The New Westminster school district is making the switch to a new food provider as demand for its lunch programs continues to rise.
Starting in September 2024, the district will contract its Fuel Up lunch program to the Lunch Lady.
Rick Bloudell, School District 40’s manager of community projects and partnerships, gave a presentation to trustees about the district’s lunch program at the June 20 school board meeting.
He said the Fuel Up program has experienced rapid growth over the past three years, with the number of lunches ordered more than doubling between 2020-21 and 2022-23.
In 2020-21, the district saw 41,151 lunches ordered; in 2022-23, that number is projected to be 86,454. Of those, 17,422 lunches were subsidized in 2020-21; in 2022-23, the number of subsidized lunches is projected to hit 46,950.
“This growth of the program has made it crucial that we continue to take steps to evaluate ourselves and our caterer to ensure the needs of students and families are being met,” Bloudell said.
That led the district to put out a request for proposals and to ultimately choose the Lunch Lady, which provides meals for schools in districts across Canada.
Lunch Lady menu includes vegetarian, gluten-free, Halal options
Bloudell said the Lunch Lady’s focus on “tasty, simple, healthy meals” aligned with what the district has heard from parents.
He noted the company also offers a diverse lunch menu that accounts for a variety of dietary restrictions, with vegetarian, egg-free, dairy-free, gluten-free and Halal daily options.
It also offers a user-friendly ordering platform where parents and caregivers can simply click on an item to get full information about allergens and nutrition.
Bloudell noted the district already has a good experience with the Lunch Lady, which started supplying food for new district breakfast and snack programs in November 2022. The company will continue that work and also take over lunches starting in September.
The Fuel Up program offers daily lunches at all elementary and middle schools in the district.
Families receive a monthly menu featuring a different selection of hot and cold options each day, and they can opt in to as many lunches as they choose. Full and partial subsidies are available when needed, with the goal of providing stigma-free meals for everyone; students in a classroom don’t know whose meals are subsidized and whose aren’t.
To help cover the costs of those subsidies, School District 40 has earmarked about $369,000 in provincial funding it received from the B.C. Ministry of Education’s newly created Feeding Futures fund. SD40 will receive $826,000 for the 2023-24 school year. Other money will be used to help subsidize lunches at the high school cafeteria, to provide breakfast and snack items in schools, to buy gift cards for families in need and to provide small appliances (such as toaster ovens and microwaves) for schools, among other spending.
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