Coordinating a local effort

By Mike Mitchelson


Serving local foods might be a logistical challenge, but as District 196 discovered, it’s well worth the effort.


Three grape tomatoes in a serving cup might not seem like much, but in the context of educating school children about local produce, it’s huge.

It’s those types of cumulative efforts that earned Independent School District 196’s (Rosemount, Apple Valley and Eagan) elementary schools a Silver Award from the USDA’s Healthier School Challenge this past spring. The program recognizes schools across the country that undertake extra efforts to provide students a foundation of nutrition and physical educations. Conveniently, the award was presented on May 20, the same day as the district’s monthly “Local Lunch” series, for which the district selects a local product to feature on the lunch menu.

Being served that day were those three tomatoes per student, from Bushel Boy, a greenhouse-tomato specialist located in Owatonna, Minn. Bushel Boy founder and owner Jay Johnson was there with a demonstration table to show students the plant to tomato to table process, and those USDA officials got to see the district’s Local Lunch Series in action, which fit neatly into one of the requirements for the award. Among them include serving a different fruit and vegetable per day, one whole-grain food three times per week, restrictions on sodium, sugar and the sale of food items in the cafeteria that don’t meet USDA nutrition standards.

Going for the award was a tool to “educate and motivate (the district’s foodservice) managers and school children on what is a healthy lunch,” said Wendy Knight, District 196’s food and nutrition service coordinator. Coordinating the award and the Local Lunch efforts was Barbara Griffiths, the district’s food and nutrition supervisor, Knight said. “This was a huge endeavor for our district; it took a lot of Barb’s time,” she said.

Obstacles, solutions
Deciding to serve healthy items and local product is a noble exercise, and one that no one, in principle, disagrees with. But there was some convincing to do among the district’s foodservice managers at its 18 schools. “I think there was a fear by our elementary managers that students wouldn’t accept product, and that their counts would go down,” Griffiths said. And when counts (students purchasing school lunch) go down, federal and state funding goes down. “(We had) to get them over that fear, that this is the thing to do, that children will eat these healthy foods, and we need to provide them to them.”

The bigger hurdle was for the award, which, amongst its requirements, asked that the menu provide children a legume every week. The group looked at a variety of bean and lentil ideas, and created five cold salads with beans and lentils. “We tried that for a couple cycles and it just bombed,” Griffiths said.

But they found children would eat baked and refried beans. A dietetic intern also helped develop new recipes, one of which was a pasta bean salad, with cannelloni beans, fresh spinach and tomatoes that tested very well. It will be on the schools 2010/11 menu. “That’s the tricky part; you need to find something that kids are going to eat,” Griffiths said, adding that a new item is evaluated after three tries on the menu.

Educating students and parents about nutrition and menu items starts with the district’s monthly Nutrition News Flash newsletter. (When the Bushel Boy tomatoes were served, general facts and the nutritional breakdown of tomatoes were printed, in addition to information about Bushel Boy and a “fresh garden salsa” recipe.) The newsletter is sent to the schools, which then distribute it to parents and have it available for download on the school’s Web site. For the cafeteria, sneeze guard “slicks,” posters and other materials are created. “Then we let the schools do their own thing,” Griffiths said. “We give them all this information and set a minimum standard of what they have to do to (to market the item).”

Parents have responded positively to the efforts. “We received a couple e-mails from terribly excited parents that their child would actually be served basmati rice,” Knight said. “I would say for the general student population, this is the first time they are experiencing some of these foods.”

On the menu in previous months: local acorn and butternut squash (“Some of our staff had never had butternut squash before, either,” Griffiths said), corn on the cob, wild rice and, of course, apples.

Logistics
Staffing and general kitchen limitations are other obstacles. Raw local product needs to arrive at many schools processed to usable forms. Corn cobs needed to be shucked, broken in half and packaged in 30 pound cases, the squash needed to be cubed and packed in five pound bags. The district’s mainline distributor handled those tasks.

Fortunately, serving raw grape tomatoes isn’t complicated. But getting the Bushel Boy tomatoes distributed in timely fashion to the schools was a challenge.

Bushel Boy, as is their policy, picks their tomatoes when they are red and ripe, and delivers them to retail stores or wholesale accounts within 24 hours. Working through Bix Produce and directly with Bushel Boy’s Johnson, Griffiths coordinated the size of the order—about 2,000 pounds on 15 flats. “We wanted them to be the freshest, and (Johnson) didn’t want them to be refrigerated,” she said. “Basically, I had to talk (our school district) warehouse into changing their route for me, in order to get the freshest product to the schools and to the students. We got the product in on Tuesday morning, we got them out to all of the schools by then end of that Tuesday, (the schools) washed them Wednesday and served them for lunch on Thursday. So they were pretty fresh, only two days from picking. That was pretty nice.”

Cost
It’s no secret that fresh, local product is more expensive than bringing in standard commodity items. But how much? “I think the corn on cob was maybe a third more per serving than normal,” Knight said. “We offered a local grass fed beef hotdog, and that was twice the cost of our normal hot dog, that’s why we only did that once.”

They received the tomatoes for a “good price,” Griffiths said, although it was at a time when the market for tomatoes was high generally. “(We paid) 35 to 40 percent higher than what we could have bought off the market.”

Despite the added cost, it is an educational opportunity and a “worthwhile endeavor,” Knight said.

