Diner décor used to draw kids to summer feeding site

Getting kids and families to participate in summer feeding programs is getting harder, according to available data. Strategies to turn that around include the deployment of mobile feeding platforms like food trucks, but at Cleburne ISD, located just south of Fort Worth in Texas, they tried a different approach with a fixed site: a café made up to look like a colorful traditional diner that provides access to indoor and outdoor activity and recreation spaces.

“We purchased the building a year ago [for a nutrition training center], and when I looked in there, I thought, ‘Wow, we could do summer feeding in here,’” recalls Kim Chance, Cleburne ISD’s director of child nutrition services.

But rather than just opening another bland site where kids can get summer meals—Cleburne already has two schools where that is being done—Chance decided to make this one a little more fancy with a ’50’s diner look.

“We had some red and white booths designed and built to fit into the room, and a local guy did the black and white checkerboard floor,” she says. “I contacted a local artist who did the murals and after seven months of searching online, I finally found a retro blue refrigerator that the kids absolutely love. Now I’m looking for a jukebox.”

The retro blue refrigerator holds the chilled milk for the summer meals served in Cleburne ISD’s new diner-style summer feeding site.

The café is open weekdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The food is prepared in a small kitchen on the premises designed to provide catering for groups that use the facility during the school year. The “very kid-friendly” menu rotates items like chicken nuggets and tenders, grilled cheese sandwiches, mac and cheese and burgers as entrees accompanied by a variety of fruits and vegetables, plus milk (from the retro fridge). There is one entrée choice each day because “the same kids tend to come every day and I don’t want them to have chicken nuggets every day—I want them to have some variety,” Chance says.

After eating, the kids (and family members if they are along) can participate in a variety of activities at the site. There is a media room ordinarily used to show training films that has been adapted as a movie theater where kid-friendly films are shown. Another area has a variety of board and tabletop games.

The café actually opened last summer, but it was still in a “trial and error” phase, Chance says. “It wasn’t ready until the day before it opened last year, so this is our first full blown summer to promote and advertise it.”

Flyers and posters around the community, as well as a notice sent home with kids before the end of the school year, have been used to get the word out about the colorful new summer feeding site. The building also sits on a fairly well traveled street in Cleburne, near a Wal-Mart outlet, and a prominent digital marquee sign out front alerts passers-by to its presence, drawing in youngers who walk or bike by.

Cleburne has an enrollment of around 6,800 with 68 percent of the students qualifying for free or reduced price school meals.