From pre-packaged to scratch-made: breakfast offerings get an upgrade at Little Lake City School DistrictFrom pre-packaged to scratch-made: breakfast offerings get an upgrade at Little Lake City School District

The most important meal of the day has gotten healthier for students at Little Lake City School District in Santa Fe Springs, California thanks to a handful of new scratch-made items on the breakfast menu. 

The changes made to the morning meal have been a couple years in the making and were spurred by the team wanting to improve the meal quality of its breakfast menu as well as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) upcoming changes to the School Nutrition Standards which include added sugar restrictions for the first time in school meals. 

“We were using a lot of pre-packaged items that probably weren't of the best quality,” says Food Service Director Heidi McDonald. “So, we started looking at what these items were, and we thought we could do this ourselves probably for a lower cost and we could make it healthier as well.” 

The switch to scratch-made have led to big breakfast gains and the nutrition team was recently awarded a Breakfast Trailblazer Award from the USDA and nonprofit Action for Healthy Kids. 

Slow and steady

The team started tackling its breakfast revamp slowly and focused on recreating simple menu items that they used to buy pre-made. For example, one of the first items to switch over to a scratch-made version was a ham and cheese croissant. 

Once staff had those simple changes under their belt, they expanded into more complicated recipes, including a breakfast burrito that quickly became beloved by students. 

“All the kids that were trying samples [of the burrito] were like,’ You need to add this.’ They're all very excited about having it on the menu,” says Nutrition Operations Supervisor Sara Cardenas. 

A large part of the new menu items’ success, McDonald says, is first testing out the new options to get students’ feedback before trying to add it to the permanent menu. 

“We don't want to go to all the work of implementing a recipe and then the students don't like it from the start,” says McDonald. “It’s good to get their feedback ahead of time.”

After sampling the potential new additions, students are encouraged to fill out a simple survey that allows them to leave their thoughts. Staff take that feedback into consideration before they make the final call about whether to add something to the menu.  

Expanding the menu

Based off the success of the breakfast burrito, the team is currently working on adding a breakfast burrito bowl to the menu as well. 

“It’s kind of like we're disassembling the breakfast burrito,” says McDonald.

Staff were hesitant at first with switching over to scratch-made breakfast items, but as they successfully introduced the new options their confidence grew. 

“Once they saw that it wasn't as hard as they anticipated, and the reaction of the students really enjoying the items, they gradually bought into what we were trying to do,” says McDonald. 

Both McDonald and Cardenas advise fellow school nutrition operators who are reworking their breakfast offerings to go slow and wait to add more complicated recipes until they have buy-in from both students and staff.  

“Start with the basics,” says Cardenas. “Try to make it as simple as possible.”