SF Board of Education approves contract with meal provider Revolution Foods

Photo Caption: Students enjoy fresh food prepared by Revolution Foods.

The San Francisco Unified School District renewed its annual contract with Revolution Foods after the Board of Education voted in favor of the contract Tuesday night.

At the Committee of the Whole on May 7, staff shared all the ways SFUSD remains dedicated to continuing to improve the quality of food served in schools, including making more meals in-house and decreasing the District’s reliance on an outside meal provider.

Healthy Meals that Students Want to Eat
SFUSD’s Student Nutrition Services (SNS) Department has been working closely with Revolution Foods to continue to improve student satisfaction while adhering to SFUSD’s ambitious nutrition guidelines. Recent improvements include: updated recipes, updated menu items, increased portions, improved packaging, more frequent student surveys to gather real-time feedback from students, improving ordering systems, and updating menu cycles to increase the frequency of more popular items.

Serving 30,000 Meals Per Day
Because of existing facilities constraints, SFUSD must purchase most meals from an outside meal provider. And that meal provider must be able to deliver 30,000 meals per day.

• During the 2017-18 school year SNS engaged in a thorough Request for Proposal process that weighed numerous factors and engaged stakeholders.
• Only three vendors submitted proposals, one of which was deemed non-responsive. From these limited options, Revolution Foods clearly offered the best value for SFUSD.

SNS is continually working to increase food made by SFUSD SNS staff and served to students. As a result, SFUSD more than doubled the amount of in house freshly prepared meals served this year.

SNS is implementing several immediate strategies now to decrease our reliance on an outside meal provider.

• Using General Obligation bonds, we will update school kitchen facilities and cafeterias to accept and serve bulk meals. By 2028, our goal is to build a state of the art central kitchen that can produce high quality student-vetted meals for the entire District and eliminate more than 80% of pre-packaged meals.
• SNS is developing plans by leveraging Sugar Sweetened Beverage Tax funds to increase the number of elementary schools and EED locations served by the new production kitchen at the Ruth Asawa SOTA/McAteer campus. Due to the increased capacity, this facility will be able to provide an additional 3,600 meals per day.

Since July 2018, Revolution Foods has conducted taste tests and student surveys at over 40, mainly PITCH, schools. Over 700 students have participated in these taste tests and surveys. The surveys/taste tests show:

• 41 menu items were tested and rated at 3.5 out of 5. Items must be rated at 3.5 or higher to be placed on menu
• In September & October 2018 341 students were surveyed. 83% students said they rated the taste of their meal “ok” “liked it” or “loved it”

Summer Meals
Any youth 18 years or younger can get free summer meals, even if they are not enrolled in a summer program. No application is necessary. Go here for a map of sites that provide free meals in the summer.