2023 Reflections, 2024 Opportunities, and Future Moonshots

I spent a lot of time with Chef Ann Cooper and our Chief Operating Officer Leslie Stafford planning how to intentionally manage our team’s growth while continuing to launch and refine our healthy school food programs across the country. The three of us joined forces over fifteen years ago. I was the parent unhappy with the processed food my kids were being served at Boulder Valley School District (BVSD). Leslie was BVSD’s Chief Operating Officer, known for her practical problem solving and can-do attitude. Chef Ann was a school food visionary with the culinary expertise that would transform BVSD’s school food program to meet an ambitious goal of serving students fresh, made-from-scratch meals every day. 

It’s amazing to reflect on our journey together and the incredible food now being served at BVSD. Together, we laid the groundwork for the force that the Chef Ann Foundation is today — a community of team members, school food professionals, and healthy school food advocates who are addressing the issues we experienced at BVSD at a national scale. 

Pictured right: Chef Ann Cooper and Chief Operating Officer Leslie Stafford

Accelerating school food workforce development

We jumped into workforce development like never before. When a friend asked me why we chose to focus so heavily on this, I explained that school food staff are a crucial part of transformational school food change. If we don’t have enough trained people serving fresh, scratch-cooked food, the whole system falls apart.

In 2023, our Healthy School Food Pathway (HSFP) program kicked into high gear. Through Pre-Apprenticeship, Apprenticeship, and Fellowship, HSFP is designed to provide new and experienced school food professionals with the training they need to help schools transition from serving highly processed, heat-and-serve meals to serving fresh, scratch-made meals. This past year, more than 55 Pre-Apprentices and 8 Apprentices in California, as well as 20 Fellows located across the U.S., participated in HSFP. 

In 2024, we’re thrilled to be launching HSFP in Colorado and beginning the design phases of HSFP in Virginia and Wisconsin. We’ll also be significantly expanding Pre-Apprenticeship and Apprenticeship in California.

Pictured right: Healthy School Food Pathway Pre-Apprentices at West Contra Coastal Unified School District in California

Tackling the biggest source of school food waste

Schools serve approximately 275 million single-serve cartons of milk to K-12 students every school day, resulting in a staggering amount of waste. Switching to serving milk from a bulk dispenser into reusable cups is a simple way for schools to drastically cut waste.

To help schools transition to using bulk milk dispensers, we launched Bulk Milk. We awarded 43 grants to 18 districts across the U.S. that will provide nearly all of the equipment, materials, and training needed to implement a bulk milk serving system. We’re excited to continue granting bulk milk equipment in 2024.

Partnering with the U.S. Department of Agriculture

Our partnership with the USDA demonstrates the astounding progress school food reform has made in a decade. When the Chef Ann Foundation was founded fifteen years ago, scratch cooking in schools was seen as a niche cause. Today, the USDA is one of our key partners in supporting scratch cooking in districts across the country. 

The USDA selected the Chef Ann Foundation to be a cooperative sub-partner in the Healthy Meals Incentives program, which provided $150,000 grants and technical assistance to 264 small and rural School Food Authorities across the U.S. to improve the quality of their school meals. 

Additionally, the USDA selected the Chef Ann Foundation to lead another grant program — Partnerships for Local Agriculture & Nutrition Transformation in Schools (PLANTS). PLANTS aims to build more equitable and sustainable school food supply chains while expanding scratch cooking. The program will award up to $4.8 million to eight collaborative projects in 2024.

Rebranding school food jobs

To build the workforce that will change school food, we need to change the way people think about school food jobs. In the spring, we’ll be launching a first-of-its-kind, yearlong marketing campaign in California that aims to dispel negative “lunch lady” stereotypes and transform public perceptions of school food professionals. As someone whose early career and education centered on marketing, branding, and communications, this work genuinely excites me. 

This groundbreaking campaign is part of our workforce development partnership with the state of California. To lead this effort, we’ve enlisted the expertise of renowned social change agency Fenton Communications. We’ve spent almost six months conducting research with Food for Climate League and Evitarus to help us both understand existing perceptions of school food workers and identify the key information needed to alter those perceptions to recognize the inherent value in these roles.

Proving the impact of scratch

It’s one thing for us to conceptually understand that scratch cooking enhances the nutritional quality of food, empowers school food teams to have a positive impact on the environment, and supports community economies through local procurement. It’s another thing to substantiate these claims through rigorous research.

I am delighted to share that we’ll be hiring a Director of Research & Evaluation in 2024. This role will work to ensure that our internal and contracted research projects adhere to gold-standard methodology. We’ll apply what we learn to optimize outcomes for schools and districts, communicate our findings to key stakeholders, and facilitate widespread adoption of our research-backed, scratch cooking initiatives.