Union City Public Schools: Cuisines around the world, yet with a taste of home

In Northern New Jersey lies a region called Havana on the Hudson: a place where waves of Cuban emigrants settled beginning in the late 1940s, drawn by the promise of political freedom and ample job opportunities at the area’s many embroidery factories.  

This influx shaped the area forever: It’s home to the four most densely populated U.S. cities (even more so than nearby New York City), including Union City, which was once America’s second-largest Cuban community outside Miami. Today Union City is even more diverse: It’s 81% Hispanic and still home to many Cubans, but also people who are from Puerto Rican, Mexican, and many other backgrounds. 

Union City Public Schools’ foodservice team works hard to ensure these cultures are reflected on the school menus—efforts that have garnered two awards on the federal and state level granted this fall.

“We’re primarily a Hispanic culture, but it’s gotten increasingly more diverse in the last 10 years or so,” says Chris Lovisa, Resident District Manager for Chartwells K12, which operates the foodservice program across the district’s 14 schools. “Meals from our students’ cultures are comfort foods that they love, but they tell us they also want more culturally diverse menus.”

The first of the pair of awards came in October, when Lovisa and his team received an recognition from the Action for Healthy Kids and USDA’s Healthy Meals Incentives program for their “Innovation in Cultural Diversity of School Meals.” Specifically, the groups cited Union City’s addition of menu options like Mexican turkey barbacoa, Puerto Rican beef sancocho, Cubano sandwiches, Vietnamese bahn mis, Mexican street corn, and jicama pineapple slaw. 

Lovisa and the team developed these ideas in true partnership with the students, he says. They hold focus groups with about a dozen students around October or November, and again in May or June, to find out what’s a hit and what they’d change if they could. Taste tests, samples and feedback about new programs from Chartwells round out this student input.

Students have responded extremely positively to the Global Eats program that Chartwells brought to the district last year, introducing new global entrees and sides that “invite K-12 students on a food exploration that celebrates cultural heritages.”

East Asian, Italian and Caribbean dishes have been particularly popular in Union City, compared to other cuisines like Indian. Lovisa speculates this may be in part because of meal components that mimic students’ own cultures—for example, slow-roasted Korean pork with Asian brown rice and a spicy cucumber salad, and Chinese ginger-soy-glazed chicken with fried rice.

Another tip from Lovisa: Familiar flavor profiles often breed winners. Cubano sandwiches are an event at Union City schools, often selling 600 or more when they’re on the menu. But the newer Vietnamese banh mi has been a runaway hit.

“Some weren’t sure, but once students tasted [the bahn mi], the numbers kept going up and up. And now we’re almost on par with the Cuban sandwiches, which is something I did not expect,” Lovisa says. “But Asian dishes can have a lot of familiar things to them, like cilantro—and when these cultural dishes have similar ingredients, they're certainly more willing to try it.”

The Union City Public Schools Chartwells K12 team won a Action for Healthy Kids and USDA Healthy Meals Incentives program award for their “Innovation in Cultural Diversity of School Meals.”

A taste of home

Students are big fans of Global Eats, yet their personal cultural favorites remain perennial favorites too. Every Friday is Cuban roast pork day at Union City’s middle and high schools, and the process begins two days prior. The pork is marinated Wednesday into Thursday, placed in the oven on Thursday afternoon, and cooked low-and-slow for about 18 hours. By Friday it’s so juicy and succulent that it’s practically falling apart, ready to be served for lunch alongside Cuban moro rice and maduros (fried sweet plantains).

“Friday pork creates such a buzz throughout our community. The kids just gravitate to it and there’s a real energy,” says Tony Dragona, Business Administrator for Union City Public Schools and Chartwells’ day-to-day contact at the district.

“We even hear comments that it’s just as good as grandma makes, which is the best compliment you could receive,” he adds.

That sentiment tracks: Often, it is indeed abuela or tío who’s in the kitchen.

“Our cooks are the grandmothers, the aunts, the uncles, the cousins, the neighbors, the parents of the students that we're feeding,” Lovisa says. “They have a vested interest, and it builds trust with our students. It’s also a great way to get student feedback via our employees.”

Dragona has seen that “beautiful dynamic” over his 49 years at Union City Public Schools, in which many family and community activities center around the school district.

“[Foodservice] is part of that, so we try to use our cafeterias as an extension of the classroom, where it's a learning opportunity for our students,” he says. This includes indoor hydroponic gardens, where students can watch produce grow, as well as classroom tie-ins like social studies teachers talking about the country of origin highlighted in the cafeteria’s offerings for the day.

For these and other initiatives, in mid-November Union City Public Schools received New Jersey Department of Agriculture “Jersey Fresh Farm to School” program’s Cream of The Crop award. The recognition is awarded for integrating locally grown items in a school’s menus, curriculum and programs. The team additionally showcases these items through in-school farmer's markets, and hands-on cooking and tasting demonstrations.

To Lovisa, awards like these aren’t about the ego of recognition—but rather evidence of the district’s focus on innovating for the students.

“It reflects the mindset and the willingness of everybody here to be better tomorrow than we were today,” Lovisa says. “When I interviewed for this position, I asked our business administrator: What does success look like in your eyes from your food service provider? 

“He said, ‘I want Union City to be the top of every Top 10 awards list.’ I wrote it on a Post-It that’s still on my wall years later. It hit me that this is somebody who wants the absolute best for the school district. So, it’s not about the accolades; it’s the recognition of what we try to do for our students.”

Get to know Union City’s Chris Lovisa

See what’s in store for Lovisa’s operation, which was named FSD’s December Foodservice Operation of the Month.

Q:  What is it that makes your operation excel?

When I think of what we do here, the heart of it is the partnership between Chartwells and the district—and it is a true partnership, not a client-vendor relationship. I cannot tell you how many times somebody from the district has come into the kitchen or sat down in my office and said, “Hey, I have this idea. Is this something we can work together to implement?” We hash it out, I sit down with my team, and we go back to the district contact to see how we can come together to make it happen. The success of our program is because we work so well with the administrators of the district.

Lots of times with school districts, it can be that very black-and-white, vendor-client relationship. We’re educators and you’re foodservice over there. Here, they care just as much about what we're serving the students as what their teachers are teaching their students. 

Chris Lovisa

Q: What are your goals for the operation in the coming year? 

Our big project right now is an upcoming culinary internship program that we’re working on with the Navigate Foundation, [a youth workforce development nonprofit]. About five to seven students will receive this paid internship to learn the culinary and soft skills they need as aspiring hospitality professionals: 15 weeks of financial literacy, effective communication, resume writing and interview skills, kitchen management, knife skills, food costs, inventory and kitchen sanitation.

We’re also working on several sports nutrition initiatives. Chartwells is only one division of [our parent company] Compass Group, and we’re looking to leverage our higher education partners for guest speakers to visit this year—like nutritionists and chefs who work with these college athletes—so that we can understand how to best feed our athletes. In Union City our sports programs are a huge opportunity for our students to go on to college and get that education. So, we want to support the district and help ensure these students are properly fed before, during and after their seasons.