Please leave your comments on the current hot lunch program or the proposed vendor.
Note: this entry was edited for clarity on 26 March 2008.
View a Revolution Foods Sample Menu (pdf format)
Pros & Cons Current Program:
UPSIDES:
1. Creates Community, Fun: The Beach tradition of Friday Hot Lunch is a special treat – the highlight of the week for the kids and a break for the parents. There is nothing like a hot meal in the middle of the school day…
2. Fundraising: The BPO gets a substantial return on the volunteers’ efforts to help fund other BPO services.
3. One-time ordering for the entire year.
DOWNSIDES:
1. Limits Program to One Day a Week: Expanding the program would require many more parent volunteers. [1]
2. Difficulty recruiting volunteers to chair a hot lunch day: Without a legible protocol, it is difficult for newcomers to easily step in and know what to do. Limits participation.
3. Time and Labor Intensive:
a. Heavy load on committed few. You see many of the same faces on Hot Lunch that you see volunteering throughout the school. It is difficult to recruit enough volunteer to serve. Often the same people fill in over and over.
b. Administration and management tools aren’t in place, making administration scattered and difficult.
c. Creates volunteer burn-out and limits who can be involved.
4. Target of Complaints: Despite it being a volunteer effort, and because it deals with food and a Beach tradition, parents have high expectations surrounding menu choice, nutritional content and health & safety issues. The current program would required upgrades to keep up with bureaucratic state regulations governing nutritional values, public health or food safety.
Outsource Lunch Program to Revolution Foods:The following pages speak to why this would be the best option.
REVOLUTION FOODS PROS:
1. Multi-day: They offer lunch 3-5 days a week. A hot lunch program is convenient. For kids who stay at school for long hours it provides a healthy break in the middle of the day. Many families voiced a preference for more hot lunch days.
2. Progressive Business Model: Revolution Foods’ was founded by two UC Berkeley women to bring high quality food to low-income schools and do it as “sustainably and green” as possible. They source local where possible and have teamed up with Whole Foods to keep prices low. They hire real chefs and pay living wages with health benefits. They discount their food to Title One schools. Our support of them supports communities without our resources.
3. Good Food. We improve the nutritional value of our program. Revolution Food’s menu is kid friendly, yet not junk food. They use “Whole Foods” quality meats; they average 65% organic fruits and vegetables; and they don’t use trans-fats.
4. Professional Accountability: Complaints can be addressed by the company. Their business depends on their meeting the needs and desires of the BPO and the school as a whole. When volunteers cook for the school, in a sense, the complaints are a bit like “looking a gift horse in the mouth.”
5. Allows us to maintain compliance with bureaucratic state regulations governing nutritional values, public health and food safety
6. Fewer Volunteer Hours are needed. No preparation, no clean-up, no trips to Costco to buy plates. Everything is delivered. The time commitment would be about one hour; unless you want to hang out and chat. Each day would require 1 to 2 volunteer servers – adding up to 6 positions to fill each week. This is about the same amount as we need now, but it is spread over the week with less time per slot.
7. Flexibility and Streamlined Administration: Online ordering on a monthly basis. Don’t guess in June if your child wants Bagel Day in May. If you want 1 day this week and 2 days next week it is all fine.
8. Compostable Packaging! We potentially could co-ordinate with the Grounds & Garden committee to take a bit of this stuff into the garden. It also seems that the new city food scraps program could take this type of packaging. The current Hot Dog and Pizza days have relatively little packaging anyway, but we use a lot of aluminum pans, aluminum foil and paper plates on Chinese, Burrito, Pasta and Roast Chicken day.
9. Affordability: The cost per meal to the BPO would be about $3.25 if there are 100 or more orders, $3.50 a meal for fewer than 100. The BPO could keep the current price at $4.00 or possibly raise it to $4.25 if prices go up.
9. Potential for Fundraising Increased. Despite the lower margin of profit per lunch, there are more hot lunch days, so the potential for fundraising is still there.
