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(cheerful music)

[Archive Narrator] Yes, kids are always hungry

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and that's fine, nothing wrong with a good healthy appetite

as long as it gets taken care of at the right time

with enough of the right foods.

And here in the United States

we're lucky. Our children, none of them

need to go hungry, we've got the food.

(edgy rock music)

- What do you think is the number one complaint

I hear from kids?

- Lunch. - It's not cooked.

- [Boy] This is not cooked, it's just microwaved

and it tastes bad.

- We have a high percentage of students

living at or below the poverty level.

- Hunger is our number one concern that comes up

each and every day as an implication of poverty.

- 85% of the kids who go to the public schools in Boston

get 75% of their calories every day from schools.

(girl gags)

- When you talk to young people, you hear it

over and over again, "We want better food."

- I come out of lunch hungry.

That doesn't even make sense, to come out of lunch hungry

but I do.

- The kicker is it's a $25 billion industry

to feed kids in schools.

- They don't have knives, they don't have cutting boards,

they don't have funding.

It's hard to serve healthy foods when you have

a can opener and a microwave.

- Anything is better than what we've got right now.

What we've got right now is so bad

that kids aren't eating at all.

(edgy rock music)

(vegetable crunches)

(downbeat rock music)

All right, are we good to go, okay.

(downbeat rock music)

- Jennie's down there. - I don't know my way around.

To the right.

So I was in a school one day and

we were going to do a food tasting

and when I walked into the cafeteria,

it was a heating oven and a freezer.

And they opened the freezer and showed me the food

and the food was all frozen

and I later found out it was shipped up from Long Island

and it was all wrapped in plastic.

They showed me how they heated it up in the plastic,

served it in the plastic,

and I said, is that the way we feed kids?

And he goes, "Primarily, the majority of urban kids

are probably fed that way."

And it's very efficient and there's big businesses

built around it and that's how it is.

So is that the best way to do it?

- That's very standard way to do it, yeah.

- Okay.

- They are within the nutritional guidelines

of the USDA program and the dietary guidelines

for Americans, they don't look healthy, but they are.

- Sure, and what are you using to heat it up now?

(doors creak)

(downbeat rock music)

I don't know that I was well equipped for it.

Except for that I've always been an entrepreneur

and challenges like this are really interesting to me.

I've started a bunch of companies,

I've raised tons of money, I've sold companies,

I've created product, I've done all kinds of things.

(downbeat rock music)

We were going to be launching this foundation

focusing on education and healthcare

and I know how important nutrition is in food.

And so I figured I'd just dig in and see

if it could be fixed.

Hey, Ed, I'm Jill Shaw. - Hi, Jill,

what's going on? - So nice to meet you.

- Come on in. - Thank you for having us.

- Hey Ross, how are you? - Nice to meet you.

- This sounds awesome and ambitious,

but it's awesomely complicated and awesomely ambitious

at the same time, right? - Right.

- So unfortunately... - That's the only things

we do, we decided. - Go big or stay home.

- Exactly. - I mean, that's it.

- So tell me. - The food service industry

as a whole is in a massive crisis for skilled labor, right?

- Really? - Oh my goodness.

You have the world of not to be diminishing or condescending

but the lunch lady, that can be a guy or a woman

and they have a very short list of tricks, right,

and they know what they know and one thing

that lunch ladies and men don't like to do is change.

You're asking a woman who's later in their career path

to say, "Okay, well, now this is on the wall

"and I'm touch screening something,"

versus where'd my on-off switch go?

And look, the reality is the plumbing side of things

gives us a heart attack every project.

Engineers will tell you nothing can be done.

It's too much trouble, especially maintenance guys

on site, because they just want their life to be easy.

- And then right now there's a rule

that says that schools can't deal with uncooked meat

so they bring in all the animal proteins cooked?

- Mmhmm, food safety is a constant concern.

They're trying to hedge their bets

and bringing in raw chicken in their mind

is like nuclear waste. - "Why are we dealing?", yeah.

- But there's a brave world out there

that deals with raw chicken on a daily basis successfully,

so, I mean, but that's how we've got to where we are,

right, that's how we've gotten to the meals

that these kids are eating. - Right.

- Dumb it down, make it safer, make it cheaper,

reduce the labor load, how do you feed 200 kids

with two lunch ladies?

In their mind, you call Tyson and tell 'em to send me

fully cooked chicken fingers.

- Yep, now let's go in the freezer.

Hey, does she need yogurt?

I have more yogurt, this is all that's left til tomorrow.

You've gotta see downstairs, Colby,

is there any barbecue sauce?

This job is not an easy job.

So we need turkey sandwiches and egg salad sandwiches

and we can make 'em, right?

We all work hard, at the end of the day.

So no matter what school you go to, everybody's working.

You don't see people standing around.

Linda, what'd you do with that case of butter yesterday?

(upbeat music)

All right, there's only like four left.

(upbeat music)

(kids murmur)

We range from 1100 to 1200 kids,

today will probably be over 1100.

The first lunch will be like three something,

then we go back in there, we cook the second lunch

and then we cook in between second and third lunch

for third lunch. So that way it's a little easier

because everything's packaged.

All that stuff that's in those packages is processed,

not like us, I think we do a good job.

The food, the presentation.

(upbeat music)

You get to see the kids and they're smiling, they're happy

and they know what they're eating!

And when they come back for a second

and you can't give it, you feel bad but

come back for second is a good thing.

- That means you're doing something right.

- Yep. - Yes and no

because maybe they're coming back for seconds

because they're hungry, they don't have food at home, so...

- You're right.

Half of these kids don't have a home.

- A lot of kids, they say, "I eat here and I go to work."

- "And I haven't eaten since I ate here yesterday."

That's what they say, that's what they say,

say, Jennie, I ate lunch and that was the last thing I ate,

and I say to 'em, Honey, if I could give it to you,

I'd give you anything you wanted,

but I can't give it to you.

- Maybe some of them dropped out because their

parents are sick.

(kids murmur)

- Gardner Pilot Academy is located in

Allston, Massachusetts. We are a Boston Public School.

We're very close to Harvard University.

(kids murmur)

Allston is an incredibly diverse community,

while it's perceived as serving primarily college students,

it is rated as the third highest poverty rate

in the city of Boston.

When you start to actually hear the stories of children,

where food insecurity is such a real thing for them,

it's beyond what you can fathom when that's not your reality.

The number one reason kids come to the nurse's office

is due to stomach pain and most of that

is related to symptoms around hunger.

(kids murmur)

- [Girl] I eat broccoli, I love broccoli.

- [Jill] You love broccoli, do you like the school broccoli?

- No, it's like watery. - Tastes watery.

- [Jill] You're right about that.

- So I think it became a dream about 10 years ago.

As a principal, you have to be responsive to your kids

and your families and wanting a kitchen here

was not something I was like, oh, as a principal

I want to go and build a kitchen.

It was every year talking to children

and them telling you what are the things

that don't work here.

- I like cooked food, not microwaved food.

- Some of us don't even eat the whole day

'cause the food's bad.

- Did you eat this? - Nope.

- [Jill] So what did you really eat for lunch today,

this and a cheese stick is what you had for lunch?

