Building a Better Salad Bar

For many districts, offering salad bars is a great way to get students to eat more fruits and veggies and meet the new school meal regs. There are challenges—food safety and sanitation, primarily—associated with salad bars, but many directors have found ways to integrate these stations as a part of their school meals program. Here are some districts that have found salad bar success. 

Jessica Shelly, food services director for Cincinnati Public Schools, was hesitant at first to add salad bars to her schools because of sanitation concerns. After trying the bars out and using videos to train students how to properly use them, Shelly is a firm believer in the benefits of salad bars.

A typical salad bar in Cincinnati offers romaine lettuce, sliced cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, broccoli florets, cauliflower florets, sliced radishes, baby carrots, green peas and garbanzo beans.

A new addition this year is adding a daily legume choice to help meet the new vegetable subgroup requirement.  

Shelly says self-serve dressing and some toppings like shredded cheese, croutons, sunflower seeds and dried cherries were not successful for use on the salad bars. “We found children putting large quantities of ranch dressing on everything, not just salad,” she says. “The same happened with the toppings; students were building a snack plate, not a salad plate.”

Another way Shelly has made her salad bars successful is by using them as breakfast kiosks in the morning. “Why have a piece of equipment you only use for one service?” she asks. “Using our salad bar as a breakfast kiosks allows us to serve breakfast outside of the lunchroom and helps us reach more children each morning.”

Greenville County Schools in South Carolina found simplicity was best when it came to its salad bars. Eileen Staples, director of food and nutrition services, says she tried adding more variety to her bars but it wasn’t successful. “We have found that it needs to be simple,” she says. “We combined all the vegetables into the serving bowl and allow students to choose their protein items. Too many items slows service, giving students less time to eat or making them return late to the classroom.”

Greenville’s salad bars, called vegetation stations, are offered as a reimbursable meal when the salad is paired with a whole-grain bread stick and one of the rotating housemade soups.

The district also uses the Go, Slow, Whoa spotlight identifiers on its salad bars to help students make healthier decisions.  

New items on salad bars in Denver Public Schools include peas, black beans, pickled beets and an Italian green bean salad. Like Shelly, the district allows individual managers the option to use the salad bar at breakfast, by offering fruits and juice in the morning. Students have a choice of four vegetables and four fruits on the salad bar every day. Composed salads like a spinach salad, potato salad, coleslaw, and a cucumber and tomato salad are offered on the bars. When a composed salad is offered, it counts as one of the four daily vegetable offerings.

Sandy Grady, area supervisor, suggests using shallow shotgun pans instead of deep ones for unpopular items because it makes the bar appear fuller. She also uses large containers for popular items like watermelon so she doesn’t have to replenish as frequently. “Put the vegetables before the fruit as the students come through the bar,” she adds. The move entices students to pick up more vegetables.  

At the Lake Stevens School District in Washington, a new salad mix made of romaine, shredded carrots and iceberg lettuce has been introduced to the salad bars this school year. Other salad bar options, such as watermelon, strawberries, tangerines and sliced navel oranges, are offered when in season. Mollie Langum, food, nutrition and health services manager, says offering seasonal produce helps keep costs for the salad bars down. 

Last year in Lake Stevens elementary schools Langum held a Make a Rainbow at the Salad Bar promotion. Every student who purchased a meal was challenged to create a “rainbow” from the salad bar’s offering, by selecting items with at least three different colors. Students who were successful received a sticker. One school tested a rainbow coleslaw recipe made of green and purple cabbage, shredded carrots, red grapes, onions and oranges with a sweet vinaigrette. Fifth-grade students volunteered to pass out samples.