The innovative food company, Revolution Foods, (aka: RevFoods) makes thousands of nutritious lunches every day for students all over the Oakland area. They also recently expanded their business to serve schools in Los Angeles and Baltimore. RevFoods demonstrates a sound financial and socially responsible business model in the school lunch industry.
Their impact has been tremendous. On their website it states that “in just three years we have already made significant impact in the communities we serve [including] over 3.5 million meals served since inception, reaching close to 40,000 students. And, we have established key strategic partnerships with healthy food suppliers including Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, Niman Ranch, and local farmers in order to deliver on our promise of all natural, safe and fresh meals for students.” Furthermore, RevFoods worked with their partnering school “to gather anecdotal evidence reporting higher attention levels in class, less disciplinary problems, an increased interest in healthy food, and weight loss amongst their students.” These are huge achievements.
A combination of junk food in school lunches, prevalence of fast food restaurants, and minimal farmers markets in low-income areas play a substantial role in the high rates of obesity and poor nutrition. It’s not surprising that the highest rates of childhood obesity are in these same low-income areas. Lunch provides the bulk of the calories most kids consume in a day. The federal school lunch program currently serves 31 million low-income American children every day. Yet this same school lunch program has been under fire by several organizations and advocates, like Slow Food USA, Jamie Oliver, Tobey Maguire, and Whole Foods, over the ubiquitous junk food and empty calories of the school lunches. This same issue served as a major impetus for the founders of Revolution Foods.
As of last week, these organizations and food advocates can add another very significant player to their side of the argument. First Lady Michelle Obama held a press conference about her new initiative to end childhood obesity. The “Let’s Move” initiative puts a special emphasis on getting healthier choices onto school-lunch trays. With secured commitments from the food industry to reduce the amount of fat, sugar, and salt in the school lunch products, the First Lady is off to a great start. However this federal school lunch program needs more money to achieve positive change. Organizations, advocates, and nutrition experts were hoping the president’s new budget would add $1 to the current $2.69 budgeted per school lunch. This extra $1 would allot more veggies and fruits and increased nutrition, however, the budget only increased the school lunch budget by 20 cents. We are still short changing kids and their potential.
In the mean time as we continue to push impatiently for saner food policy decisions, this problem could be a great opportunity for innovative food entrepreneurs to launch a social enterprise and join RevFoods in the school lunch revolution.
I encourage advocates, innovators, and investors to come together, generate ideas, and put action towards ventures that provide an invaluable service, equipping our future leaders with nutritious energy. For a relatively small investment, these business ideas will produce high returns for investors and the whole of society.
If you would like to connect with advocates and entrepreneurs in this area, I recommend searching on Twitter. There’s a strong online sustainable food system presence, with many of them using the hashtags #Profood #Agchat and #SchoolLunch. Also, feel free to contact me @TheEcofoodie with any questions or if you would like to collaborate.
Related posts:
Pingback: uberVU - social comments