San Francisco to Revamp Way It Serves School Meals

The San Francisco USD plans to launch pilot initiatives this fall to revamp spaces and incorporate technology to transform the overall dining experience for students and faculty, reports the San Francisco Examiner. The initiative, funded by a $400,000 grant from The Sara and Evan Williams Foundation, includes developing a smartphone app that will let students pre-order and review meals, creating regional commissary kitchens to prepare food and a central warehouse to receive fresh and local food, implementing dinner kits for students to take home, deploying a healthy food education program and having communal meals in which students are served off a cart by staff to eliminate lines.

Currently, SFUSD serves 22,000 lunches and 5,500 breakfasts each day, but only 57 percent of students eligible for free or reduced price meals participate, while 13 percent of students pay cash.