How is the reputation of noncommercial shifting?

So many small-town newspapers have published articles about the food at the local hospital going from “ew” to “amazing” that the idea now rests somewhere between cliche and joke. Scoop-and-serve is so over.

That transformation gives noncommercial foodservice a new seat at the table, and operators are working harder than ever to retain their clientele. With housemade mozzarella, game rooms, chefs’ tasting dinners, vegetarian menus and more, why wouldn’t diners want to eat noncommercial? (Click here for more on how FSDs are incentivizing their menus and operations.)

What about the ultimate incentive: free food? While FoodService Director wrote in November about gratis meals for parents at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, that’s a small population compared to the current movement in K-12, thanks in no small part to the Community Eligibility Provision. With the nation’s largest district, the New York City Department of Education, moving to universal free meals for the 2017-18 school year, could the rest of the nation be far behind?

Check out the full State of the Industry report.