10. It is Educative: Revolution Foods has an educational component to their service that will be available on-line for teachers, kids and parents.
11. Frees up Board Positions: Without having to be Chinese Day Chair, Bagel Day Chair, etc., etc., we would be free to volunteer for other positions in the school that are going unfilled! Hah!
CONS:
1. Potential Financial Hardship: Some parents have pointed out that offering more days would create a hardship those who can’t afford more days, because their children would feel left out or the parents would feel embarrassed to request a scholarship or they would find it difficult to turn their children down.
2. Base price of lunch is higher ($3.25 – $3.50) than our current program, though some of this will be offset by the increased number of lunches. To maintain revenues, the price per hot lunch could increase.
3. Loss of Informal Program: Some parents mourn that we’d be going to a food service. Although many of the Hot Lunch Days are catered by local restaurants and chains, there is something nice about the small scale of the effort.
OUTSTANDING ISSUES:
§ Fundraising & BPO Mission: Is school lunch the appropriate place to fundraise? What is the mission of the BPO and of the school. Should income from school lunches be earmarked for lunch scholarships, scholarships for educational programs like the Marin Headlands or should it be open for other programs as well.
BROADER BEACH PARTICIPATION: We need the Beach community to weigh in on the lunch program. Please read the Pros & Cons and leave a comment on the on this post; Come to the Revolution Tasting and discussion on April 7th; Answer the Hot Lunch Survey in April; Attend and vote at the BPO meeting on May 12th ! If you have questions please feel free to contact me: kimberly@mo-po.com. [i]
[1] On the Hot Lunch survey last year, 43 were in favor of more hot lunch days, only 15 were against.
[i] Thank you to the many and diverse BPO members, Hot Lunch chairs, volunteers, and parents who have shared their thoughts with me over the last 6 months. Thank you to Eliza Chin, Susan Miller and Teermatie Taylor for their help in getting me started this last month.
I am g huge supporter of Rev Foods. They supply the food for Making Waves Charter School in Richmond, and I have heard nothing but rave reviews from my friend, who is the assistant head of school there. I have tried to get middle school to consider using this food service model, but, so far, I have not made much progress. I know that our family looks forward to hot lunch Fridays, and we could get used to a couple more days to look forward to (I know, a dangling prepostion). I can see where parents may worry that they have to say no to their children, but, hey, that is part of parenting….
I wholeheartedly support hot lunch program to be outsourced. I’ve talked with parents at Havens and Wildwood who rave about the program — low cost, great quality food, convenient, kids love it. As one parent said, it sure beats dumping 400 hot dogs into boiling water!
Whoever wrote up the pro’s and con’s above did a great job!
i absolutely support the idea of outsourcing the lunch program to Rev. Foods. My daughter and I both look forward to hot lunch Fridays, and would welcome more breaks from my less than creative (and probably nutritious) lunches.
The parent volunteers have done an amazing job with the lunch program thus far, however, it seems to be a very time and labor intensive undertaking. I think that Beach would benefit by using our parents’ precious time in other areas of the school.
While I understand that the outsourcing option would be cost-prohibitive for some families, I also know that historically, the parents and administration at Beach find creative solutions to just about everything…
I would miss the ‘small town feel ‘of of hot luches being a parent volunteer effort. But since I have never worked a hot lunch I guess I’m in love with the feeling of other mothers feeding my children once a week. I think the whole thing has gotten way too complicated. I have been elated with the program as it has been for the last 4 years. Kimberly Moses has done an outstanding job of writing this report and I will support the BPO’s decision what ever it is.
I think it’s a wonderful idea to have a professional organization do the hot lunches–because I could never volunteer myself to do the lunches and because it sounds like lots of work for the dedicated few who can do so. It’s been great to have Friday as hot lunch day–thank you parent volunteers!– and I’d like to give the Rev. Foods a try.
Kudos to Kimberly for preparing a thoughtful and thorough document!! Her efforts here are a culmination of the efforts of her predecessors. I’ve been so grateful for the Friday hot lunch program, knowing that a few volunteers provide a much loved service. I think the proposed move to Revolution Foods will provide greater options to our community, with the ability to opt in or out as parents see fit for their children and their budgets.
