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lunchVolume #05February 2013

Inside this Issue:

Buying Power and Quality in Numbers. pg 1-2

Cutting Short Lunch Time in School May Lead to Obesity pg 2

The Six cents: Do you Have a Sense for Your Cents? pg 3

Part 2 of 3: Revitalizing the School Lunch Line through Fingerprint Identification. pg 4

In today’s world of School Food Service, product specifications and quality can cause major cost increases to SFA’s struggling to just navigate the stormy seas of self stainability. HHFKA Guidelines on whole grains, increased portions of fruit and vegetables, and leaner lower fat protein choices can wreak havoc on plate costs already stretched to the breaking point. With no safe port in sight more and more schools are joining purchasing consortiums, buying groups, and GPO’s (Government Purchasing Organizations). Schools doing this are wise in making this move as increased buying power equates to lower, and in many cases fixed prices and increased quality for their student customers. Schools who do not take this route may find themselves in the red due to increased product costs forcing them to purchase lesser quality items, which translates to lower student participation.

Schools banding together increase each other’s buying volumes causing their cost of goods to decrease and allowing for lower pricing on higher quality items. Food distribution houses tend to provide better value added services and prices to groups commanding 40 million dollars of purchasing power than to individual SFAs with 40 thousand dollars of purchasing power yearly. You do the math, a box car load of chicken costs less per pound than a truck load. While volume purchasing and Net Off Invoice programs for USDA Commodities allow some respite to the higher cost of products, many schools do not have the storage space to handle these large deliveries, and many buying groups command better pricing than NOI by at least $1.50 per case.

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Buying Power AND QUAlItY IN NUmberSwritten by Milt Miller, President at Milton Miller Consulting

to lend more credibility to this train of thought, for the first time ever, the largest school districts in the U.S. have banded together to share best practices and build a coalition to drive costs down and quality up, giving students healthier options for school meals. the Urban School Food Alliance, which includes the school districts of New York City, los Angeles, Chicago, miami-Dade, Dallas, texas, and Orlando, Florida has come into being for the sole reason of providing better food at a better cost. this group purchases more than $530 million in food and supplies annually and intends to use this purchasing power to drive down costs and have vendors reformulate menu items to insure students receive meals that exceed USDA guidelines daily. these districts served more than 460 million meals in the 2011-2012 school year. that equates to 2,565,000 meals per day.

“Forming such a partnership is unprecedented,” says rick boull’t, COO at los Angeles United School District, “It’s an honor to be part of an alliance that wants to move the needle when it comes to improving school food, while implementing eco- friendly practices.”

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“We want to give a national voice to a healthier meal program where costs are contained,” says eric Goldstein, CeO of School Support Services for the New York City Department of education, who spearheaded this alliance. “Our urban school districts face unique challenges and we need to find innovative ways to meet them.”

think about it. If the largest school districts in the nation are doing it why not yours? buying power is the key to a successful program in today’s school food service arena. there truly is safety in numbers. An excellent GPO to consider is US Communities. Check them out at uscommunities.org. If you are in western or central Pennsylvania, check out PrFSD (Pittsburg regional Food Service Directors) at PrFSD.com. this may be your ticket to continued sustainability in your program.

Healthy food can take longer to eat, and research shows that wolfing down a meal in a hurry often means people eat more.

A new national survey by the School Nutrition Association shows elemen-tary kids have about 25 minutes for lunch; middle school and high school students about 30 minutes. that includes the time students need to go to the restroom, wash their hands, walk to the cafeteria and stand in line for their meals.

many students may have only about 10 to 15 minutes left to eat their meals, school nutrition directors say. but students should have at least 20 minutes to eat their lunch, the government recommends.

“It’s a problem in a lot of districts. there’s not a lot of time to get their food, sit down and eat their fill,” says Helen Phillips, president of the School Nu-trition Association, and senior director of school nutrition for Norfolk (Va.) Public Schools.

many students feel rushed, says Deborah taylor, director of the Shawnee (Okla.) School Nutrition Services.

the typical length of the lunch has been about the same since 2009, but it’s shorter than in 2003 when kids got up to five more minutes. Children in some countries, such as France, get as long as one to two hours to eat lunch.