- Yeah, yeah. - And nothing else?

- Nope. - All I had was milk.

- [Jill] All you had for lunch for today was milk?

- Yep. - I had carrots and milk.

- What did you have, Carl? - Carrots and milk.

- [Jill] Carrots and milk, what did you have?

- I ate the sun butter. - You had the sun butter?

- What I had? - What did you have for lunch?

- Four cheese sticks and milk. (laughs)

- Four cheese sticks and milk and nothing else

for lunch today? - Yep.

- What did you have for breakfast?

(somber music)

- [Woman] You have reached Boston Public School's

Facilities Management

and Planning and Engineering Department.

- Jill had approached me and was just starting

the Shah Family Foundation and asked if I would

be the first executive director.

- All right, is that time confirmed, 10 o'clock?

Having Ross involved in this was critical.

He is from the Boston Public School system,

he understands how to navigate his way around,

he understands how to move through a bureaucracy

and get things done.

- Change is incredibly hard in any large system

and there's so many different entities involved.

I was told some things when I was a teacher

and then a principal and then a central office administrator

and even as a parent, that the way things were

was because it's just the way it is,

is what I was used to hearing.

(downbeat rock music)

- We want every kid in Boston to get fresh food

made daily, made locally which is highly nutritious

and is delicious.

That's step one.

The only way that you can get better food

is you need to have kitchens.

The missing link in solving this riddle

is getting kitchens into every school.

The schools in Boston are some of the oldest

in terms of buildings and facilities in the country.

The reason there are no kitchen is that when they were built

kids would go home at midday for lunch.

[Archive Narrator] Healthy scholars need healthy food.

- In 1945, Congress started the school lunch program

because during the draft, the number one medical reason

that otherwise qualified Americans couldn't serve

was poor nutrition.

- [Archive Narrator] The school now has a fully equipped

lunch room where hot food is served to all pupils

at a nominal charge.

- [Dariush] So the government moved

to really rapidly address

undernutrition and they were very effective.

- [ Archive Narrator] For the poorer children,

there's no charge at all.

- [Dariush] They moved to ensure that food was produced

in more quantity and it was produced as cheaply as possible

- [Narrator] 600 quality wieners pass through

the famous hot dog highway.

- [Dariush] Unintentionally at the same time,

food technology was advancing.

We had an explosion of highly processed foods

rich in starch and sugar and sodium and trans fat.

- [ Archival Narrator] Mmm, yummy.

- And so we went from undernutrition,

too little nutrients, to poor nutrition

in terms of too many processed foods

and that's really the crisis that's facing us today.

- [Jill] In the 1970s, the city started cooking

for the public schools from a central commissary

serving prepackaged, processed meals.

- This here area used to be what we call our can room.

We used to have a large can opener here,

we'd bring 100 cases of applesauce in here

or 100 cases of pineapple chunks,

staff would open up the applesauce,

we'd have blending tanks,

they would dump it right into the blending tanks,

we'd add starch and the blending tanks

would attach to our server lines

so it would pump out applesauce or fruit cocktail,

whatever would be on our cold line.

- Just to make it more thicker

so it wouldn't be, to make it more thick

when you're eating it so it wouldn't be as watery.

In 2005, we were using the same equipment

that was installed in 1971, so

a decision was made by the district to outsource the meals.

- The current vending meal provider is a company

called Whitson's.

They ship to the state of Boston from Long Island.

So I understand there is a $25 billion industry

to feed kids in schools

and when venture and business

see that kind of an opportunity

of course they're gonna go after it.

But the onus is on us to figure that out because it

doesn't feel right, it's a US government subsidy

that's supporting the food that goes into

these kids' mouths and it's also paying for plastic wrap

and transportation and logistics

and operational inefficiencies and profit.

Some segment of every dollar is paying for those things

instead of for broccoli and chicken and, you know, food.

(kids shout) (bell rings)

- Many Spanish kids come to this school

and when we serve Spanish food, they don't like it.

Hamburger and hot dogs, chicken nugget,

chicken tenders, those are the favorite food.

They're looking for American food. (laughs)

(kids murmur)

- We have the opportunity to feed all our children

at no cost, you would think everybody's coming.

They're not, so what is it?

(kids murmur)

- Every meal that's taken is reimbursed

by the federal government and so participation rate

is very important to the school system.

- Take your food, come here, honey,

you have to take your food, okay?

- For every lunch that we serve,

we get reimbursed about $3.28 or 29 cents.

I'd live and die by that little budget

because the more meals you serve,

the bigger your budget becomes.

(bell dings) (downbeat music)

- If you do the math on 57,000 students,

you're in the like $85 million a year range.

It's not a bad budget.

(bell dings)

But, I mean, the crazy thing is that if a child

takes a plate off the line and types in their number,

it counts as a meal, like, they could dump it

in the trash.

(kids murmur)

- To get a reimbursable meal,

we have to serve five components,

a meat, meat alternate, a grain, a fruit component,

vegetable component and dairy.

Students need to take three out of the five components.

And at least one of those components

has to be a half cup fruit or vegetable.

(bell dings)

- There is nothing, not in hospitals,

not on military bases, not the food that goes out

to the supermarkets, not anything compares

to the level of regulation and oversight in school food.

- Vegetables are broken down into different subgroups.

The red orange subgroup, dark leafy greens,

legumes, we have to offer starches.

Breakfast is a little bit trickier.

We offer eight to 10 servings of grain.

We can only offer protein sources like eggs,

cheese, yogurt, for all our grain,

to offer 3/4 of a cup a day.

And over the course of the week

that is three and 3/4 cup. - Okay, all right.

- I'll start over.

(kids murmur)

It's not like I didn't grow up eating Twizzlers

and all this prepackaged stuff, I love all of the stuff

that the food industry created, it tastes great, but this is so

inherently critical to the success of a kid.

When the child gets good food, it's transformative

in the classroom, they're more teachable.

(kids murmur)

(upbeat music)

- The USDA doesn't regulate sugar,

so there's no regulation to go by.

* Sugar

* Oh honey honey

* You are my candy girl

* And you got me wanting you

- In the beginning of the year, we did not allow maple syrup

We tried to get the kids to use applesauce instead

and our participation went down

and we brought back maple syrup.

* Pour a little sugar on me honey *

* Pour a little sugar on me baby *

- Did you ever think school lunch would be this difficult?

(woman laughs)

* Honey honey

* Sugar sugar

* Sugar sugar

* Honey honey

* Sugar sugar

* You are my candy girl

* My oh my *

- When you have a certain level of stature

in the community, you can call on exactly

who you want to call on to help so I was able

to call the mayor's office and 'cause the access

came from the top, every door opened.

All right, what do we got here?

Jeepers creepers, well.

There's 80 satellite schools in Boston.

Satellite kitchens have nothing in them.

- This is my place where I work. (laughs)

You see?

- Where do they walk, they walk in and out?

So the notion is that we would take full service kitchens

which we call hubs and we would attach to them

a series of spokes which are satellite kitchens.

The hub would prep the food every day,

it gets delivered out to the satellite schools

and the satellite schools would cook them, finish them

and serve them to kids.

