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Lunch at Sonoma Charter School will never be the same. Moving to an organic menu this year with help from Oakland-based Revolution Foods, Charter will begin serving healthy, balanced and all-natural lunches come Sept. 8.
Jeni Spencer, a parent and the school’s lunch coordinator worked with Charter School administrators to bring Revolution Foods on board. “Charter School parents are thrilled that we’re offering this new program,” said Spencer.
Revolution Foods was founded in early 2006 by two women with one common goal – that all students should have access to healthy, fresh food on a daily basis. Co-founders Kristin Richmond, CEO and Kirsten Tobey, COO were both students at University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business when they met and discovered their shared vision.
Now in its fourth year, the company’s growth has exploded as they’ve gone from preparing and distributing 400 meals each day to an unbelievable 40,000 meals a day.
“We started the company with the goal of providing affordable and accessible healthy food to students,” said Richmond. “We’ve built partnerships and relationships with all-natural and organic suppliers. As we further expand our reach, those relationships will continue to help us do what we do.”
For instance, one of Revolution Foods’ founding strategic partners, Whole Foods, has helped connect them with a growers’ collaborative of family farmers across California that can supply local produce. Together, these organizations are part of a small but growing movement to get healthy food into schools.
For Sonoma Charter School, the change to healthier food is welcome news. Five menu choices are prepared fresh and delivered each day including two hot entrees, a vegetarian option, a sandwich and a salad. Molly Koler, Charter School office manager and mother to three students at the school volunteered to be the “taste tester” before Revolution Foods was hired. Koler’s verdict – the food was “really tasty.”
“I sampled the chicken tamale served on a bed of organic brown rice with cubes of sweet potato. It was very good as was the southwest chicken salad with corn and black beans,” said Koler. “But the best part was that my kids loved it, too. My fifth-grader loved the tamale and my third-grader’s favorite was the salad. We’re excited.”
Unfortunately not everyone in the Valley is as enthusiastic about the change. For the past dozen years, Charter has relied on local vendors like Gramma’s Pizza, Subway and La Casa to supply food for their school lunches. For a two-year period Charter also tried the school district’s food service but, according to Spencer, a dramatic decrease in lunch orders caused them to switch back to using the vendors.
Jim Cahoon, the owner of Gramma’s Pizza said the Charter School’s decision to forgo their arrangement will be devastating to his business. “We supply two schools in the Valley and, with virtually no warning, we lost both,” said Cahoon, whose company also supplied lunches to The Presentation School. “It’s already a difficult time for restaurants. Now we have to find a way to get through the winter months without these two accounts.”
Another potentially sticky issue, the Revolution Foods’ lunches cost more. According to lunch coordinator Spencer, the local vendors worked hard to support Charter School, discounting their prices to keep the cost of a lunch ticket at just $3. With Revolution Foods, the price for a lunch ticket will rise to $3.85.
“As a parent, I don’t mind the price increase because the children are getting a healthier, more balanced meal that is organic, nutritious and meets federal standards,” said Koler. “I think most of our parents understand that.”
Justin Frese, assistant superintendent of the Sonoma Valley Unified School District, also met with Revolution Foods recently and mentioned the price increase as an area of concern – district school lunches cost $2.50 per day. More than that, he said, the district food service is already providing many of the benefits that Revolution Foods offers. “We offer fresh fruits and vegetables to every student, every day. We do not offer foods with trans-fats and have eliminated the use of margarine. And beginning next week, chocolate milk will no longer be served at any site and all milk offered will be organic,” said Frese.
As for Revolution Foods’ Richmond and Tobey, they feel honored to be doing this work. “It’s so exciting to see entire communities of schools be transformed by eating healthier food. Teachers tell us their students have fewer behavioral issues and higher afternoon attention spans because they are so well fed.”
Richmond also said that she and Tobey have personally witnessed students’ bodies becoming slimmer and, best of all, hearing that students are taking what they’ve learned back to their families and teaching them about new veggies and other things they’ve eaten.
“Our ultimate goal is to transform the way we feed kids in this country,” said Richmond. “We need to raise our expectations for feeding children healthy food in this country. If it is well prepared and aesthetically pleasing, children should want to eat it.”
