St. Philips Academy
St. Philips Academy is a Private School in Newark, NJ whose approach to learning includes curriculum in gardening, farming and cooking.
St. Philips is housed in a newly renovated Leads certified building with a state of the art professional kitchen that was not being used. They were looking for a dining services company with innovative ideas that would be able to incorporate the lunch program into the whole approach to learning at the school, primarily the seed table aspect of the curriculum.
Working hand in hand with administrators from the school, SCS was able to develop and implement a family style community dining experience. Unlike a typical tray line often seen in school food service, the family style service creates a true community by giving each child an important role in the meal process. Children are seated at round tables and are responsible for setting, serving and clearing.
Our Chef creates seasonal monthly menus utilizing in season fruits and vegetables, whole grains and whenever possible, ingredients sourced from local farms and purveyors. All our menu items are scratch cooked on the premises including soups, sauces, baked goods which incorporate fruits and vegetables and salad dressing. Even our ketchup is made from scratch. We also use ingredients grown by the children on their rooftop garden into our dishes. Gone from our menus are processed low value foods which are the staple foods in so many children’s diets at school.
Serving 400 daily, the children and staff of St. Philip’s enjoy the benefits of dining together as a family, and eating delicious, local and sustainable meals that nourish the body, mind and spirit.
The Dwight School
The Dwight School is a private school located on the upper west side of Manhattan. With 200 students housed in brownstone buildings, the school has no kitchen or dining space of any kind.
The administrators of the school felt that having a viable lunch option was an important yet absent offering for their school. A lunch option was also becoming much sought after by the parents. Barring construction of a kitchen and dining room, a delivered program was the only option.
Working closely with the schools IT department, SCS was able to develop a fully automated on line ordering system. The children and parents select their lunch from six daily options from their home computers up to three months in advance.
Our chef carefully develops easily transportable and creative meals that are delivered to the school daily. The children’s lunches arrive in personalized boxes that are eaten in their classrooms.
Whether a sandwich, soup, hot entrée or sushi is chosen, all the meals include a side salad and whole fruit, milk, water or 100% juice and fresh baked whole grain dessert. The school requires that we use all organic and natural ingredients to ensure the highest level of quality and nutritive value.
SCS has been implementing this program successfully for 10 years.
With so many small schools having the same constraints as the Dwight School, SCS can offer this program as a viable lunch option that is truly easy to administrate from the schools perspective and will keep the parents happy and children well fed.