I think that Revolution Foods is the way to go…the kids enjoy the food, money will still be raised due to increased participation, the dedicated hot lunch parents can focus volunteer time in other areas…waste can be recycled and/or composted…and parents will not have to rush around in the morning preparing lunches….what is not to like! the cost is reasonable and the food is healthy…….I can’t wait for the change…..thanks Kimberly!!
While I understand the support for this option, I am still concerned about the amount of garbage this program will produce. Their website doesn’t display images of the packaging. Last year’s proposed vendor had everything wrapped individual plastic packaging. With all the movement Beach has made with it’s “No trash lunch” campaign, what would moving backwards tell the kids? I’d like to better understand their compostable packaging – I don’t see how you are going to package cheese and energy bars in compostable packaging. Almost everything used in the current hot lunch program will be recyclable, or green waste, in next years garbage contract – even juice cups and yogurt containers from kids’ lunches. But, an outside vendor can only be so green and still meet federal guidelines. Please keep garbage and waste a concern at the April 7th meeting.
I love the new proposal to expand our hot lunch program — thank you, Kimberly! As a former working mom (now staying at home with a little one), I think that more hot lunch days and more choices would be more convenient for everybody. If we increase the number of days, not everyone will take advantage, whatever the reason. I don’t think we should worry too much about children feeling left out — many children don’t participate now. Who would know why?
Also, I have friends at an Oakland charter school who use Revolution Foods and they love it. I think this is a great solution.
I notice that Revolution Foods also produces a line of peanut butter. For the safety of our peanut-allergic kids (whether or not they participate in the hot lunch program), it’s important that peanut butter sandwiches and snacks not be included (because it’s so easy for it to get spread around in the school environment). Also, as a parent of one of the kids with peanut allergy, I have some specific questions about how their food is prepared (cross-contamination issues).
But even if my child wasn’t able to participate in hot lunch because of cross-contamination issues, this wouldn’t make me vote against Revolution Foods. I think the potential benefits to the school as a whole are more important. In particular, it would be GREAT to free up volunteer time for other activities (the Green Committee alone has lots of great volunteer opportunities just waiting for the parents who are freed up from hot lunch!)
At the same time, as Bob points out, we want to make sure we aren’t going backwards on the “no trash lunch” front. It sounds possible that between Piedmont’s new trash/recycling contract and Revolution Foods being more eco-conscious than the company we were considering last year, we might be okay on this issue. But we’d need to carefully consider the details of how much non-recyclable trash we’d be producing (compared with what the current lunch and hot lunch set ups are producing).
Finally, Kimberly and the hot lunch committee, you’ve done a great job summarizing and presenting the issues!
This new program sounds ideal and will be a wonderful improvement. Kimberly has done a fabulous job of summarizing the benefits of the proposed program and I agree with every one of them. Our family would welcome the opportunity to buy lunch more often, especially lunches that would be more well-balanced and way more appealing than anything I prepare myself. The idea of not having to prepare lunches every day makes me so happy that I am smiling as I type this. I know that there are many other two-working-parent families like ours who have had the exact same reaction. The current program has been great – we always look forward to Fridays and I’ve enjoyed being there the times that I’ve helped out – but it takes too many hours and has been a big burden on the same generous few who make themselves available for so much volunteering all over the school. With respect to the financial hardship/embarassment issue, I suspect that moving to a 5-day a week program as opposed to a 1-day a week program will be a positive — when lunch is an option every single day, it is not the “special event” that it is on Fridays — an event that kids feel they don’t want to miss. Rather, every day there will be a bunch of kids who bring lunch and a bunch of kids who get the hot lunch, so it won’t be a big deal and will be easier to opt out of. That was certainly my experience attending an elementary school where hot lunch was an option every day. In addition, I’m sure we could come up with a way to finance lunch scholarships through this program. Thank you Kimberly!!