(downbeat music)

- The concept was to put a small finishing kitchen

that you often see in fast casual restaurants.

In 400 square feet in a basement

of a school that was built in 1900.

- Electrical.

I told the city that we could fund the transformation,

we could be a bridge as they move from one system

to a new system.

We felt that if we could figure this out here,

then other cities would be able to replicate

what we've done.

- How are you doing? - Good, and you?

- The city advised us, start in East Boston.

Choose three schools in East Boston

and work with East Boston

High School to be the hub.

And so we're looking at the Bradley School,

the PJ Kennedy and the Early Education Center

in East Boston, the spokes, if you will,

so a hub and spoke model.

- If we want to put a salad bar in both of these places,

can we do that, like is there a space to do that?

- I'm dead set against salad bars in schools.

For food safety, the issue is the sinks.

- Yeah, the issue is the sinks.

(somber music)

So some of the chefs that we were working with

have told us about these combination ovens

so they're a combination of steam and heat.

They're kind of magical in terms of what that does

to food, it can make food look fried but it's not fried.

And these things taste unbelievably good.

This is what we're understanding, combi ovens,

so you could finish, to reheat, finish,

you need a cold serving area to do.

- Almost every chef we've spoken to said that's --

Yeah.

- One of the big goals that the student leadership team,

we've been really actively working on

is how do we improve the quality of lunches?

So this is your chance to really think

about how do we change, redesign breakfast and lunch?

What's the food gonna look like,

what's the kitchen gonna look like, what's gonna happen?

- Ooh, I like this idea. - I mean, like a salad bar.

- You know, how Subway has their pick your own sandwich?

- [Jill] Billy kept saying to me, "you gotta meet Erica,

she's just like you."

- So like middle schoolers would get a bigger plate

than lower grades?

- [Jill] I don't know if the first time we met,

she actually knew that we were also interested

in kitchens and food but for her it was fundamental.

- Like today, they had that sun butter sandwich,

an apple in plastic and carrots

and if they don't like that, that's what they got.

- I mean, my hope would be that we could,

we could duke this out later, but there would be salad bars

and then there would be a hot service line

but the hot service line would be delivered.

- Based on my experience and I'm not saying I'm right,

well, I am right about this.

(women laugh)

I like the idea of a salad bar and I said this to Jill

behind the line, for food safety.

- Totally fine, I don't care how they get it.

- Especially with the norovirus, it's just.

- Fine, they don't have to do it themselves.

I'll have someone give it to them.

It's like if they could have an option or add to that.

Like if you're an eighth grader and you're starving,

a sun butter sandwich ain't gonna do it.

- I think everybody has an interest in supporting

the Gardner and Erica's leadership on this.

But Allston Brighton went outside of the initial scope

of the hub and spoke program. And so separate from that

initial project, it would have to be named

as an additional project and an additional procurement process

would have to happen.

- Our level of readiness is there.

Whatever's gonna be piloted,

how can we be a part of the solution

and I agree, we want to fix it for all 54,000 kids

across the district. Like, where can we fit

inside a bigger plan? - Right.

So let me, we have a meeting with Laura tomorrow,

we'll get back to you. - Absolutely,

that would be great, yeah. - Just ask,

we can figure it out.

- So we're gonna do a quick test here.

We're gonna put these in for about five minutes

with the fan ramping up, again, auto reversing,

right, you're gonna get the best of both worlds.

- Could you do the chicken and the broccoli together?

- You could. - You know,

so first of all, we got to buy in from Billy

on the equipment, we had him go out and test combi ovens.

We had all this pushback on combination ovens

a while ago.

- What's it, like a fan? - Yeah, so it's fans

in the back.

- [Jill] When he saw today's version, he liked 'em.

- We wanted to try to prove a proof of concept

that could show that we could actually,

Boston can cook for Boston.

- [Ross] Right now I've got my steam temperature set at 195.

- [Ross] We knew that the city of Boston was talking about

potential investments into infrastructure

in the Boston public schools. - Put my product in.

- [Ross] So the pressure we are faced with was let's do this

in the right timing so the city could make this

part of their investment.

- So where is the cut?

Right there, oh.

At PJK, we need a vent guy.

And we need a plumber.

At EEC, we needed a plumber.

We still need a contractor to install the exhaust fans

at PJK and Bradley. - Right now, it looks like

we might be here at six a.m. tomorrow.

- We had about two months to have the equipment delivered.

- They've broken up into pieces. Muscle. Muscle.

- [Ross] The construction done to install the equipment

in the schools.

- So you're getting a brand new cooler,

brand new refrigerator, brand new freezer,

combination oven.

So all of this happens soon, starting like next week

and then over the summer is when they'll deal

with all the rest of it. - Perfect, okay.

- All right? - Great.

- We're gonna make it a brand new PJK.

- Yes, I can't wait.

- Anywhere along the way, we may decide,

oh my God, this thing is totally not cost effective

and it's not gonna work, because we got to collect

a bunch of data, like what's it gonna take to get it right

for four consecutive Wednesdays.

I find being an entrepreneur really exciting.

I like not exactly knowing where I'm going,

I like that there's a bunch of different ideas to test,

I like that you might fail, I like even more

that you might succeed, but I like being in that space.

So we just need a truck and a driver to help take food

from East Boston High School and deliver it

to three schools, what if we just call Uber?

- [Jill] Really, the driver has to be?

- I don't know, let's look it up.

(rock music)

- Alright, bye.. Alright, we gotta roll!

- Thank you.

- The FDA told Nashoba Brook Bakery

that they needed to remove love from their label

when it's listed under ingredients

and the FDA gave 'em a warning and said love

is not an ingredient, which I don't agree with,

love has a vibration and I think it's impactful.

- We're talking about FDA here, guys,

like if you start letting shit in like love,

where does it stop?

- There's definitely, there's a vibration to love.

- I'll just argue that it doesn't belong

on an ingredient list. (laughs)

- [Jill] What's an ingredient, though?

It has to be a physical thing? - Yes.

- [Jill] But what's physical 'cause everything's energy?

- Um, Ingredients are physical.

(Jill laughs)

- Yesterday's breakfast, I didn't get to see the sugar,

the sugar content was in a wrapper,

a wrapped up processed round thing.

And then there was a fruit cup, not a fresh fruit cup,

fake fruit and that was breakfast.

- It's not fake fruit, just to throw that on the table.

It's real fruit in there, so.

We just want to be aware of that.

- Why is Boston so tribal?

And Boston is very tribal.

- We deal with kids.

You're never going to please every single kid.

- [Louisa] That friction that you see seems to be real.

- You are still going to keep doing this satellite thing

forever if you don't change it.

- [Louisa] You know, people don't want to be on a committee,

they want to be the star of the committee.

- So we kind of gave up an idea of having a,

what we call a hub and a spoke.

There was an idea of doing something like the hub and spoke

project, years and years ago,

but it didn't get off the ground.

it's a pilot, to see how it would work.

This time around we had the drive and the funding

to move forward.

- So with financial support. - This financial support

comes from the Family Foundation.

The Shah Family Foundation...

I thought, this is a wealthy woman's desire and drive

to get involved in yet another project...

