The Difference Makers: School Foodies
Fresh School Meals, Sustainable Operations and a Commitment to the Bay Area
Long before the first school bell rings, the SchoolFoodies team is already at work.
Production starts at 3 a.m. in the company’s Hayward kitchen. By mid-morning, SchoolFoodies has prepared approximately 2,500 fresh meals and delivered them to more than 100 preschools, private schools and summer camps across the Bay Area. Each meal is labeled with the student’s name and grade to streamline distribution.
SchoolFoodies essentially serves as the cafeteria for schools without one. It handles cooking, equipment, delivery and logistics so schools can focus on their students.
“We cook and package every meal fresh each morning. Nothing is pre-packaged and reheated from the day before,” King said. “It’s harder to do it this way at high volume. But the meals look better, taste better, and less food goes to waste. We’ll grow carefully rather than cut corners on quality.”
Making Bay Area School Food Service More Efficient
Delivering to more than 100 sites a day, each with its own bell schedule, takes planning. SchoolFoodies’ drivers follow planned routes tracked by GPS, cutting unnecessary miles and saving time, labor and fuel while lowering emissions. The company uses Ford Transit vans instead of box trucks for better fuel efficiency. Hot meals travel in powered warmers so they arrive ready to serve.
The centralized model creates efficiencies beyond delivery routes. Instead of dozens of schools each running a kitchen, SchoolFoodies prepares every meal in one facility. Suppliers make one delivery to one address instead of separate stops at each school.
Every meal leaves the Hayward kitchen the same morning it is made. The rotating menu includes more than 200 recipes, with meat, vegetarian and vegan options, and parents can customize many meals.
Building Sustainability Into the Business
SchoolFoodies is a certified California Green Business in Alameda County. The certification covers energy and water use, waste and pollution prevention, and transportation. The kitchen also runs on 100% renewable electricity through Ava Community Energy.
For King, those practices also need to make business sense.
When King purchased the company’s Hayward building with financing from Community Bank of the Bay, which is now part of Commercial Bank of California, he built efficiency into a major renovation. The work included LED lighting, water-saving fixtures and an indoor HVAC system that doesn’t have to work against outdoor heat and cold.
SchoolFoodies also converted its walk-in refrigerator and freezer from single-phase to three-phase power, which the company estimates cut its power use by about 20%.
The company takes the same practical approach to waste. Parents order meals in advance online or through a mobile app, so the kitchen cooks to actual orders instead of guessing. Food waste and spoilage run under 1% of ingredients purchased. By comparison, restaurants typically waste 4% to 10% of the food they buy. The kitchen has no garbage disposal. Food scraps from the production line go into municipal compost bins instead of the wastewater system.
Packaging is another focus. Meals go out in compostable fiber trays with compostable utensils. The company also switched from bottled water to canned water, which is easier to recycle.
Staying compostable hasn’t always been cheap. When SchoolFoodies’ longtime supplier discontinued the trays the company had been using, SchoolFoodies had to switch to a significantly more expensive alternative. The company absorbed the higher cost rather than switch to conventional plastic.
King is also evaluating electric delivery vans. Any electric van must handle a full route and power the warmers that keep meals hot.
“When electric commercial vans have more range and more power capacity, we’ll get serious about converting,” King said.
California Green Fund Financing Supports Growth
SchoolFoodies has banked with Community Bank of the Bay, now part of Commercial Bank of California, since 2010 and is a longtime participant in the bank’s California Green Fund.
In 2016, SchoolFoodies established a line of credit that has helped support the company’s work with government-funded meal programs. Public-sector customers can have payment terms of 60 days or more as they complete the state or federal reimbursement process. Meanwhile, SchoolFoodies still needs to buy ingredients, prepare meals, pay employees and keep operations moving.
The line of credit helps bridge that timing gap and gives SchoolFoodies the confidence to serve public-sector customers despite the longer payment cycle.
“Public programs are good customers, but they pay on their own schedule,” King said. “The line of credit lets us say yes to feeding kids in lower-income communities and still pay our team and suppliers on time.”
Expanding Access to Fresh Meals
That flexibility matters because these programs provide free, healthy meals to children in underserved communities.
For SchoolFoodies, the work builds on what the company already has. Its kitchen, team and delivery network produce thousands of school meals every day. Public programs put those resources to work for more children, including many who would not otherwise get a fresh meal.
SchoolFoodies continues to grow, adding new schools and programs each year while serving more meals for existing customers. The company is also investing in its kitchen and team so it can handle more volume without changing what sets it apart: meals cooked fresh every morning.
Twenty years after King launched SchoolFoodies, the company is still looking for ways to serve more children, run more efficiently and reduce its environmental impact.
The approach is built on a simple idea: good business decisions can benefit the company, its customers, its community and the environment at the same time.
To learn more about SchoolFoodies, visit https://schoolfoodies.com/.
