Denver and Washington, D.C.
The concept is hardly revolutionary, but in the spirit of Earth Day, it plays out at a grassroots level, one school district at a time.
On the whole, Revolution Foods' meals are paradigms of healthfulness. Most are heavy on fruits and vegetables; many contain organic ingredients. All of the meat and dairy products are hormone- and antibiotic-free. What's more, the company doesn't allow anything with high fructose corn syrup or artificial trans fats.
Kirsten Tobey, the company's co-founder and chief operating officer, said there are even vegetarian meals.
“There's a commitment to freshness in everything we do,” Tobey said. “It's all about providing kids access to good food, and in the process teaching them about what it means to eat more healthfully.”
In a nutshell, Revolution Foods is an outsourced food provider. The company's model works best for smaller school districts that can't afford a staff of chefs to prepare lunches every day. In Sonoma County, all the company's customers fit this description, each registering fewer than 3,000 students.
The Oak Grove School District in Santa Rosa is one of the local districts serving these meals; roughly one quarter of the district's 825 students purchase them on a weekly basis. The rest bring lunches from home.
According to Superintendent Noel Buehler, the meals are prepared at Revolution Foods' headquarters in Oakland every night and driven to the schools in his district daily. They usually arrive by 10 a.m., and once they are on site, cooks reheat them slowly so they're thawed and ready for consumption by the 12:30 p.m. lunch hour.
Buehler says parents interested in purchasing the meals must pre-order them one week in advance. They cost $4 apiece, or roughly $80 per month (though some students qualify through the federal government for free or reduced-price meals, depending on their families' total income).
Adam Schaible, the principal at Willowside Middle School, says some of the most popular meals at his school include pizza, chicken enchiladas, bean-and-cheese burritos, cheeseburgers, Caesar salads and ham-and-cheese sandwiches.
“I eat the food almost every day, and I like it as much as the kids do,” Schaible said. “It's nice to see the school finally offering healthy options.”
Both Schaible and Buehler noted that Oak Grove schools keep a handful of Revolution Foods lunches on reserve for those students who forget lunches from home and whose parents haven't prepaid.
“Nobody goes hungry in this district,” Buehler said.
The catch? Because these lunches are designed to have a longer shelf-life, they aren't as fresh and healthy as the alternatives.
Other Sonoma County school districts contracting with Revolution Foods for fresh and healthy meals include Waugh School District in Petaluma, Twin Hills School District in Sebastopol and Roseland School District in Santa Rosa. All told, the company serves 10 schools across all four districts.
At Roseland, Business Manager Rosie Greco says her district purchases a total of 1,600 meals each day.
“Prior to Revolution Foods, we had frozen meals that were delivered once a week,” Greco said by e-mail. Meals made and delivered daily were a “huge improvement” over the old strategy, with wholesome ingredients that are always worth the effort.
Tobey said the company is committed to environmental consciousness across the board. For starters, it is in the process of getting its culinary center listed as a green-certified business. Its 75 employees are encouraged to recycle and compost everything they can.
The vendor also distributes all cold meals and sandwiches in compostable containers.
“It's not just about healthy food; it's an education in a healthier way to live,” Tobey said of the Revolution Foods approach. “In the end, if our messages and the products we deliver get kids to stop and think about the choices they're making outside of school, we've done our jobs successfully.”
Matt Villano is a freelance writer based in Healdsburg.
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