Clovis schools provide new lunch app and new kitchen for students

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Clovis Unified officials said baking their own bread gives them more control of the nutritional content and with federal and state regulations always changing, it's also more cost effective for the district to buy its own ingredients.

CLOVIS, Calif. (KFSN) -- As many head back to school, students at Clovis Unified will be able to use a new app to help them navigate the lunch menu.

Fresh bread is baking in the kitchen at Buchanan High School. This year, Clovis Unified is hoping to spread the delicious bakery smells to every school in the district and starting next month it's opening up a bread kitchen.

"We're going to centralize our baking efforts," Nancy Whalen with the Clovis Unified School District said. "Right now, we bake at all of the 7th grade to 12 schools but ideally we're going to be baking off some frozen dough so we can bake at all the sites, K to 6th. It's going to be fresh and smell great and it's just going to be ready for the kids to enjoy."

Clovis Unified officials said baking their own bread gives them more control of the nutritional content and with federal and state regulations always changing, it's also more cost-effective for the district to buy its own ingredients.

"We want to increase the variety and also customize as well based on maybe the school logo. We have a variety of ideas in mind," Whalen said.

Clovis Unified's bread kitchen will deep freeze a number of rolls and other bread products before sending them to other school sites and also brand new this school year is the district's menu app.

Parents and students can download the free app click on their school to check out the breakfast and lunch menus for the next month.

"With everything going digital and technology advancing how it is," dietician Tawnie Kroll said. "We feel it's very important for students and parents to visualize these menus and make things more accessible for them in general."

It's accessible and easier for parents and students to adhere to dietary restrictions.

"Parents have told me, 'Oh my gosh, this is great,'" Kroll said. "My child has this big allergy, so with diabetics and all those allergies out there right now we feel it's important to have the ingredient list accessible."

Students can also rate each menu item from one to five stars giving the dieticians a clue as to which menu options are popular and tasty.