U.S. research shows that when people eat quickly, they consume more calories, enjoy the meal less and feel hungrier an hour later .

this lunch-period dilemma comes at a time when about a third of children and adolescents — 25 million kids — are obese or overweight, government statistics show.

Almost 32 million kids eat the school lunch every day, and more than 11 million eat the breakfast served there. Overall, kids consume about 30% to 50% of their calories in the school meal programs.

the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture to set new nutrition standards for all food served in schools, from lunchrooms to vending machines.

the school food service directors have already made lots of improvements, Phillips says. the new survey of 1,294 school nutrition directors from the School Nutrition Association found that most schools are offering fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, salad bars or entree salads, and fat-free and 1% milk.

but those kinds of foods often take more time to eat, Phillips says. “It takes more time to chew a whole apple than applesauce. eating an entree salad takes longer than eating a cheeseburger or chicken nuggets, because of the crunching and chewing of the raw vegetables.”

Sometimes kids eat their favorite foods first, and if they run out of time, those vegetables may land in the trash, she says.

Children who bring their lunch would typically have a little more time to eat because they don’t have to stand in line to get their meal, she says. Whether or not it’s enough time depends on the child and the length of the period. “the younger elementary kids tend to eat slowly.”

the pressure of all the different academic demands affects the lunch sched-ules, Phillips says, so food service directors work with principals to make sure lunch hours are staggered so everyone is served quickly.

many factors come into play when determining lunch periods, including building size, the number of serving lines, the seating in the cafeteria and the number of students coming to the cafeteria at any given time, she says.

taylor adds: “I don’t know if there is a perfect answer. every building is dif-ferent, every principal is different.”

When people look back on the childhood obesity epidemic in this country and wonder how it spiraled out of control, they may blame the way kids were rushed to eat too fast, not just at school but at home, taylor says.

“I think we have diminished the joy of sitting down and enjoying a meal. Now, the attitude is we should sit down and eat and get it over with.”

Cutting Short Lunch Time in School May Lead To obesity.

Now that you’ve worked through a semester of the new regulations and hopefully have mastered the USDA spreadsheet to earn your additional reimbursement, what’s next? Well, if you are like most of us you are starting to look long and hard at the aftermath. Has your participation remained strong or has it decreased? Have your food costs increased? Have you adjusted your labor to accommodate any menu changes? As we anxiously await the end of winter and beginning of spring, don’t let your food service end up in the shadow that scares ole Punxsutawney Phil this February. Careful evaluation and planning is the key to spring cleaning your department’s financial records and making strong plans for next year’s menu strategies. One of the first steps to getting the data needed to drive your decisions is plate cost. many schools have mastered the art of menu develop-ment, and have secured what they feel is the best bid for their foods and supplies. the next steps are to truly understand your menu mix and what food combinations are costing your operation. Pairing popular entrees with well matched sides can help you achieve the most bang for your buck! In general terms, most lunch prices when cut in half rep-resent the amount of money you have to spend on food and supplies. For example, a school that charges $2.50 for lunch, generally spends at least 50% of that value to pay for the labor and benefits of the em-ployees making the lunches. the remaining $1.25 must cover the cost of the five component meal (protein, grain, vegetable, fruit, and milk) plus the supplies and indirect costs. these costs include the cost of the tray, utensils and any disposables along with some costs you might forget like chemicals for ware washing, and general daily production (food service sanitizing, etc). For some schools trash removal and/or custodial services may contribute to the indirect cost overhead. Once you have determined these factors, the key to success is to maximum the lowest plate cost with the highest participation day. this translates to the highest profit margin potential. Here are some simple steps to follow: 1) determine your most popular menu days by entrée 2) list the entrée cost 3) list the available sides by week (this is important to make sure you are still meeting all of the vegetable subgroups, and nutritional requirements averaged for the week) 4) pair the most popular entrees with the least expensive side options 5) run a test of your theory – will the students participation remain high with the modifications to the side dishes. After you have determined some of the key combinations, the spring season allows for some test pilots to maximize your cycle development in preparation for the 2013-2014 school year (and yes it’s time to plan now!). Having this information helps determine the priority you place on your commodity spending, your bid preparation and comparison, as

