Procurement, The Magic Ingredient

The group included: Lifetime Fitness Foundation (LFF), a non-profit devoted to supporting school food change by providing expertise and grants to help serve real, whole foods and eliminate the artificial and processed items from their menus; School Food FOCUS, a national collaborative that leverages the knowledge and procurement power of large districts to make school meals nationwide more healthful, regionally sourced, and sustainably produced; and school food service directors, chefs, and production managers representing seven states. The week of thought-sharing and culinary training was supported by Barbara Koch, Executive Director of Lifetime Fitness Foundation and hosted by Director, Bertrand Weber, and his fabulous team at the Minneapolis Public Schools Culinary and Nutrition Center (MPS), which is a recipient of an equipment grant from LFF as well as the lead school district in SFF’s Upper Midwest Regional Learning Lab (UMRLL). The UMRLL project brought seven large midwestern school districts together to collaborate on procurement change as a group, aggregating their scale to influence improved product specifications and pricing. Their focus has been on poultry--the number one protein served in school meals.

Director Weber opened the meetings by reminding the group: “No child is born with a preference for food. They just have the impulse to eat. We can impact this with what we offer them.” That was the perfect segue for a discussion on “everything” that we do every day to support child nutrition program innovation. The meeting included representatives from tiny districts of less than 2,000 students to the larger districts such as Boulder, Cleveland, Portland, Minneapolis, and Des Moines. Directors, like Miguel Villarreal from Novato Unified School District and Gitta Grether-Sweeney from Portland Public Schools, have over 50 years in school nutrition between them, so engaging in the small group atmosphere provided rich learning opportunities, methodology, and challenges. But, again and again, the “magic ingredient” of the meeting came back to this: Together, we can impact the health and well-being of children through creating menus and sourcing ingredients with integrity. When we are home in our cities and towns, it’s easy to work in silos--forgetful that we do have partners in change and that sharing best practices will spread “True Food” across the nation.