I've seen a lot of these come and go.

- We're really not talking about

what we're putting on the plate.

This is to get to the plate, right,

let's talk about what's really on the plate right now.

- It's not because I want to give back.

I don't feel like I owe the world anything.

I don't, I mean, the problem is like

you can't turn on a dime when you're working 100%

with the US government subsidies.

I just feel best when I am in it to help fix things.

It's a big school system and it's baby steps

and you gotta go where you have support

so that you can prove out a model and learn as much as

you need to learn so that you can do it comprehensively,

but I don't know how you change it.

This is a big problem and we think that we have

a solution to it.

We're not going away.

(kids murmur)

- It's 93.8 cents for each peanut butter and jelly sandwich

How many components are in the peanut butter

and jelly sandwich? - Three.

- Okay, I hear three, I hear grain and I hear protein

and I hear fruit.

Jelly is not a fruit, I'm just letting you know,

it's not a fruit.

One of my goals before we launched the pilot

was that we wanted all of our employees

to be part of the training, so we did a really

robust boot camp because moving from a satellite serving

process to a cooking process is completely different.

- What if they don't take a fruit?

In our school, some kids just take a peanut butter jelly

and a milk.

- Then it's not a reimbursable meal.

You must have a fruit or a vegetable

as part of a reimbursable meal.

(upbeat music)

- Have any of you guys eaten tofu here?

It's gonna be a challenge to not only get kids

to be excited about it,

but it's gonna be a challenge to figure out

how we're gonna cook it to get kids excited about it.

- [Jill] So I reached out to Ken Oringer.

- So put in a little bit of paprika.

- [Jill] Ken, of course, is a chef,

he runs incredible restaurants in the city

and around the world.

- [Ken] The important thing in my opinion to make tofu tasty

is to make sure that you drain out as much

of that water as possible.

- One day they just showed up, Jill came in and said

it was gonna start here.

- So the ordering, receiving, the decisions

about how much food goes out and how many pans,

all the chopping, the dicing, the slicing, the mixing,

the assembling.

- They didn't say, do you want to or don't you,

they were like, this is what we're gonna do now.

We're like, okay, we'll do it.

(upbeat music)

But we learned from the chef.

- No, don't be shy, don't be embarrassed

and if you have any questions, we're here for you.

- [Jennie ] I liked seeing the girls getting involved.

- Perfect.

- [Jennie] And the oven's great.

(group murmurs)

I was excited.

- I mean, I wish they had this kinda stuff

when I was growing up.

- Remember the government chicken in a can?

It looked like tuna?

That was for the poor people, though.

If you were rich, you didn't have that,

only the poor people have that.

(group laughs)

I was one of those poor people.

- Yeah, we's poor but we's proud.

When we would get our grilled cheese sandwiches,

they would be inside the plastic all burnt

to the plastic and they'd just toss it on a tray.

- Yeah. - Oh yeah.

That's Jersey for you.

- We only know East Boston, me, her, her, her.

Me and Gabrielle, we're here 23 years,

I grew up with her parents, Nancy,

I knew her when she was in her mother's womb

and Corinne has the same relatives as me

and we all graduated here too,

so we all know, but we're all in the same neighborhood.

- I hope you're not offended by us white coats coming in.

We're not trying to show you what to do or not.

- The blue shirts aint afraid of the white coats, okay?

(group laughs)

We ain't afraid of the white coats.

- You have cilantro? - Oh, I think so.

- Because we can add that to chopped tomatoes,

we can make a nice salsa for the tacos too.

I love this because to be able to cook fish tacos,

they have a huge Latino population in here,

so it's kind of a no brainer that we should serve something

where we can get them fish which a lot of these kids

don't have the opportunity to eat a lot of fish

and then we can serve with Chipotle mayonnaise

and fresh tomato salsa and hopefully guacamole

and they can see how you can make nutritious food

taste really great. - Ken Oringer going rogue

in the kitchen, Jennie, don't look,

Jennie, don't look. - We usually don't use salt.

(group laughs)

But it's ours, it's our personal salt for us.

- I brought it with me.

- When we eat, we add salt.

- [Jill] Oh my God, you have your own salt?

- We have our own salt. - Salt in moderation

is not a bad thing.

Yeah, look at this, 24% in this but we're not allowed

to put salt on the tomato salsa, you know how much salt

24% is, it's like. - It's a lot of salt.

- [Ken] Yeah, and I think all the salt is being used

in all the wrong places. - Yep.

- [Jennie] Oh my God, those are beautiful.

You see how golden they are?

Okay, ready? - Ready?

- Ready?

(tacos crunch)

- [Jennie] Oh, it's good, that sauce is delicious.

- And with the fish it's so good.

- Oh my God, I'm on a diet. (laughs)

(kids shriek)

- [Erica] Okay, so we wanted to get back to you

about the kitchens.

- Yes. - So over in East Boston

we're just placing the order now for freezers,

fridges, hot and cold serving tables,

what's called the combi oven,

this is probably about $50,000 of equipment.

- Okay. - So we are happy

to make a donation of all of that equipment to

Gardner as well. - That's awesome.

- Yay. - That is really exciting.

Yeah, I have a big glowing smile on my face

which is what I was hoping you were gonna tell me today

but I wasn't sure, that's amazing.

(group cheers)

- [Jill] Gardner just scored a goal on the boys' soccer team

and just tied up the game. - That's fantastic.

- I know, that was great.

Well, this is awesome, thank you so much.

- You're very welcome. - Good luck this week.

- [Jill] That's great news. (laughs)

- [All] GPS, GPS.

- We just got $50,000.

- Whoo! - I know.

- That's awesome.

(kids chant "GPS")

(gentle music)

- Take the chicken over there and start laying chicken.

Now we're going to the next school, ready,

we're on PJ Kennedy, let's go, PJ Kennedy,

we're gonna do the apples first.

Linda, where's their cucumbers?

Deb, leave my girls alone, they're working.

* They're working hard for their money *

(laughs) Right, Elsa? - Yeah.

- I was supposed to go to the gym this morning,

like I didn't go 'cause I was thinking of this.

The food we get delivered here, the carrots,

all the vegetables, all the fruit

and we would have to do temperatures and logs and--

we just prep it, put it together,

they tell me how many they needed

and we'd portion it out and put it in cameos

and send it off on the truck.

- Go as far as you want to.

- 10 minutes, everybody.

Thank you, honey, go try a fish.

- [Ross] The spring pilot

was really an all hands on deck experience.

We had food nutrition service staff on site,

we had the foundation staff on site.

- Green apples. - We have green apples.

- [Ross] We were serving food on hot and cold serving lines

for the first time.

- Are we really putting chocolate milk on show?

Are you kidding me?

- Here they come!

How are you guys?

- Okay, come on, guys, let's go, very exciting,

let's go, let's go!

- Raise your hand if you want a cheeseburger

Cheeseburger, who wants a cheeseburger?

- Cheeseburger.

- Chef, we're gonna need some more cheeseburgers.

- Hi lovey, would you like meatballs or chicken salad

or chicken? Would you like meatballs?

Would you like meatballs?

