Edwards-Knox Central School District is elevating its commitment to student nutrition and health with the debut of a new self-service salad bar for high school students.
The salad bar has been an immediate success, with students and staff alike showing strong interest.
The concept for a salad bar had been popular for years but did not have the proper equipment to implement it. Food Service Director Blaine Hoppel took an incremental approach to build momentum, beginning with a rotating “salad of the day” menu.
“We kind of started out just doing a salad of the day every day, Monday through Friday,” Hoppel said. “They gained traction and were definitely popular.”
This early success paved the way for a breakthrough.
“Through a food service equipment grant, we were able to get funding to get the salad bar,” he said.
The unit was purchased over the summer and rolled out at the start of the current school year.
For Hoppel and the district, the focus is about more than just filling trays; it’s about valuing the quality of the food.
“There’s a lot of stigma of what school lunch is and what it looks like,” Hoppel said. “The first priority is that the child is being fed, but then kind of wanting to have a little more care and compassion of what that looks like, including wanting to have a broad range of nutritious items that aren’t just coming from a freezer or a pre-packaged item.”
The salad bar offers a simple, effective solution.
“It was a quick way we could provide both fresh fruits and vegetables while still counting as an entire meal for a student,” he said.
While the self-service bar is currently limited to the high school, the district ensures students at all grade levels have fresh options.
“For all of our pre-K through 8th grade students, we are still building that Monday through Friday salad menu and putting those out so they still have a salad option as well,” Hoppel said.
The district’s dedication to quality food is also intertwined with supporting the local economy through its Farm-to-School program.
“All of our butternut squash, our summer sweet corn, we get it in, it gets frozen, green beans, our sliced apples that we have every week are coming locally,” he said.
The meat served is also locally sourced. Everything from ground beef to sausage comes completely from farms within St. Lawrence County.
“It is our goal to provide the freshest fruit and vegetables while using as many local products as we can to feed our students,” Hoppel said.