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A STUDENT’S FAVORITE EVENT – Taste Test Day! Amanda Stout, SNS Director of Food Services, Greenfield-Central Community School Corporation
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Try Day Friday, Taste Test Tuesday,
help parents and guardians setup online payments for prepaid meal accounts, give out copies of menus, and potentially recruit new employees if you are hiring! Health or nutrition class – Talk with your high school health and FACS teachers about visiting their class to do a lesson on nutrition. You can easily discuss federal requirements on child nutrition programs too. When sampling food, these students could be involved in the preparation and serving process as well. You could then recruit these students as volunteers for future taste testing events. Farm to school – If you participate in a Farm to School program, invite the farmer(s) to your school to meet with students. They can discuss their crop and how it gets from the field to the cafeteria. The farmer can bring samples of their food to share. Fall and Winter are a great time to initiate sampling and test taste events with students, especially as you plan for your menu after Christmas Break and prepare for the commodity survey for the next school year. Again, have a conversation with our industry partners to see how much they can help with this! Spring and late Summer taste test events are a great time to feature fresh, in season produce as well as new items for a la carte sales. No matter what method, it is important to plan ahead and give yourself and your taste test team members time to make sure key features are included during each event. A good “Try Day Friday” will make sure students know something new is being offered on the menu or as a sample. Most of the time, students will know ahead of time what item is being featured. If it’s something unlike anything they have ever had, you may want to do some education on the item ahead of time. You should determine if the item will be part of the reimbursable meal or offered as a freebie that day. You need to make sure you have enough of the item in inventory so you do not run out. Many taste tests can result in failure if you do not have enough of the food for everyone to try if they are interested. And finally, you need to make sure you know how you will evaluate the products success or acceptance with the students. These can be done a variety of ways; get creative!
Free Sample Day ; we’ve all seen or used these phrases to advertise the always popular event that takes place in school nutrition programs at all grade levels. Whether taste test events are still in existence at your school district or they are currently a thing of the past, the goal of taste testing remains the same. Taste testing events expose students to something new and exciting and is the essence of our programs. Nutrition professionals want to foster a healthy mindset around nutrition and eating; trying new foods is one way to accomplish this. Inmost cases, food service operations are hoping to get feedback on the food items sampled from the students in order to determine its future on the menu or its success as an a la carte item. The magnitude of the event can range from simple to extravagant. Taste test events do not have to feature something overly complicated. Consider howdifferent a canned peach is from a fresh peach. The texture and aroma are very different! Believe it or not, there are some students that have never tasted fresh versions of their favorite fruits or vegetables. Sampling fresh fruits and vegetables that have never been served before is a great small-scale version of taste testing that your students can enjoy without much fuss or extra work for kitchen staff. On the flip side, our industry partners are anxious to help with sampling and taste test events held within our cafeteria walls. Many times, you can feature more than one item this way and setup in an alternate serving area so the focus is much larger. By inviting industry partners to help with preparation and service to the students, you can focus your energy on advertisement and gaining feedback before and after the event. Taste tests can take place anytime and anywhere during the school day; you are not limited to breakfast or lunch served in the dining room. Taste tests could even be done at extracurricular activities. Here are some ideas for hosting a taste test event outside of the traditional setting. Back to school night – Set up a booth at back to school night to not only offer samples to students, but to use the event as another opportunity to inform adults about your child nutrition program. You can
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Resources: https://www.actionforhealthykids.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Taste-Test-Guide.pdf
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