What we wanted to make sure of was that you could provide

fresh, nutritious food that kids love under

the price of vended meals.

Chicken Caesar salad.

Our goal was to make sure that the city

could operate this within the subsidy.

(upbeat music)

- You're gonna try the fish too?

- All right, okay,

open your mouth, I'll squeeze it in.

Want some spicy special sauce?

Yeah, two drops, three drops, all right.

- It's very good.

(kids chatter)

- Everything is good. - Everything is good?

- Yeah. - Everything.

- They like it better than McDonald's, which is probably

the best compliment ever, but we are different

from McDonald's, we are a highly regulated program

so our hamburger buns are whole grain and our

beef patties are lower in sodium and so is our cheese,

lower in sodium and fat.

- The best lunch I had like in school for years

and I've been here three years.

- Three years? - Yeah.

- [Laura] So we're exposing them to something

that they recognize but it's also nutritious.

(upbeat music)

- [Jill] It blew kids' minds.

(upbeat music)

- Good!

- [Jill] You know, you can see

how it's completely transformative.

- What are we gonna tell the kids tomorrow

when they're gonna eat that crappy food tomorrow?

That's something you gotta do.

- How did they make it?

Oh, they cook it?

I like it, I want to eat this every day.

- This is just a pilot program.

- You guys know what you're doing,

we all know what we're doing.

We need people that are not you guys doing the work.

- [Woman] And I think that will come with the next phase.

- You also know, you need your employees,

I need my employees back here working,

that's what we should've had today

to really see if it's gonna work.

- It might not be exactly how we would do it next year,

but this is like just a pilot, so it's a kickoff.

- Mmm.

- I have three of these, if you need these,

you know what I need to get.

I don't know what they're gonna do for hours.

For the satellite schools.

There's no way we can cook 600 more kids

and not get more hours, there's no way.

- [Man] There were only six in this oven?

Should be a full 10.

- We're just barely making it, sometimes

we don't even get a break.

But I know these women will have my back

and we'll have each other, we'll make it as a team work.

Yeah, do that.

- A lot of people was here today.

Everybody was excited because everything is new.

But it's a lot of work to do because it's extra work.

- [Woman] Really?

Lots of stuff.

- Very casual, but just to debrief on anything, anything

'cause we've got two months to plan for how we

go back to executing in the fall, so I think anything

we can just get on the table now.

- The only problem I had is like every day

there was changing something in the menu,

they were like, okay, we don't want peaches,

they don't have peaches 'cause they were frozen

so we're gonna do watermelon, so we need 200 watermelon,

now I'm like, okay, how many watermelon do I need to cut

which I didn't know how many watermelon I need

because we don't serve watermelon, really.

- Right, menu changes needed to be more consistent, right?

- Yeah. - Okay now,

let me just get your reaction to this.

The beef that we order right now,

that we cook down, it comes salted,

it comes prepared, all we're doing is heating it up,

what if we bought a roast beef and cooked it down?

You end up, if you do the calculations,

you save half a million dollars on beef

and you get a better product.

- My concern would be the handling of the fresh food.

It's a much higher risk to get foodborne illness

and we've never ever had an outbreak here in BPS.

It's gonna eliminate a lot of people.

- A lot of people are not certified.

- That are not qualified to cook that kind of food.

- You could just hire a cook off team.

It would just be a different time of day.

- You're gonna have to go up a lot more on your pay grades.

I mean. (laughs)

And that's across the board because you can't have

a cook making more than a manager, who's responsible

for running the whole show.

- We have to make sure that we're understanding

if we're changing the position,

then you want to make sure that you put in the person

in there that can adapt to the position,

who can do it and wants to do it.

- Right. - You've got three,

with the possibility of having two to three people.

- I can't see any of them doing that.

- And if they're kind of interested,

kind of qualified, kinda not,

they're just kinda doing it because they feel

they have no other options, guess where the weak links start

(woman murmurs inaudibly)

- No, never.

- We need to look at how we're gonna train our staff

to be able to meet those needs.

(upbeat music)

(kids giggle)

- So right now we're sort of on a waiting period.

We've got some funding, we've raised a significant amount

of interest and donors and we're ready to go

and we're in that place where right now we're waiting

for the total number of what it would cost.

I actually have right here the plans of what

some potential ideas are, so the architect

was able to come up with different proposals

of how the kitchen would look and now he's waiting

to hear from the plumber, from the electrician,

some of the other technical sides.

I'm also waiting to hear back from some central people

in the city, lots of emails have gone out,

lots of phone calls have gone out.

I haven't gotten any official notification

of what's actually happening.

- Laura did not respond back to me,

so finally I texted her, she texted back.

I got your response to the email, I'm sorry I'm dealing

with a couple of nightmares, but that she'd call me at one.

(laughs) So it's 1:20, so anyway.

We felt like if we could push hard to get them cooking

and delivering food, before the end of the school year,

you would just use that momentum to take you

right through the summer, right?

(laughs) It's so interesting what happened instead,

instead it literally just...

There was silence, there was absolute silence.

- We can't get a call scheduled.

We can't get on the same page around menu or procurement.

We get constant pushback around equipment

as if, like, there's only one way to do this

which is about two decades old thinking.

School systems are not in the business of doing food.

- Mmhmm, not knowing whether or not the support was there

at the higher levels of the school system

and in the city, that just made us waver.

- The people in the system can't keep up.

- Because you're not gonna get anywhere without support.

Right.

- The system loses focus, gets distracted,

goes to a different fire, and

leaves the operating dollars on the table.

- As we were working through the logistics

of the east Boston hub and spoke project,

we impacted three small satellite schools.

That's just a small subset representative

of the entire district.

We still have to have a program in place

to be able to provide vended meals to our children.

All 85 of those satellite schools.

- The contract was up, the bid process came around

and there were three bidders, Whitson's,

which was the incumbent, Preferred Meals,

and Revolution Foods.

It wasn't exactly a transparent or open process.

We assumed that essentially it was another sandbagging

attempt to just give the contract again to Whitson's,

that the decision to give it to the same vendor

was already in the bag.

- There you go, this is big boy school, man,

there you go, big boy school.

(upbeat music)

- Hi, how are you guys, it's good to see you.

You ready? - I'm always ready.

- Revolution Foods won the contract for this school year.

It was a good step for the district

because Revolution Foods represented

a lot of the things that we wanted in reference to

clean labels, cleaner ingredients.

- What's up, hi!

How's lunch? - Good.

- Is it good?

- Yes I am.

- The mayor of Boston.

(upbeat music)

- If we look at it per meal, it's probably about 21,

22 cents more per plate, but as a committee

and as a city, we evaluated all of the proposals

that were presented to us and we thought

that this was the best value.

- I knew that the school system

was most likely not gonna use the current vendor

because there was real concern about the quality of food.

I was surprised that the school system

agreed to a contract with a vendor

that was higher than the USDA reimbursable rate.

- Oh, it's so much better, yes, it's much much better.

We're gonna figure it out, we've budgeted for it.

We knew we wanted something that was higher quality

and we knew we needed to pay for it and if it's about

getting our young people something better,

I think it's worth it.

- You should have one, it's good, I'm telling you.

