School nutrition operators celebrate, make connections and find new ideas at the Fall Healthy Meals Summit

Earlier this fall, hundreds of school nutrition professionals met in Las Vegas for the 2024 Healthy Meals Fall Summit. 

Like its sister summit held earlier in the spring, the Fall 2024 Summit was part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) and nonprofit Action for Healthy Kids (AFHK) Healthy Meals Incentives (HMI), an initiative that aims to help strengthen the supply chain and provide resources to schools looking to incorporate more scratch-made meals.

“The purpose of the summit was to collaborate and connect and celebrate school nutrition professionals across the country,” says AFHK Program Director Barb Mechura. “And give them an opportunity and a very professional yet fun environment where they can make connections.”

Throughout the summit’s three days, attendees listened and participated in a series of breakout sessions that centered on topics including farm to school, scratch-made meals and more. 

“We just had a really well-rounded set of workshops,” says Mechura.

In addition to the sessions, the Summit also included an awards dinner to celebrate and recognize the strides school nutrition programs all over the country have been making toward offering students scratch-made, local and healthy meals. 

The summit also provided attendees with ways to make meaningful connections with their peers, something that can be hard for the average school nutrition operator to do because of labor shortages and other challenges in the industry. 

“They have short staff, so they have a hard time maybe getting out to meetings, and they're new in their directed roles,” says Mechura. “And so, having people connect to make networks for support, for ideas, sharing, for collaboration, was a super important part for us.”

Planning for the future 

While the summit just ended a little over a two weeks ago, the event’s organizers have already heard positive feedback from attendees. 

“We had people share with us that they've been to many conferences, and they have never been to a conference quite like this one,” says Mechura. 

Work is already underway on next year’s summit which will be open to recipients of school nutrition employees at schools who have been awarded a Healthy Meals Incentives Recognition Award. The awards program is open to all school nutrition programs, no matter their size or where they are located in the U.S. 

As the year goes on, Mechura and the team will be keeping an eye on what’s new in school nutrition to make sure that next year’s summit is also addressing the needs of today’s school foodservice professional. 

“We hope to be bigger and better than this year's [summit] and we want to continue to build a place where people can come and connect and celebrate and collaborate and go home really inspired,” says Mechura.