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Fueling Our Nation’s Kids, One Breakfast at a Time

In honor of National School Breakfast Week, we’re highlighting resources around creating a successful school breakfast program and sharing examples from the field.

We have all heard the expression: “breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” It certainly plays a crucial role in fueling kids to have a productive day at school. Children need nutritious food in the morning to fuel their bodies, and many studies prove how breakfast affects attention, behavior issues, mental health, and academic performance. While the pandemic has shifted the way that certain school meal programs operate school breakfast, there are plenty of serving methods they can utilize.

If your district is considering expansion of school breakfast, there are many useful toolkits and resources available to support your efforts. If you already have a breakfast program at your school - fantastic! In this blog, we will be highlighting resources around creating and expanding a successful school breakfast program.

We have all heard the expression: “breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” It certainly plays a crucial role in fueling kids to have a productive day at school. Children need nutritious food in the morning to fuel their bodies, and many studies prove how breakfast affects attention, behavior issues, mental health, and academic performance. While the pandemic has shifted the way that certain school meal programs operate school breakfast, there are plenty of serving methods they can utilize.

If your district is considering expansion of school breakfast, there are many useful toolkits and resources available to support your efforts. If you already have a breakfast program at your school - fantastic! In this blog, we will be highlighting resources around creating and expanding a successful school breakfast program.

Key Components to Creating a Successful Breakfast Program

  • Equipment - Check out our Alternative Breakfast Equipment Guide, which describes the most common choices for various service models and can help determine district-wide equipment needs based on each school’s criteria.

  • Menus & Food - There are various ways districts can serve breakfast that are cost-effective, attractive to students, and that meet guidelines. Explore breakfast menu cycles developed by us and by districts around the country in our Menu Cycles section.

  • Labor - The impact of breakfast on your current labor model will vary depending upon your operational model, breakfast model, bell schedules, service hours, and historical labor assignments at the sites. Check out our Meals Per Labor Hour Worksheet to help manage your labor baseline.

  • SOPs - Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for breakfast service must be articulated for the particular service model and updated as part of the department’s SOPs. Need a sample? Check out this Breakfast SOP from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction School Nutrition Team.

  • Cultivating Relationships - Depending on the breakfast model, you’ll find a variable level of confidence and support from your team, administration, principals, teachers, parents, and especially students. Cultivating relationships with your “breakfast stakeholders” is an important component of success.

  • Marketing - More than any other meal, breakfast requires real engagement with the school community. Efforts often include branding the district’s program (see Marketing Your Program section) and pushing the message out through the media, district website, videos, and materials sent home to parents (see a sample Pre-Launch Parent Letter).

  • Program Evaluation/Summary - Evaluation is a key part of expansion and change in your breakfast program and also presents the opportunity to measure your progress and set new goals for the future!

  • Creative Serving Efforts - One of the largest challenges for access to breakfast at school is the serving time. Many families don’t have the ability to get their kids to school early, and kids who ride a bus to school often don’t have the advantage or option of arriving early. Creative serving methods are a useful way to ensure kids are able to eat.


Examples from the Field

Project Cereal

Conscious Kitchen is launching a delicious new initiative with West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD): Project Cereal. The campaign sets students up for health and success, while transforming school food supply chains to include more fresh and organic ingredients. Focusing on a bowl of cereal is a simple, measurable, achievable step schools can take to positively impact bodies and minds, climate, and local economies.

Why organic? Organic foods do not contain harmful pesticides and chemicals, use fewer petroleum-based inputs, create less externalities, have higher nutrition, and are better for people and the environment. Kicking off with an event on Monday, March 7th and serving all week, Conscious Kitchen and WCCUSD will host breakfasts with organic cereals and/or a special entrée, nutritious local organic milk, and farm fresh organic produce.

Project Cereal

Conscious Kitchen is launching a delicious new initiative with West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD): Project Cereal. The campaign sets students up for health and success, while transforming school food supply chains to include more fresh and organic ingredients. Focusing on a bowl of cereal is a simple, measurable, achievable step schools can take to positively impact bodies and minds, climate, and local economies.

Why organic? Organic foods do not contain harmful pesticides and chemicals, use fewer petroleum-based inputs, create less externalities, have higher nutrition, and are better for people and the environment. Kicking off with an event on Monday, March 7th and serving all week, Conscious Kitchen and WCCUSD will host breakfasts with organic cereals and/or a special entrée, nutritious local organic milk, and farm fresh organic produce.

Austin Independent School District

Austin Independent School District (AISD) has a robust plan for National School Breakfast Week, starting with a toolkit shared with school principals. This toolkit provides activity sheets, morning announcements, sample social media posts, school breakfast statistics and more!

On Friday, March 11, AISD will highlight a whole grain apple cinnamon muffin from one of their favorite local vendors, New World Bakery (NWB). These muffins are new to the menu this school year, and represent a new venture with the NWB partnership. As the food industry began experiencing the impact of nationwide supply chain shortages, AISD found opportunities to expand local vendor relationships.

Austin Independent School District

Austin Independent School District (AISD) has a robust plan for National School Breakfast Week, starting with a toolkit shared with school principals. This toolkit provides activity sheets, morning announcements, sample social media posts, school breakfast statistics and more!

On Friday, March 11, AISD will highlight a whole grain apple cinnamon muffin from one of their favorite local vendors, New World Bakery (NWB). These muffins are new to the menu this school year, and represent a new venture with the NWB partnership. As the food industry began experiencing the impact of nationwide supply chain shortages, AISD found opportunities to expand local vendor relationships.

NWB, located just south of Austin in Kyle, TX, is one of nearly 80 vendors that supply 112 kitchens across the district. As a direct delivery vendor, NWB remained a reliable supplier, regularly delivering without interruption to each campus. Over the past few years, NWB bread and buns have appeared on multiple menus and rotations. This year, upon request, NWB developed new products for school menus including whole grain dinner rolls as well as blueberry, apple cinnamon, and banana muffins.

AISD will also be serving a “breakfast for lunch” menu at elementary schools to highlight various breakfast options. This menu will feature pancakes with scratch prepared syrup, turkey or veggie sausage, potato puffs, chilled strawberries, and milk. As the day before Spring Break, campuses are encouraged to make for a fun lunch day, with ideas like “Pancakes and Pajamas.”

NWB, located just south of Austin in Kyle, TX, is one of nearly 80 vendors that supply 112 kitchens across the district. As a direct delivery vendor, NWB remained a reliable supplier, regularly delivering without interruption to each campus. Over the past few years, NWB bread and buns have appeared on multiple menus and rotations. This year, upon request, NWB developed new products for school menus including whole grain dinner rolls as well as blueberry, apple cinnamon, and banana muffins.

AISD will also be serving a “breakfast for lunch” menu at elementary schools to highlight various breakfast options. This menu will feature pancakes with scratch prepared syrup, turkey or veggie sausage, potato puffs, chilled strawberries, and milk. As the day before Spring Break, campuses are encouraged to make for a fun lunch day, with ideas like “Pancakes and Pajamas.”


If your district is serving fun and creative breakfast items this week, we’d love to hear about it and give you a shoutout for National School Breakfast Week! Post your serving efforts on social media and tag us accordingly; Facebook: @ChefAnnFoundation, Instagram: @ChefAnnFoundation, Twitter: @ChefAnnFnd, LinkedIn: @ChefAnnFoundation.

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