Michael Thompson set up a table inside the cafeteria at Edgewater High School, where he was unveiling his latest culinary creations.
“I did three dishes today,” said Thompson, a chef at Walt Disney World, and that included a croissant with mustard sauce -- “The mustard sauce makes a difference,” he added – plus a flower tortilla vegetable wrap and some buffalo chicken with spicy mayo and a side of chips.
While a group of adults had gathered at the cafeteria to check out the meals and sample Thompson’s cooking, it was actually a group absent from school that day – the students – that Thompson had in mind.
“I have a 13-year old, and she is pretty adventurous on her eating,” Thompson said.
What he’s learned, he added, is that kids are looking for meals that are adventurous as well – including spicy meals.
“I think the flavor profiles for kids have changed,” he said. “Those spicy flavors really are working for them.”
Those meals drew a particularly enthusiastic response from another adult, Laura Phillips Bennett, the president of Bennett & Company, and also the media contact for Feed More Kids, a new nonprofit organization based in Fort Lauderdale that is working to help feed more school children in Florida.
Bennett said the new group formed a month ago, with a clear goal to accomplishment before the new school semester begins on Aug. 24.
“In this very school, there are 2,200 kids,” Bennett said, “and more than 60 percent of the kids in Orange County are eligible for free or reduced price meals.”
If that sounds like a lot of students being fed at their school each day, the exact opposite is true, Bennett added.
“Less than 700 kids eat – literally,” she said. “Less than 700 meals are served each day.”
Of the students who opt not to eat at their school, Bennett said, “Some of it is bullying, if kids know you’re low-income. Some of it is the long lines.”
To combat that trend, Feed More Kids is forming a coalition with school districts to get new refrigerated vending machines put in the cafeteria that would allow students to get their breakfast or lunch right there.
“We asked ourselves, why don’t people buy these machines and put them in their own high school,” she said. “The machines become the property of Orange County.”