LUSD Gets New Central Kitchen
The Orfalea Foundation School Food Initiative brings healthier food alternatives to students of all ages in local schools.
It’s a core vision for Paul Orfalea who parlayed his success as founder of Kinko’s in Isla Vista nearly 45 years ago into a dynamic philanthropic family enterprise.
“Paul is really concerned that the whole child is taken into account in the school district”, says Kathleen De Chadedenes of the Orfalea Foundation School Food Initiative, “its not just a little brain that sits there at a desk and absorbs information, but its also a child that needs to be nurtured and needs to be physically well and mentally present and well nourished in order to be able to learn, and just to be able to reach their potential in many ways.”
The Lompoc Unified School District is getting a $1.2 million grant from the Orfalea Foundation School Food Initiative to pay for the complete remodeling and retrofitting of the district’s decades-old Central Kitchen that provides daily, scratch-cooked entrees and freshly prepared salad bar choices to the district’s nearly ten thousand students.
The Central Kitchen remodel will feature an additional cooking line with a tilt skillet, two steam-jacketed kettles, a roll-in combi-oven and exhaust hood; an additional blast chiller; doubled walk-in refrigeration capacity; the relocation of food service administrative offices which will be replaced by a new area for processing fresh produce; an additional dish machine for pot and pan washing; new flooring; an upgraded HVAC system and a new security and back-up system for all refrigerated and frozen storage units.
“School lunches for the last 20 years have been mostly packaged, highly processed foods”, says LUSD Superintendent Trevor McDonald, “with the Orfalea Foundation we are making a shift to create, healthy quality foods from scratch.”
“Real healthy, quality foods, stuff that I guess a lot of our grandparents made for us but we’ve missed out in the last 20 years but we are happy to bring it back to our kids and we know it makes a big difference not only in their schooling but also in their lives, we’ve bought into this, we’re on board and we have a common interest here, its thriving students and in this way its through nutrition.”
And for the Orfalea Foundation School Food Initiative, its a proven recipe for success.
“We have built on this project, we did a pilot project with two of the elementary schools to see if the scratch cooking would be well received”, De Chadedenes says, “I think we found that it was an overwhelming success.”
To read more about the Orfalea Foundation School Food Initiative go to www.orfaleafoundation.org.
