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Since you can evaluate all needed resources for the school year in advance, you can balance more expensive choices with less frequency and still support a sustainable procurement approach.

Cycle menus allow for innovation with less risk.

Each time your team prepares a recipe, they will improve and create a more efficient process. More popular items may hit the menu weekly, while others are served six times a year or less. Cycle menus provide the building blocks for developing skilled production environments. Utilizing menu cycles provides a built-in framework that can really help with transitioning your team to working with new food, new standardized recipes, and the overall new vision. Excess inventory can become a barrier for your district to innovate, tweak, and shift its menu strategy. It is a burden in more ways than just the space that it takes up. One of the most common issues in school district warehouses is excess inventory.

If your district is committed to focusing programs on selling reimbursable meals without relying heavily on à la carte sales to balance the budget, then the extra time spent on menu planning can be a much more effective use of your resources. The school year, which is often 180 days or less, offers a finite window of opportunity to demonstrate that your menu plan is effective and popular. While some districts may choose to create a menu and adjust as they go, this approach carries accountability and efficiency risks. The primary point is that you need to have a plan. For more options, you can also check with your state agency, borrow menu cycles from a successful colleague, or create your own. Then what? Planning! We have sample menu cycles to help you formulate your menu plans. So, you want to transition away from the spicy chicken patty? Great.

Some districts feel “lost” when they shift away from ready-to-heat foods and the core items that anchored their menu planning are no longer there.

Though we often hear, “I have a lot of XYZ in storage and need to use it up,” that strategy is usually a direct result of purchasing or allocating without menu planning and without reasonable forecasts paired to participation history. It is more difficult to develop students’ taste for fresh foods when their unhealthy habits are still being fulfilled.

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When we talk about changing from ready-to-heat foods to fresh foods in the context of menu planning, letting go of prior presumptions is important.ĭoes your high school menu always have the same five items daily, plus one daily special? Is the daily special the one meal that your team feels like they are “cooking from scratch,” but the students don’t select it as frequently as you’d like? This is a good example of how a new vision for the program can compete with the old.