- We knew people would be smitten with Revolution Foods,

at least for the first few weeks.

But we also knew that people would get tired

of Revolution Foods, this is the same thing

that's happened with every food vendor

who's come into Boston.

- It's way more expensive for the city to go with Rev Foods

so unless your food is substantially better,

substantially, like basically unless they've solved

the riddle, so yeah, I'm a little surprised. (laughs)

But I'm a sales and marketing girl at heart

so I also commend them on their ability to win

the contract.

(kids murmur)

- There was some hope that this new vendor,

it was supposed to be much healthier options

for our kids and it does provide more choice

but we'll see and take a look at

what they actually are getting.

And as you can tell, there is a lot of

plastic, so this is, what is this today?

I actually don't even know what it is from the top of it.

This would be the pizza, so again.

Oh, this is the third option and this is?

- That's turkey and cheese.

- Turkey and cheese what? - On a flatbread.

- Turkey and cheese on a flatbread, so I'm a kid,

I look at this, I have no idea what this is.

This is it, this is our food services right now.

(kids murmur)

Sometimes in urban education and people who are

often marginalized in our society,

we think that if we give them just a little bit

they'll be okay.

It may be healthier than what we had before,

but it's not good enough.

Don't bring them, take them and if I see them again,

I take them.

* Yo

* We're gonna show y'all what we be snacking on *

* You dig?

* Okay

* Hot Cheetos and Takis

* Hot Cheetos and Takis

* I can't get enough

* Of these Hot Cheetos and Takis *

- When students are younger, they'll eat what's

in front of them because they're hungry

and that's what's given and as they get older,

instead of eating a school lunch that's provided,

they get small amounts of change and they stop

at the corner store to buy a dollar bag of Takis or chips.

* Hot Cheetos and Takis

* Hot Cheetos and Takis

- These Takis, which are really bad for you,

they're chips, but they're the in thing.

Where's your lunch, did you give it away?

Who's eating your lunch?

- Javier. - Javier ate the lunch?

- What do you think that we need to do to help kids

understand, how do we help you make better choices?

- I would just want better food.

- [Erica] We want to make a deal, eat one of these,

you gotta eat something better than potato chips, okay?

* Hot Cheetos and Takis, wow

* Snack, snack, snack

* Crunch

* Snack, snack, snack

* Munch

* Hot Cheetos and Takis

* Hot Cheetos and Takis

* You can catch me *

(phone rings)

- Hi Laura. - I just want you

to be aware that the menu that we had planned on,

lightly breaded chicken, is on there.

- Well, no, I don't think so because we had a discussion

about if we were going to do frozen proteins,

then leave the frozen proteins just as they are.

I think that was a pretty clear point

and then tangerino sauce, whatever that is

which is prepackaged, that's why Ken spent

so much time teaching sauces, so I don't know,

I don't know that we're on the same page still.

- [Laura] The district is in and moving this forward,

again, my apologies that it is coming across

that we are not, that's not the intent.

- I feel like the city has either got to want to fix it

or they've got to decide they don't,

that this is good enough, that they've decided

that they're gonna pay for this new contract

and it's gonna be good.

And then problem solved.

- Can I say one thing, Laura, that has nothing to do

with this menu?

Yesterday, when we were working on this saying

we need the ingredient list, we need the menu items,

your team says, we won't have it to you until tomorrow

and then when we get it, it says we're gonna use leftover

fruits and vegetables and we're gonna used canned crap.

That to me sends a message that it's like I don't care

about this, right? We will solve this issue,

but it's gonna happen again next week,

it's gonna happen again the week after.

If something does not change with the team

taking this seriously.

I know you do, Laura, but your team is not.

That's all I want to say.

- I understand. - Okay.

- [Laura] And I hear you loud and clear.

(upbeat music)

- [Ross] So I would move the hot

and the cold and switch 'em.

- Switch 'em, okay. - 'Cause you're ending.

- 'cause we're gonna end with the cheese.

- You're ending with the cheese.

- We can do that.

The summer had been challenging.

Scratch that, these plugs don't line up.

But we were very focused on making sure

that this project worked and that we continued

the momentum that had been made in the spring.

Perfect.

(upbeat music)

- Getting the new vendor, Revolution Foods,

off the ground and ready to start in the fall,

I think we just lost a little bit of focus.

- Okay, we're here.

- So it was an opportunity for me to be reminded

that this project is really important.

- Have you guys made the sauce for the chickpeas?

- We'll add the spinach once we get it on the steam table

'cause it'll cook itself then.

- I wanna try one. - You wanna try?

- Can I see what that is? - What do you guys think?

- Is this Chinese food? - Does it taste like Chinese?

It's kind of Indian influenced, it's called

a garbanzo bean. - Garbanzo?

- Garbanzo, right, you got it.

(kids squeal)

- All right, what are you having?

A meatball sandwich, pasta with meatballs,

or you can have a vegetarian dinner.

- [Ross] During this pilot,

we maintained a cafeteria manager

and then added a chef in each of the schools.

- You want the pasta and meatballs or the meatball sandwich?

- Meatballs. - All right.

- [Lauren] Santiago is really passionate about cooking.

He's really passionate about engaging the kids.

- [Santiago] Enjoy, you want broccoli, what about broccoli?

- [Lauren] So I think it was a good fit for him.

- But I know she doesn't have bread over there.

- Rolls, we need 60 rolls.

(cash register beeps)

- [Santiago] You're gonna have the same as him

or pasta with meatballs?

- I want pasta. - You want meatballs?

- Really didn't get a lot of the kids

that want to try that chickpea,

it's not a real hit for the kids.

- Enjoy your lunch.

- I could see that the pasta was going

a whole lot quicker than the chickpea stew.

You have broccoli, you have chickpea stew,

you have pasta, for how many?

- This is the last of the pasta.

- That's it?

How many kids?

- But your kids, you're gonna feed 'em three more lunches?

Just pasta. - Just pasta.

This is what happens, right, when you try

new and innovative stuff, you just gotta hope for the best,

prepare for the worst.

- What plan are we on now, like plan C?

- [Woman] Oh yeah.

- Mmm.

I'm not happy, that's true. (laughs)

I think you can see in my face.

This is too much, that's too much work.

- With any kind of pilot, any kind of changes,

some people can absorb the change

and for some it's a very drastic change.

What you were doing one day a week

is now gonna be all the way up to five days a week.

With Santiago being the cook and with Maricela

being the manager, it probably created some stress.

- [Man] I have a green bean and a cauliflower.

- [Ross] We didn't have enough time to really sit down

with each team and clarify roles and responsibilities.

- You want a teriyaki sauce on your chicken?

- Okay, teriyaki, yeah.

- Certainly there is confusion and conflict.

- What is that? - It's like a dessert.

It's like a pie. - I want to try that.

- [Santiago] Okay.

- [Jill] The job's changed.

In some cases, people were excited.

I think it was emboldening. - That's the apple pie,

apple crisp.

- [Jill] And for others, I think it was exhausting.

- [GPS] Stay to the left to 190 East Mass Pike, Boston.

