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Project Summary
The vision of the Lunch Box project is to provide the elements
needed to transition a processed food based K-12 school meal
program to a whole foods environment where food is procured
locally and prepared from scratch for the student population. This
set of “tools” will encompass all aspects of examining, learning about, and
actually implementing this kind of meal program. From
the “why” to the “how to,” the Lunch Box will offer a complete
menu of choices for those seeking to implement program change
in their schools and districts.
What Is It?
Using the Web as the means of connecting the various stakeholders
around this issue, the Lunch Box will exist as a Web portal
and will address the concept of this particular kind of school
food make-over – boxed and canned to fresh – through three
main paths.
I. The Technical Tools –These
are the nuts and bolts of program change. For the practitioners working on the ground, access
to the key elements of transition to a scratch cooking program will be in one
place. They would include: the menus and production records needed for
compliance to the National School Lunch Program; recipes that are nutritionally
analyzed, costed, tested and scalable; teaching tools (videos, photos, manuals) linked
to the recipes so the help is right there when you’re trying
to figure out how to roast chicken for 3000 meals that day;
and procurement tools and methodology to help a district
transition from one stop-shopping with a single national
distributor to understanding how to find, purchase and manage
real food.
A key part of the Technical Area will be that the Menu/Recipe/Cost/Analysis
tool, which will scan 5 week cycles of Lunch menus, Breakfast
menus and Snack menus, will be housed within a food service
software client already in use in the industry and adapted
to use via this web portal. The project will partner
with a USDA NSLP compliant software developer on this part
of the site to maintain end user integrity and compliance
for the practitioners wishing to utilize these products in
their programs.
II. Resource, Implementation and Education Tools – This
area provides much of the architecture needed to successfully
transition a school or district. For the school board, financial
officers and departmental administration stakeholder tools
such as finance and budget management models, spreadsheets,
and formulas for labor and resource tracking, human resource
tools specific to scratch cooking skill sets including job
descriptions, models for hiring and negotiating within the
union environment found in most school districts. In
this area the users will find feasibility study models for
accomplishing the district audit needed to ascertain readiness
for shifting programs and evaluation models for staff, plate
waste, wellness, academic programming and finance.
Marketing is a key area to success in program transition
and in many ways marketing as a concept in this regard is
Education. The
target audience in marketing can range from parents to superintendents
and everyone in between and the site will provide an array
of marketing tools to help all the various stakeholder groups.
Academic curriculum links to support the wholesale change
in the dining rooms is critical also to this change in this
area curriculum resources will be found to support both hands-on
education in food and agriculture, as well nutrition and
health education curriculum. As state requirements
vary with regard to curriculum, this area will be very sensitive
to identifying currents standards and all ready existing
materials to be accessed for use by districts.
III. Community Space – Critical
to success and growth of the concept is an active area of
the web site specifically for the various stakeholders who
will use the website. We envision an online collection
of users – from the food service director to the parent, teacher, superintendent,
youth and school boards – the Community Space would be where Blogs, Pod Casts,
Forums, List Serves, Events Calendar, Newswire, Policy updates, and links would
live. With acknowledgement that there is a tremendous amount of expertise
and experience across the country and those with none – having a place to bring
this knowledge and experience base together to exchange will keep this web
resource alive and growing. Our desire in this area
of the site is to utilize the most current “push” technology
to access younger users as well as the “old school”.
Why this Project? - The key contributors
to this concept have been working in the field of school food
for the past 8 years. As pioneers in the concept of re-
localizing our food supply and retraining our school districts
in the concepts of the healthy child, we are asked again and
again for the tools outlined above. The Lunch Box will
not be the ultimate one stop shop for program change but it
will go a long way to inform, assist and support those who
are brave enough to step to the plate.
Goals for Planning Grant Stage 10-14 months – The
Lunch Box concept has attracted the support of key funders
to help us articulate and plan for the implementation of the
web portal. In this granting period we will identify
a web development partner who will assist in the technical
and design exploration to bring the Lunch Box to life. We
would like to have a “dummy” model to use in stakeholder meetings
which will help us hone in on the specific user needs within
each of the three broad areas; technical, education/resource
and community space. We will produce a business plan which
will identify all the work and associated costs of both producing
the website over the next three years as well identify the
means to maintain the website as a free resource.
Resource Support – The project planning
grant is being funded by the Kellogg Foundation . Chez Panisse
Foundation is the current non-profit sponsor and project manager
for Kellogg on the project. We have proposed that the
Orfalea Foundation of Santa Barbara come on board for
Implementation funding for year 2 and with successful planning
goals achieved Kellogg Foundation is expected to fund implementation
as well as a number of other identified potential partners.
Key Contributors -
Ann Cooper – Celebrated author, chef, consultant
and Kellogg Food and Society Fellow and former Executive
Chef and Director of Wellness of the Ross School in East
Hampton, NY. The
past two years, she has worked as Director of Nutrition Services
in the Berkeley Unified School District implementing the
district’s change from processed foods to scratch cooking
district wide.
Beth Collins – Food Systems Consultant
– Beth works as a chef and consultant to the food service
industry focusing on developing sustainable food systems,
with a special emphasis on schools and children’s health. Beth also worked at Ross
School from 2000-2006, serving as Executive Chef from 04 to
06. Establishing her business in 2006 she has transitioned
the Grand Traverse Area Catholic School District to whole
foods in Traverse City, MI and has been working with Berkeley
Unified School District on procurement and training in the
past year and a half.
Carina Wong – Current Executive Director
of the Chez Panisse Foundation she has worked in education
policy at the national, state and local levels for the last
15 years. She served
as the Director of the Bureau of Assessment and Accountability
at the Pennsylvania Department of Ed implementing No Child
Left Behind for the state, as well as working with the
Philadelphia School District as part of the $150 million Annenberg
Challenge Grant and served as Director of Youth Policy and
Education as the Washington DC based National Center on Education
and the Economy.
Coleen Donnelly – Chef/Consultant – A chef
in both the private and education sectors for the past 12
years, and prior to her culinary career, a computer programmer
Coleen brings a unique set of skills to her profile. Since
2005, Coleen has been working in the areas of training, menu
and recipe development and software conversion, program openings
and implementation in the Berkeley Unified School District,
the NY Coalition for Healthy School Food, Food Change and
the Harlem Children’s Zone in NY, and in the Grand Traverse
Area Catholic Schools last November.
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