Best performing menu items by daypart

Crowd-pleasing takes on a much heavier meaning when the size of that crowd is 30 million children per day. Of course, school foodservice professionals face the added obligation of providing meals that are both healthy and hearty enough to fuel kids through the school day, and yet familiar and friendly enough that youngsters will eat them—and fast. Market researcher Technomic tracks menus from 150 schools in the top 50 school districts. Here are the items that are holding their ground, and gaining ground, in K–12 foodservice. 

Breakfast

Protein—delivered in sandwich form, especially—is raising its performance on school breakfast menus, with chicken sandwiches, sausages and bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwiches all gaining steam. Overall, breads (43 percent) such as muffins, bagels and toast are the most prevalent add-ons at breakfast. Fruit represents 28 percent of breakfast sides in schools.

Most common breakfast entrees:

Fastest-growing breakfast entrees:

Most common breakfast sides

Fastest-growing breakfast sides:

Lunch

While pizza, burgers and chicken nuggets still are everywhere on school lunch menus, on-trend items such as beans and chicken sandwiches are showing up and growing, as policies and preferences tend toward more healthful options.

Most common lunch entrees:

Fastest-growing lunch entrees:

Most common lunch sides:

Fastest-growing lunch sides:

Most common desserts (by category):

Fastest growing desserts:

FoodService Director partnered with Technomic for this article. Technomic, a Winsight market research firm, provided data from its MenuMonitor 2016 K–12 Menu Snapshot report.