* Early in the morning

* Wanna spread it on toast

* Peanut

* Peanut butter

* Peanut, peanut butter

(kids shout)

* Peanut, peanut butter

* And jelly

* Peanut *

(kids murmur)

- [Jill] You get to serve this every day?

- Yes, we're now up to five days a week right now.

This is our first week of five day implementation.

- What do you think of your new lunches?

They're good, you like 'em, do you like these?

They look so good. - Yeah, we had

so many kids last year and like behavior rates increase

after school because they weren't eating,

they were starving and so now they actually are eating

and there's much less problems.

It was wildly different. - They can have

as much as they want? - I'm pretty sure

they go by the federal regulations for kids'

serving sizes and the age range.

- Wow.

(kids speak foreign language)

- This is why I feel such urgency,

yesterday there was this new kid that just came in,

lost his mother, walked home one day after school

to find that her and her boyfriend had overdosed.

Yesterday before algebra class,

I find him on the third floor

and he looks at me and he goes, miss, I'm just so hungry.

Whatever we're doing isn't enough

and we have not gotten the political power

or political movement where people have taken

and paying attention to this.

- And don't you have, you have funds?

- [Erica] We have $250,000 sitting in the bank.

- Right, so that seems like it's really close.

- That's what I said. - Right.

- I can't understand this, that's double.

This can't be, like you moved mountains in East Boston.

If you didn't move those mountains,

we would still be talking about it.

- Yeah.

- You know, at one time it was raise the money

and we'll just kind of have this happen

so then we were fighting raising all this money,

we got all the money and then it was like

even though we have the money, no, we're not moving forward.

- Erica's school ended up being a little bit more

complicated than we had expected, we thought we could

simply install new equipment in her current kitchen location

and the reality was that the plumbing and the trenching

would be too expensive and I think that's where

the project has gotten hung up.

- You wanna see?

- [Ross] There's so much happening every day

that it's hard to know.

It's gonna happen.

- [Man] That's the family one.

- Thanksgiving was coming up and so we just thought,

just throw something in that celebrates the holiday.

Changes things up a little bit.

- Yeah, I'm gonna.

I don't know.

- Nobody told us that Corinne was coming.

We didn't know Corinne was part of this deal.

We just thought we were doing it.

Corinne gets paid by food service, but Jill's her boss.

- They never asked my opinion on anything,

they just figured, okay, we're gonna do it like this and

me and my girls would run with it.

because it was part of our job.

Get a picture of that.

You smell it, I'm taking a picture of that

'cause I'm not working like this.

Somebody want to start the parfaits for tomorrow?

Oh yeah, me and her bumped a lot,

but when she came, we had to treat her like

she's one of ours.

(both laugh)

(upbeat music)

There we go.

- We didn't think about it,

but it's her kitchen and I don't think we (laughs)

teed that up very well, I'm not sure that we really

kind of thoughtfully said, here's what we're thinking

about doing for a day and we're gonna need

to use your kitchen to prep parts of the meal.

- Hi Santi. (Santiago laughs)

- Hi Corinne. - Okay, what else, honey?

- I've been here 23 years, I never did this.

Now we're running around at four o'clock in the afternoon,

we're here cooking turkeys.

- Aren't you getting paid, though?

- Nobody's getting paid, just me and Martha right now,

they don't get nothing extra, they work eight hours,

that's it! The union's gonna step in

and the union's gotta say, "Okay,

everybody's on the same page."

- Good, it's working out...

She doesn't talk to me.

No, no.

- She don't want to do this, like nobody wants

to do the hard work, right, Santi?

- Yeah. - Yeah, nobody wants to do it.

- That's her problem, really, she don't want...

- That's what a lot of people's problems are.

- That's why she's so against it.

- Yeah, she don't want to cook, she don't want,

she didn't sign up for that, she said.

These turkeys are raw, right, food service is saying

they're not raw, I go, they're raw,

she goes, "What do you mean, they're raw?"

I go, do I speak funny, they're raw.

They didn't know they were raw.

- Yeah. - Corinne, you're my witness.

Gimme that, gimme that, that's the stress ball. (groans)

(Jennie giggles)

Five, six, seven, 11, 12, 13, where's Nancy?

Nancy, can you count this real quick?

Gotta go.

- So Kathy, what we were talking about

is we would place a single order to be delivered here

for all three schools, Corinne would order,

Corinne would receive or we would work out some way

to do that.

- Kathy Carney, the president of the union,

wanted to know all the labor that's involved

and make sure I'm fully staffed, nobody's overworked,

and underpaid. - Jennie has not been happy

with the way it's been going on.

- Okay. - Right.

- Talk to me about that. - She knows, I told her.

- [Kathy] We never agreed to have someone from the outside

do our ordering and all that stuff for us.

- Corinne came in and she kinda tried to take over

but it's my kitchen.

- So we suggest they bring in another person,

they hired Corinne. - Corinne don't communicate

with me, if there's something, she'll go on the computer

and communicate with the Shah Foundation.

- [Kathy] But she's not out of food service.

- Yeah, she is, she's paid. - They hired her?

- Yep, Kathy, I just found out today.

- [Kathy] Jennie, you need to speak up, you need to talk

about everything that you talked to us about.

- I did, all right. - Because this is all

different from the MOA that we agreed to,

but we were left in the dark, Jennie was too.

We didn't know what was going on.

- I'm very sorry about that, Kathy,

I wasn't, I didn't realize that.

We're at the part of the pilot now

where we've figured out how things work at the spokes

so they're working really well, yours is obviously amazing.

- Oh, thanks. - Thank you.

You know, my entire life in business,

it's been much more of a game and so you just take

the straightest line that you can to win.

- And I decided, you know, I'm just gonna try something.

I will do my best to win their trust by treating

everyone with love and kindness and by listening and doing

all of these things that took a lot of time.

So if you can hang in there. - All right.

- I can't tell you how appreciative we are.

- [Jill] And Maricela, we didn't give her enough love.

(somber music)

I know my options, I will find her another position

elsewhere, but if she doesn't want to be here,

she doesn't have to be here. - Right, right.

(somber music)

- [Jennie] Maricela, she didn't make it.

(somber music)

- [Man] Okay, so you can see, we can press it.

- [Jennie] And Naima, she went to another school.

She didn't sign up to cook.

(somber music)

Melbi is the only manager that made it.

- What are you gonna have, chicken, chicken taco?

- Santi's fully staffed and he's doing well.

(upbeat music)

(group murmurs)

We need a case of bagels for Friday.

I work 50 hours a week

'cause I stayed for the two hours for the hub and spoke.

(upbeat music)

Happy at my paycheck, yeah, and happy that I had people

that wanted to do it.

And they made it work, they made it work

because I can't do it all.

I do it for the kids, Santi. - Yeah,

that's what we're all in it for.

- That's what I do it for, I don't do it for me,

I don't do it for my girls, I don't do it for Jill,

I do it for the kids. - The kids, yeah.

- [Jennie] I supervised Corinne and now I think

we would be lost without her. - When he calls,

it goes like (imitates grinding)

- [Jennie] She's right up there with us

and she's like one of us now.

(upbeat music)

They took away chicken nuggets, chicken patties,

French fries, anything breaded or anything deep fried

or whatever it was that they were used to,

they just took it right away.

