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Four Area Schools Awarded Funds to Serve Local Meals

Updated: Mar 7, 2023

Feed Our Future Local Menu Takeovers Coming Next School Year!


The Greater Cincinnati Regional Food Policy Council is excited to announce that we are granting four schools in our region a $2,500 stipend each, so their food service teams can serve four local meals in the 2022-2023 school year!


The four schools offered sub-awarded funds through our USDA Farm to School Implementation grant are Campbell County Schools, Cincinnati Public Schools, Milford Exempted Village Schools, and West Clermont Local School District.

We are piloting the Local Menu Takeover program in our region to prove that procuring local foods can be done, even in unpredictable conditions.


Feed Our Future (FOF) launched the program in Northeast Ohio in 2021 as a response to the pandemic, when quickly changing regulations left little capacity for local procurement. The “grab and go”-style meals allowed maximum flexibility for school lunch programs.


In our region's Local Menu Takeover, participating schools will select four meals from pre-planned all-local menu concepts (foodservice speak for dishes). These pre-planned concepts include all nutritional and costing analysis, training, and educational materials for students and families.


Districts that participate in this pilot will be able to serve as Greater Cincinnati Region Feed Our Future benchmark schools and mentor other districts in future years. Together, we can continue collaborating to inspire innovation around the Farm to School program in the future!

 

Funding for efforts discussed here was made possible by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service through grant AM190100XXXXG181. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the USDA.

 

🥪 Contact us at feedourfuture@greenumbrella.org for more resources about procuring local food in our schools! And sign the Feed Our Future pledge.

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