A couple years ago, the nutrition team at 27J Schools in Brighton, Colo., was struggling with understaffing and rising costs.
“We had just come off of a fairly unsuccessful vending program [at Prairie View High School]. We had machines that were refrigerated but they kept breaking down,” Nutrition Director Tony Jorstad told attendees at the School Nutrition Association’s Annual National Conference (ANC) this month in Denver. “The company that we actually bought them from disappeared, and we were also short staffed, so we were really looking into how could we increase our entire revenue in a different way.”
Around that time, Jorstad was approached by Prairie View High School Business Department Lead Jean Schneider, who wanted to create a school store for her Career Technical Education (CTE) students to gain work experience. The pair decided to join forces and opened a student-managed store that sells USDA Smart Snack-compliant items.
The store has been a hit with students and brings in an average of $400 a day to nutrition program.
Students are in charge
The store is open from 8:30 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. each school day in a room at the back of the cafeteria. It is equipped with a cooler, freezers and a coffee maker that the nutrition team purchased, as well as display cases and a counter that were constructed by students in the district’s building trades department.
Since the store counts as a class, CTE students manage the entire space throughout the day— doing everything from running the cash register to restocking shelves.
The students are also responsible for choosing items to sell that align with Smart Snack nutrition requirements. After receiving an order guide from the nutrition team, the students research and select which items they want to purchase.
Along with teaching students business skills, allowing them to control what the store sells increases the likelihood that their peers will make a purchase.
“The kids have to look for what the different trends are for what we stock in the store,” said Schneider at ANC. “Because they're picking the items, we know they're items that are going to sell.”
Looking for future partnerships
The store has proven to have numerous benefits. Not only has it provided enough income for the nutrition team to hire two additional staff members, it’s also helped ease cafeteria lines and provide a way for students who have brought a lunch from home to still purchase items from the nutrition team.
Due to the success of the partnership, Jorstad is looking for other ways to partner with different district departments, including having Future Farmers of American (FFA) students grow produce for use in school meals and allowing culinary students to complete an internship with the nutrition team.
While it takes time and effort to set up these sorts of relationships, Jorstad said that they can help foodservice teams tackle major challenges plaguing school meal programs, such as labor shortages and rising costs, while also providing benefits to students.
“You really have to step back and think outside of the lunch box, so to speak. It's easy with all the rules and regulations that we have to say, ‘Oh, we don't want to attempt to try a partnership,’ he says.
Operators looking to start a collaboration of their own should do their research on the different departments in their district and make sure to set up clear expectations with whomever they’re partnering with.
“It does make it easier when you have willing partners who can work towards a greater cause,” said Jorstad. “And as long as clear expectations are communicated between interested parties, that’s where the solutions to the challenges can be found.”