- Green beans and broccoli. - Yeah, broccoli

is good for you.

- And they kinda adjusted, the kids adjusted to the food

and I haven't seen any complaints.

(kids murmur)

- This is the last hurdle.

The East Boston pilot has demonstrated without a doubt

that you can deliver fresh, healthy real food

that kids prefer and it doesn't need to be vended.

- So PJK's up 23% and the Bradley's up 10%

on days where we're serving this year.

- Participation was up, it was cheaper,

we understood how to operationalize it,

these kitchens weren't very expensive,

we'd answered a lot of the big questions.

- Basically, the money that we're saving

is like money that we have after the reimbursement

so we're actually making money.

- We strongly believe that both with philanthropic support

and with city resources, we'll be able

to expand this project across an entire city.

(suspenseful music)

- [Laura] This year, we have a lot going on

in food and nutrition services, starting off with...

- So we were very interested in which direction

the school committee was going to move in,

would the school committee double down on Revolution Foods

and say that the future of food be with a food vendor?

Or would the school committee choose a longterm vision

of Boston cooking for Boston with the hub and spoke model?

- The first project is the East Boston hub and spoke project

It embodies everything that we are doing

in focusing on our school meal program

by resetting the standards of how we provide meals

to our students. We have awarded pre-plated meal

contracts to two leading vendors. Revolution Foods

for breakfast and lunch meals

and Preferred Meals for the after school programs.

- No offense to Revolution Foods,

they're another provider providing us food

covered with plastic. Quite frankly,

I'm a thousand times more excited

by the hub and spoke models because that is creative,

it's different, it's new, it's exciting,

it's bringing much fresher food to our children.

Do not let bureaucracy in Boston Public Schools,

no offense, superintendent, or the city of Boston stop you.

This is gonna be how we revolutionize food service

in Boston Public Schools.

- We should have something in this deck that says

the time is now because we have the backup of Rev Foods

for the next two and a half years so like

it's an easy way to transition.

So the thing that keeps me up at night right now

is how do we make sure that this transformation

is actually a transformation?

That it becomes embedded, that it's part of the DNA

of the city, that the city believes this is foundational

to these kids, to education, to their health and wellness

and that we'll never go back.

127 kitchens in three years, are we gonna present that

to the mayor, like do we want him to see the whole?

- Yes. - Okay.

- Do we have a PowerPoint? - Template, no.

- So shall we just make one?

- Over the last four years, we have dedicated ourselves

together to Boston's progress and we can be a power of

example to the nation and the rest of the world.

(audience applauds)

In the next four years, we're also gonna scale up

our new food pilot program, that's working

at East Boston high school, the Kennedy School,

the Bradley School and East Boston's Early Learning Center

until every single student in our district

gets two fresh nutritious meals every single day.

(audience applauds)

(upbeat music)

Yep, yep, I'll do lettuce, carrots, tomatoes,

and cucumbers. I want to thank you guys for letting me come

here and have lunch with you guys, it was awesome,

I ate everything, I notice some people didn't have broccoli

on their plate, but that's all right,

broccoli's like the best vegetable in the world.

This is an equalizer, having nutritious meals

in schools is a game changer.

What's happening here will improve

all of our young people's performance,

improve their futures, you started something special here

in the city of Boston and I want to thank you.

We're expanding this program, we're ready to go

with 30 kitchens next year in our school systems.

(audience applauds)

- Before, the lunches were not so great.

- We used to have very few options to pick from

but this lunch has changed our lives.

(upbeat music)

- I think first and foremost, cities and towns

are capable of feeding thousands and thousands

of students across our country every day.

We've learned we don't have to rely upon for profit vendors

to do this work for us but in fact we can do it ourselves.

We should be able

to use our buying power to change the market.

(upbeat music)

- Look how beautiful the broccoli is.

- I know.

I don't think that bureaucracies can change very easily

on their own.

Philanthropy, it can be an instigator,

it can give a bureaucracy the breathing room

it needs to take risks.

They couldn't have done that on their own.

They were trying to just feed kids.

- Hey Jennie.

- [Jill] I think collaboration is key.

(Ken laughs) (upbeat music)

- You wanna be an agent of change?

I would say know your people.

You will need more labor, of course you do.

But we're lowering our food cost

because we're able to control it through waste

and through inventory practices

and improving procurement practices.

(upbeat music)

- I'm very optimistic about the food system

because we really only screwed it up for about five decades

and I believe that the awareness around food

is such that it's not going backwards.

(upbeat music)

- Both of my girls saw it on the news.

And I came and says, hey, we did it,

and they're like we did what,

and they didn't even announce us,

they didn't say anything about us,

they just said that we're gonna do it,

I go, but we did it, that's what we need to do,

is we did it and that was it.

- There are 30 schools in Boston that are getting

new kitchens and we're not one of them.

- Really, so we're not getting a kitchen?

- Hearing that.

Are you okay with that answer?

That we're not on the list to receive a kitchen is like,

I don't have words, honestly, like.

(downbeat music)

- I believe the concern ultimately was

Erica's school needed a brand new kitchen.

It would no longer simply be

an equipment installation project.

But I still believe that under Erica's leadership,

it will get done.

(somber music)

- The goal was to feed the kids better food.

There was one day where Ross and I were over at

the PJ Kennedy school and Ross said you gotta come see this

and he waved me into the cafeteria.

And these cafeterias are raucous and there's kids

and there's lots of movement and people always seem

to be yelling.

And I walked around the corner and

there was just this lovely hum

and kids were just sitting there

and they might've been talking

but they were talking fairly quietly

and they mostly were eating.

And I almost cried 'cause it was beautiful.

(kids chatter)

* It's the latest

* It's the greatest

* Mashed potato

* Yeah yeah yeah

* You'll find this dance is cool to do *

* Come on, baby, gonna teach it to you *

* Mashed potato

* Yeah, the groovy beat now

* Mashed potato

* Come on and match the beat now, baby *

* It's the latest

* Come on honey

* It's the greatest

* Come on baby

* Mashed potato

* Yeah yeah yeah

* And then this dance

* They groove and they groove

* They play the records

* And they do it too

* They find this dance was out of sight *

- Thank you, whoo!

* Mashed potato

* In the winter, in the winter

- My turn, you can have the bowl.

* Yeah yeah yeah

* Yeah yeah yeah

(singers vocalize)

* Now everybody is doing fine

* They dance along for a big boy's line *

* They discovered it's the most, man *

* The day they did it to please Mr. Postman *

* Mashed potato

* Wait a minute, wait a minute

* Mashed potato

* Can you believe it, yeah

* It's the latest

* Come on, baby

* It's the greatest

* Come on honey

* Mashed potato

* Yeah yeah yeah

* Well, they got with it more and more *

* You oughta see 'em around the floor *

* Mashed potatoes along the list *

* They even do it to the daily quiz *

* Mashed potato

* Get up from your chair now

* Mashed potato

* Hey yeah yeah yeah

* It's the latest

* Come on baby

* It's the greatest

* Come on, honey

* Mashed potato

* Yeah yeah yeah

* Hey yeah

* Yeah yeah yeah *

(electronic music)