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THESixCEnTSWritten by: Maureen Pisanick, RD, LD President, Chief Nutrition Officer at Pisanick Partners, LLC

well as appropriate spend down of this year’s inventories and stocks of supplies. many schools have gotten into commodity cooperatives which allow for a mindful strategy in maximizing commodity dollars. the best analogy is planning the shopping list before you go into the grocery store and getting items based on need and in consideration of budget verse having a shopping cart of foods handed to you and trying to figure out what combinations you might offer given the lot you where given. I am an advocate for being in the driver’s seat on these decisions. Only you know what your students eat, and what your shelves have capacity to bear. be active in this process to maximize your chances to reduce the center of the plate costs in your operations. this is key to ensure that the most popular entrees remain the most economical for future menus. If you are part of a third party buying con-sortium, or if you go out to bid on behalf of your school district, structure your priorities to get the best results. A careful review of the top 20 items your district purchases will give you a good sense of where the majority of your money is spent. Once you know these details, evaluat-ing bids efficiently becomes quite easy. Comparing apples to apples (and cases of nuggets, pizza, etc) allows for a true sense of what value a bid may provide for your bottom line. be careful to assess the details as well. One example is what a company’s minimum delivery criteria are. Why you ask? It doesn’t matter if company A can provide you a 2 cent discount on canned green beans if they are more expensive on your entrée nuggets and they require a $350 minimum delivery fee. the big picture is that a line by line bid may not in the end save you money if you can’t receive timely delivery of the volume that you need. Some schools order in volumes of food into a local warehouse, and then increase their labor costs by having to delivery this internally and maintain inventory in-house. In the end, you may have been better off ordering the green beans from company b along with the nuggets on the same delivery directly to the school site – the 2 cent difference might save you’re the 20 cent labor cost! tools of trade are available for those that are up for the challenge. FoodCo is a menu costing tool offered by Food Service Solutions that can help you grab the reins in careful costing. For more information check out (www.foodserve.com). For those not up for a new software project, a simple excel spreadsheet can work just as efficiently to help gain needed information about your menu mix. When to find the time to accomplish this –independent consultant audits also can help depart-ments review financial records and align strategies for improving the financial tools to maintain successful service parameters. Interested in learning more? Contact Maureen@pisanickpartners.com for spring cleaning strategies!

Do you Have a Sense of your Cents?

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SeCTion iii: Speeding Lunch Lines

because biometric systems typically take a few seconds to recognize a student and access his or her account information, they’re not necessarily faster than well organized roster-based systems, where a name is checked of a list, or ticket-based systems where color coded tickets are simply collected. However, biometric systems will speed lunch lines where cash is primarily used because students, particularly younger ones, are prone to losing or misplacing cash and extra time is taken to make correct change. multiply the change-making process by hundreds of students during a typical lunch, and the delays can cause students to stand in line much of their lunch hour, only to wolf down their food or they avoid school lunches altogether.

biometric systems also typically speed lines over PIN-based systems, which take time to enter and students tend to forget as well as magnetic card-based systems, which take time to fish out of pockets and swipe.

SeCTion iV: eliminate the “Free Lunch” Program Stigma

Furthermore, while federal law prohibits schools from overtly identifying those receiving free or reduced price meals, this can inadvertently occur when lunch tickets are color-coded to designate free or reduced price lunches. One consequence of singling out those receiving free or reduced price meals, which can identify them as “poor” in the eyes of their peers, is to cut program participation, especially at the middle and high school level.

this can substantially reduce federal reimbursement for poverty-based programs linked to school lunch counts. “this stigma and attitude toward ‘free lunch’ has students opting for a bag of chips and can of soda from vending machines,” states a Detroit News source, commenting on the city’s public school district loss of $17.6 million in federal funding due to foodservice underuse, primarily by high school students qualified for subsidized meals. “Just 40% of those eligible for a free lunch bothered to fill out the application, further burdening the district by reducing e-rate reimbursement, title I and other subsidy programs which are directly tied to the free and reduced application process.” because there are no color coded tickets or different amounts of cash involved with a biometric system, nobody knows who is buying a free or reduced price lunch. this eliminates the reputed stigma of being a ‘free lunch student,’ which can help boost school lunch participation and federal reimbursement via the programs tied to it. “biometric technology has brought much needed anonymity to our food service program,” says Dr. russell Strange, Superintendent of Penn Cambria School District. “Not even the cashiers know which students are ‘free’ or ‘reduced’ and the students and parents have responded well.” “For

ten years prior to the system, high school averaged 28.6% low income,” continues Strange. “Now in our fourth year of using the biometric system, high school’s low income is 42.7%, with a four-year average of 39.1%. High school is only 2% points below elementary low income for 2004- 2005. the additional reimbursement enables us to provide higher quality meals and more generous servings.”

