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North Carolina’s Lexington City Schools receives breakfast boost after fresh cafeteria makeoverNorth Carolina’s Lexington City Schools receives breakfast boost after fresh cafeteria makeover

Eating area, serving lines go from dark and dingy to warm and welcoming with light, color and pattern. The project by Pro-Team Foodservice Advisors is part of former food service director Jean Ronnei’s next chapter as a consultant.

Tara Fitzpatrick, Editor-in-Chief

January 29, 2020

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Incorporating words of encouragement is a big part of what makes Pro-Team’s designs special.

Bright pops of color, words of inspiration and energizing patterns are key components to the recent makeover of Lexington Middle School, part of Lexington City Schools in North Carolina. Created by Pro-Team Foodservice Advisors and partner Visualz, a design team, the new look for the café is designed to promote student success, character and healthy eating.

Amelia Holland, Lexington school nutrition director, reports that breakfast participation rose by 2.5% in the first month of the new café. “The design is clean and nurturing,” Holland says. “The team had great advice.”

Part of that team is Jean Ronnei, SNS, senior consultant at Pro-Team Foodservice Advisors, who is well-known for her past work as director and COO of St. Paul (Minnesota) Public Schools. For the past couple of years, Ronnei has been traveling around the country helping school districts’ (and other onsite segments’) foodservice teams with operations, student nutrition support, menu planning, using nutritional software, staff training, marketing, USDA compliance and more.

But the design factor is the most visual of those components, and a change like this definitely has an impact. Take a tour of the before and after photos of Lexington Middle School’s makeover.

Contact Tara at [email protected].

Related:Behind the scenes of a school foodservice makeover

Follow her on Twitter @Tara_Fitzie.

About the Author

Tara Fitzpatrick

Editor-in-Chief, FoodService Director

Tara Fitzpatrick is editor-in-chief of FoodService Director. She previously served as senior editor for Food Management magazine.

At the start of her career, Tara was a reporter for the daily newspaper in her hometown of Lorain, Ohio, where she still resides. She holds a journalism degree from Kent State University. She's also a mom, a pretty good home cook and a fan of ghost stories, folklore, architecture, retro recipes, cheese of all kinds and cats of all kinds.

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