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Everytable taps into K-12 foodservice with new partnership with Compton Unified School District
The Los-Angeles-based chain will provide vended meals to supplement the district’s in-house nutrition program starting this school year.
scratch,” says Polk. “We can leverage that existing supply chain and logistical infrastructure to meet the needs of schools.” Everytable’s meals are meant to supplement Compton Unified’s in-house foodservice menu. School nutrition operators at the district will place their orders, which will be prepared fresh in Everytable’s commissary kitchen and then be delivered to the schools. The ingredients used for Everytable’s school meals are the same ingredients used at its retail locations, just in different proportions to meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) School Nutrition Standards. Kids can be tough critics, says Polk, so Everytable held a tasting at Compton High School earlier this summer where students got to sample and share their feedback on several different menu items, including Everytable’s Chicken Alfredo, Chicken Teriyaki, Pollo Asado and more. “[Students] loved the chicken alfredo, they really loved the pasta,” says Polk. “They loved the Chicken Teriyaki and then they especially loved the Chicken Parm Ciabatta Sandwich which is one of our specialties.” Everytable will continue to hold student taste tests throughout the year to make sure its offerings keep evolving with students’ wants and needs. Thanks to Everytable’s in-house R&D team, they can be nimble in making recipe adjustments, says Polk. For example, the team has already made changes to its bean and cheese burrito
recipe based on initial feedback from students. “The students said they wanted more flavor on it, and so literally, before they're going to get it the next time, it's already been significantly improved to meet their taste profiles,” says Polk. In addition, Compton Unified faculty and staff can order their own Everytable meal for lunch using the company’s Everytable at School platform which allows diners to place their orders online and have them delivered directly to their school. They also receive a 10 percent discount. Everytable’s partnership with Compton Unified marks the start of what Polk believes will be a long relationship with K-12 foodservice. The company has “massive expansion plans in K-12 throughout California,” he says. Along with expanding its vended meals program like the one offered at Compton Unified, it is also working on what it calls Work in Progress (WIP) products, which “basically are components of a meal,” Polk says. School nutrition programs would then be able to purchase the WIP’s directly from Everytable and use them to prepare their own scratch-made offerings from the comfort of their own school kitchen. “Districts want to do their own scratch cooking, but a lot of times, all that is available to them is frozen and pre- processed stuff,” says Polk. “So now, they can get scratch cooked proteins from us and scratch made dressings and sauces, and they can cook some of the components themselves and combine it with ours.”
BY BENITA GINGERELLA
Everytable is headed to school this fall. The Los-Angeles-based restaurant chain known for its scratch-made, health- focused offerings has partnered with Compton Unified School District to provide vended meals to supplement the district’s nutrition program this school year. Everytable’s relationship with the city of Compton, California goes back several years. It first opened a retail location in the city in 2018 and then opened a location at Compton College a couple years after. Providing meals to Compton Unified seemed like the next logical step for the company, says Everytable Founder and CEO Sam Polk, especially because he feels they are well-suited to help school foodservice programs implement more scratch-made meals into their menus. “There's this big movement for scratch cooking in schools. But scratch cooking is really hard, and you need certain equipment, and you need a lot of training,” he says. “And so, a lot of these schools are basically, like, on a transition to scratch cooking, but they can't do it right away.” By utilizing Everytable’s existing supply chain and infrastructure, the company can aid school districts, like Compton Unified, who want to incorporate more scratch-made meals into their menus but don’t have the current means to do so on their own. “We have really high experience making high quality, ultra fresh food from
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