BERKELEY, Ill. — School districts hard-pressed to come up with innovative solutions in meal presentation, cafeteria design, menu creation and school nutrition education are being introduced to “Serve & Learn Smart Line,™” a new meal serving system developed and launched this fall by Preferred Meals. Preferred Meals has installed its serving system in 250 schools across the country.
The “Serve & Learn Smart Line™” helps students build a healthy meal tray while learning more about good nutrition. The system brightens lunchrooms with its vibrant graphic displays and color coded meal bins, and it organizes daily meal components. The meal items are placed in the color coded bins and colorful signs direct students to items with protein, vegetables, fruit and whole grain.
Brightly colored bins match the graphics of each food category each day for easy visual selection. The display also provides a posting of the day’s menu at the beginning of the line. A unique aspect of the display is the ease in set-up and student access to each meal component condiments and milk on its own shelf.
“Serve & Learn Smart Line™” utilizes a self-contained storage cart designed for quick and easy installation and use within existing school cafeteria facilities and tables. The design permits students to move through the food line and make their food selection less time consuming. A poster sleeve with seasonal healthy messages is rotated throughout the year.
After the initial concept testing was completed last year, school foodservice staffs across the country were contacted to review the approach. Reviews generated an overwhelmingly positive response and many districts were extremely interested in implementing the new serving system this year.
“Since the school lunch legislation Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 was proposed and passed, Preferred Meals has focused its efforts on providing high-quality, good tasting balanced meals to meet the new regulations. While meals are healthier today than ever before, meal presentation, student nutrition education and increasing student participation have remained topics of concern for school districts,” Clare R. Keating, SNS, Vice-President of Marketing said.
“This new system makes it easy for our students to identify the meal components and makes learning about meals choices fun. The set-up is easy and we found the speed of the double-sided line is faster,” said, Janice Wolff, Cicero Public School District 99, Foodservice Director. “The new system has created excitement among our students in learning about healthy food choices,” she added.
“We are addressing all the foodservice concerns and we believe this new meal serving system will have significant impact on student participation for school districts,” Keating said. Preferred Meals is one of the country’s largest and most respected suppliers of healthy, affordable and well-balanced meals to public and private school districts and charter schools.
For further information about Preferred Meals visit www.preferredmeals.com.
Source: Preferred Meals