The Lunch Box is specifically designed to support school district food service teams as they transition their meal programs from processed to scratch cook using fresh ingredients. With open source resources that provide technical support, school districts are able to use The Lunch Box to expand their capacity and ensure that healthy food reaches even more kids each and every day. Users have free access to scalable and downloadable recipes, USDA compliant menu cycles, procurement tools, financial calculators, implementation strategies for salad bars, training tools, marketing materials such as posters and signs, and much more!

TLB offers:

• Relevant, up-to-date operational content and resources that enable school districts to serve healthy, scratch-cooked meals
• Information about programs and opportunities that solve common problems experienced by school food service teams
• Tools for marketing and promoting their lunch program and healthy eating

Program Details

The Lunch Box is the largest online resource for scratch cooking in schools. It is designed specifically to support school district food service teams as they transition their food programs from processed foods to scratch cooking with fresh ingredients.

The online toolkit provides technical support to help districts expand their services, ensuring that healthy food reaches more kids every day. Users have free access to:

• Scalable and downloadable recipes
• Examples of USDA compliant menu cycles
• Procurement tools
• Financial calculator
• Implementation strategies for salad bars and school breakfast
• Training tools
• Marketing materials such as posters and signs
• Much more!

SCALE-ing up

The Lunch Box also features our newest resource for K-12 school programs: the Scratch Cooking Assessment & Learning Evaluation (SCALE). After 12+ years of operational assessments and support, we’ve built the first free-access digital platform that offers the first comprehensive self-assessment focused on enhancing school meal programs and increasing scratch cooking. This platform works with any size of district or level of cooking, and provides a specialized report with custom recommendations and step-by-step guides. As part of The Lunch Box, SCALE helps districts review and assess their own school food programs, and then connect with useful resources and guides. What used to only be available to districts through an on-site assessment is now widely available for all districts through this innovative platform.