SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco Unified School District's new fresh-food program has been giving schools a stomachache, as a lack of refrigerators has put the brakes on plans to expand the program.
The SFUSD switched to a new food provider, Revolution Foods, last year as it also increased the number of breakfast, lunch and supper meals served to students.
The new programs have succeeded in feeding thousands of students healthy food, but they have also produced unexpected growing pains, a San Francisco Examiner investigation shows. The district has a lack of refrigerators to handle the extra fresh food, and the increased fresh waste has attracted unwanted guests -- rats -- for meal times.
The waste is attracting rodents into school cafeterias -- a lot more rodents than typically find their way onto school grounds.
"We are working on systematically addressing the needs of our cafeterias as we increase our school food programs," said Heidi Anderson, an SFUSD spokeswoman. "In fact, this is a common issue across the nation's public schools."
Since July, the SFUSD has purchased and installed new refrigerators at approximately 20 sites, but the problem persists.
The SFUSD began serving fresh, locally sourced food from East Bay provider Revolution Foods in January 2013. Since then, the program has largely been called a success, if a costly one. Instead of serving frozen meals like in the past, the SFUSD now serves meals cooked in Oakland and prepared in South San Francisco.
Revolution Foods' fresh meals are served in almost all SFUSD elementary schools, along with most middle and high schools.
In financial year 2011-12, under its previous food provider, Preferred Meal Systems of Berkeley, Ill., district food expenditures topped nearly $17 million. After switching to Revolution Foods the district's most recent expenditures are about $19 million for 2013-14 financial year.
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