The Bushel Boy tomatoes were a great example. Johnson’s display table was a hit, and the majority of students liked the samples—which means they will likely appear again on the menu. Some had never tasted a raw tomato before, Griffiths said.

From a strict nutritional standpoint, fresh local product isn’t better than fresh frozen produce, or fresh foods coming from a distance. But that’s beside the point, Griffiths said. “We’re doing it for flavor and for helping the local economy, and teaching children where their food comes from,” she said.



Bushel Boy for lunch

Delivering about 2,000 pounds of tomatoes to District 196 was Bushel Boy’s first venture into the school foodservice market. The company primarily supplies retail stores. “But we would like to do more schools and restaurants,” said Jay Johnson, founder of Bushel Boy.

Did he notice any particular challenges to working with a school district? “It doesn’t seem to be any different,” he said. “It went very smooth, that was a good-size order, and that’s a good-size district compared to most. We were able to drop it all at one spot, and it went very smoothly. They had to order quite a ways in advance, so we planned it. We were able to pick them one day and deliver the next, so it was very fresh.”

If there are challenges, they are related to Johnson’s insistence that the tomatoes are harvested at peak ripeness and delivered quickly without time spent in a cooler. “Probably 80 percent of our stuff is delivered within 24 hours of harvest,” he said.

Depending on the time of year, volume can sometimes be a challenge, but in 20 years the company has expanded to 20 acres of greenhouse, they can produce about 8,000 cases (15 pounds per case) of tomatoes per week. They deliver to Bix Produce six times per week, and do direct shipping.

For the elementary school demonstration, Johnson brought along a live plant, many pictures, a variety of tomatoes and a beehive used for pollination. He set up in the cafeteria as kids picked up lunch and sampled the grape tomatoes. The reaction among the kids was “huge,” Johnson said. “They loved it. That age of kids, I think it was really interesting for them. They were more interested in the bumblebees than the tomato plants, but a lot really seemed to like it.”

There were predictable “no, I hate tomatoes” reactions from some kids. But, Johnson said of the two-thirds that tried them, most liked them. “If the kid (in line) says, ‘Oh I’d never put a tomato in my mouth—I hate tomatoes,’ probably the next three behind them that heard it aren’t going to take them either,” he said. “But if you get one that says, ‘Oh I’ve had these before, I like them,’ the next two or three behind them will probably take them and give them a try.”



Apples for an Apple Valley high school

In other District 196 news, the School of Environmental Studies, an optional high school within that district and located next to the Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley, recently planted Honeycrisp apple trees on the school grounds. “Some are bearing fruit right away, said Dan Bodette, the school’s principal. “Our goal with the trees is to give those to our foodservice (operation) and they’ll sell them at a nominal cost to kids during lunch. We picked Honeycrisp because that’s what kids tend to enjoy, so we hope to have apples for years to come for our students, and have our foodservice department make a minor profit off that other cost.

“We are also going into a community partnership gardening project with the City of Apple Valley’s residents, where we plot off parcels of land on our property here for them to grow their own vegetables, and then we have a plot as well that we’ll share our produce with our foodservice department so our kids can get fresh healthy foods and vegetables when they come due in the fall of the year, and also expose our kids to agriculture practices and get them excited about gardening—and maybe they’ll continue some organic practices when they leave our school.”



Schwan’s cuts sodium in school pizza

With nearly all school districts in the state purchasing Schwan’s Food Service Inc. (SFSI) product, the company in April formally announced its support of Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act and First Lady Michelle Obama’s call to reduce childhood obesity. With those national nutrition objectives, Schwan’s committed to doubling the number of its nutritionally enhanced school foodservice pizza products with whole grains by the fall of 2011, and reduce the sodium content of these products by up to 10 percent. Turns out, they accomplished a chunk of that goal one year early, and cut more sodium than expected. This fall, the company will have available its reformulated Big Daddy’s-brand pizza, in its reduced sodium (by 15 to 25 percent) form.

According to a company release, SFSI school pizza products currently contain whole grains, and one-third of these products have more than 51 percent whole grains. By the fall of 2011, the number of school pizza offerings with more than 51 percent whole grains will double.

The company also committed to reducing the sodium content of its school pizza products by an additional 10 percent over the next 18 months in support of the recent Institute of Medicine School Meals Report.

Marshall, Minn.-based SFSI is the largest supplier of pizza to the National School Lunch Program. Currently, the company works with about 75 percent of the nation’s more than 96,000 schools. Other large-scale food manufacturers such as Kraft, ConAgra and Cargill are also cutting sodium in their products in response to consumer demand and government calls for healthier products.



Tortillas tossed into school mix

Catallia Mexican Foods produces about 1.8 million tortillas per day for grocery stores and restaurants, and one of its clients is one of the largest international quick-service restaurant companies on the planet (Hint: it’s most famous for burgers). But Catallia, based in Eagan, Minn., remains very much a local operation. Its offices are located within its 41,000 square foot production facility, where 71 employees work.

Part of being a community player is providing schools a product that is affordable, nutritious, and counts as a commodity staple. Catallia is working with Lake to Lakes Marketing to make inroads with school foodservice, with its whole-grain tortilla. “It does not have a grainy texture,” said Cathy Cruz Gooch, Catallia’s president and founder. “Children accept it, and schools have totally changed over.”

Catallia also hosted this spring a tour for foodservice directors at the plant, and served up many food samples that showcased tortillas’ versatility. “We work closely with our customers and we understand what tortillas are about.”