SeCTion V: reducing unpaid Lunch Charges

In response to stepped-up federal enforcement of unpaid debts, school lunch programs across the country are now looking to reduce lunch room-related financial losses – namely unpaid lunch charges – by employing biometric student pre-identification systems. the root of the problem is that students are able to enter the lunch line to fill up their trays. Students cannot be pre-screened with traditional systems, since federal law requires that POS systems must be at positioned at end of the lunch line. If schools are able to put an end to school lunch charges before they occur, they could gain some control over how much lunch room-related debt they incur. It could also eliminate the need for attempting to collect debt from financially strapped or uncooperative parents. Federal law requires that students at the primary level with overdrawn accounts must given an alternative meal that meets the basic nutrition requirements. this alternative meal is typically a peanut butter and jelly sandwich along with milk or orange juice or a cheese sandwich for those with food allergies. At the secondary level, however, it is up to the discretion of individual schools and districts whether or not to feed students whose accounts are in the red. Although the practice of taking a meal out of a student hand at the register when a negative balance is discovered is not mandated, many school systems allow the student to charge the meal against his or her account. taking a student’s lunch tray from his or her hands at the cashier station is not only extremely embarrassing for the student, but food that has been served cannot be returned to the lunch line, and would have to be tossed out. the plan, instead, is to create a system that will save schools from repeatedly having to adjust the amount students are allowed to charge on insufficient funds, eliminate continual decisions in regards to what a child without money will be given to eat, and reducing the need for teachers and staff to police the lunch lines in order to prevent potential “chargers” from making it into the lunch line. the system will simply require students to scan a finger at a kiosk before they enter the lunch room. the system will inform the student whether or not they have exceeded the negative charge amount. Students who have sufficient funds or those in the free or reduced lunch program will be allowed to enter the lunch line. How to handle the students who have insufficient funds will be up to the discretion of individual school districts—whether it is offering them a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a small snack, or simply turning them away.

Revitalizing the School Lunch Line through Fingerprint Identification Part 2 of 3by now many principals, superintendents, administrators and K-12 food service operators have heard of school lunch biometrics, or the use of high tech devices such as fingerprint readers, to recognize students and allow for the automated payment and accounting of school lunch purchases.

Once the province of the FBI and criminal investigators, fingerprint technology is now regularly being harnessed at K-12 schools around the nation. Not for Orwellian motives such as surveillance, identification or tracking, but for school lunches and breakfasts. Examples cited in this report include the Penn Cambria and Wilson School Districts in Pennsylvania; JSerra Catholic High School in San Juan Capistrano, California; and Fairfield School District of Fairfield, Texas. Yet this is only a small sampling of the hundreds of school districts across the United States that are currently implementing such systems.

Using fingerprint ID technology, foodservice operators are not only speeding lunch lines and simplifying payment, but also virtually eliminating lunch fraud, bullying, and reversing the trend of declining reimbursement for programs such as the National School lunch Program (NSlP). moreover, because biometric systems automate the payment and accounting of school lunches, they eliminate tedious backend administrative chores such as cash, ticket, or paper-based handling, accounting, reconciling, and oversight.

At first blush, fingerprinting students as a means to improve the efficiency and speed of school lunch lines often carries the “baggage” of a host of misconcep-tions about the technology – not to mention the privacy implications. For school district personnel, these preconceptions and considerations may lead to an initial hesitation to investigate the benefits of such systems. Therefore, this special report attempts to clear up the myths from the hype, and to provide an ac-curate picture of the technology and its potential benefits. This special report provides information and answers to the following questions:

• A layman’s explanation of biometric technology and privacy issues• How parents can use such systems to monitor and control where their child’s lunch money is being spent