Our Real Food Lunch Club program gets the nod from Toronto Star Food Writer Susan Sampson!
There are school lunch caterers. Then there are “edu-caterers.”
David Farnell proudly puts himself in the latter category. He runs Real Food for Real Kids, a Toronto company competing in the fast-growing, elementary school lunch-catering business.
It sets itself apart from the pack by serving seasonal, local, ethically farmed, additive-free food made from scratch daily.
The kids are offered a side order of education about healthy choices. Oh, and in addition, the lunches are litterless.
“There’s zero waste generated, except for compostible real food,” says Farnell, now delivering to 14 elementary schools, private and public, along with 100 child-care centres.
He started the business in 2004 with wife Lulu Cohen-Farnell. While searching for a child-care centre for son Max, they were dismayed to find menus padded with canned fruit, trans fat-filled biscuits, chicken nuggets, fish sticks and other processed foods.
Max is now 7, and the business grew and moved into elementary school with him.
“There is a world of difference between a locally produced meal made from naturally grown food than the typical fare found in school catering programs – which highlight industrially made nuggets of factory-farmed chicken,” Farnell says.
His local menu items include chicken from Mennonite farmers; grass-fed, hormone- and antibiotic-free beef from the Guelph area; Niagara peaches; Leamington tomatoes; mini apples from Norfolk County; and organic yogurt.
The average price for lunch is $5.
To read this article on the Toronto Star website, click here.