Making share tables work for schools

Share tables seem like an effective way to reduce food waste in K-12 environments while giving students who might otherwise leave the cafeteria hungry a way to get some more to eat and drink at no cost. Basically, the idea is to let students leave food and drink they plan to toss on a designated table from which other students can take what they want.

But the practice also raises concerns about food safety, either through cross-contamination among students or by compromising the integrity of foods, especially perishables.

As a result, some states have severely restricted what foods can be shared.

Such restrictions have yet to hit Wisconsin, where an effective share table program has been operating at the New Richmond Schools. It started at the district’s middle school and has now been expanded to one of the elementary sites.

“My goal is to have it at all five of our sites by the end of the school year,” says Bobbie Guyette, supervisor of school nutrition for the district.

She offers some suggestions from how her share table program works.

Make sure staff is trained. “We are required to create a standard operating procedure for our food safety plan, and my responsibility is then to train all my staff on that procedure,” Guyette says. Also, understand that situations can differ from site to site, she adds. “At the middle school I have the staff to monitor it, but at [some of the] elementaries it is not possible for my staff to be the only monitors, so I have to train education staff to help.” One ironclad requirement is that someone must be monitoring the share table at all times to make sure that it’s being used correctly.

Designate what is and isn’t eligible for the share table. Guyette says she allows “anything that’s unopened and prepackaged” to go on the table. That includes things like milk, juice, yogurt, cheese sticks, crackers, muffins, and fruit with inedible peels such as bananas and oranges.

Perishables need to be kept cool. To avoid possible spoilage, items like yogurt, milk and cheese are placed in a cooler bin on the share table. “We tested it and it meets all food safety requirements” for keeping items at safe temperatures, Guyette stresses.

Get buy-in from all parties. “You have to talk a lot with your administration,” Guyette says. “I sought their approval first and then communicated with the principal at each site before moving forward. I also send communication to all staff at the site so everybody is aware [of what we’re doing] and they’re educating the kids before they even get to the lunchroom.”

No food leaves the lunchroom. Guyette says early on some teachers wanted to take what was left on the share table after the lunch period to use as classroom snacks but can’t be done for various food safety and regulatory reasons. Instead, anything left over is recovered back into the meal program.

Guyette says milk is the most common item placed on the share tables at New Richmond, though most are then taken by other students.

The presence of the share table has also given the nutrition team hints about ways to tweak the menu to increase appeal. For example, Guyette says one day she noticed a muffin that was being served with a chili meal was often being left on the share table “so I asked if they would prefer the muffin we serve at breakfast instead and they said ‘yes,’” so the change was made.

“I don’t want anything on the table,” Guyette declares. “I want to serve them things they’re going to eat.”