School Lunch Program

[mandyspizza]

Hey Guys…

We have been invited to present a proposal to our local school district to provide their pizza for the next school year. I cannot find online the specifics as it relates to the specific requirements when making the pizza. For example…the pie size, the amount of cheese per pie, the amount of sauce…and the nutritional requirements. The school is interested in our allergen-free pizza crust and since they are a huge customer of ours they said that they would like to see our pizza in the schools…but…we need to be versed in the requirements.

Do any of you have this info? My contact at the USDA is on vacation this week and I would like to do some reading over the weekend.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Registered_Guest]

The requirements are set your local/state school boards - they might follow some federal guidelines, or they might be even more restrictive.

In their request they should have give you the specifics of what they were requesting. We bid our local school contract a couple of years ago - we spent a lot of time (and money) developing our proposal and having the nutritional information analyzed. We had to make some major changes to our product to be able to fall under the nutritional limits. Domino’s had the contract for the high schools for many years, and it was the first time in a years they put it up for bid. The contract was for almost 1000 pizzas/day - we would have made them out of 5 different stores. We would have needed to invest a lot of money in additional ovens, etc. We undercut Domino’s current price by .90 - and we still lost the bid - as Domino’s undercut themselves by $1.10.

Looking back, it was a good thing we lost. A year later, the state decided to stop using outside pizza vendors in schools. So we would have just barely recouped our investment.

There are a lot of things to think about - it is a real pain. For example, there will be a minimum temperature that the pizzas must be when they arrive - and the will temp them and reject any below.

 

[Tom_Lehmann]

Try the USDA web site at USDA.gov. The school should be able to provide you with that information too. You might also see if you can find anything on your states web site on school food nutrition. This might be important as some states have established nutritional guidelines that exceed those at the Ferdeal level. In some cases your school district may have a nutritionist that you can work with too. This used to be the case in California, but I don’t know if it still is or not. If you will e-mail me directly at [email protected] I’ll be glad to copy you on some helpful web site links. Also, if you need help, please feel free to contact or food labeling department (Elaine Meloan) at 800-633-5137 (ext. 217) as she is much more familiar withthe various sites than I am.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor