- Cereal, frozen baked goods, and biscuits are your friends. These products are tools that you can use to create meals that are always satisfying, and sometimes unexpected.
- Use this as an opportunity to create a heartier meal as you follow the meal pattern for lunch versus breakfast. While for breakfast, you may serve a 2 oz equivalent grain cereal, for lunch, you may find a hearty 2 oz equivalent grain biscuit with meat to be more appropriate.
- As operators, you have enough to think about when it comes to planning menus. General Mills Foodservice chefs created recipe books full of simple recipes that won’t drastically increase your prep time and effort but will interest students.
- Embrace the breakfast leftovers and reinvent them for lunch.
- Involve students whenever possible, doing tastings with students to determine what they like and what they might buy. It allows you to include them in the food they eat, and for older kids, you can even explain some of the regulations so they understand what you as an operator are working with.
Here are some practical applications for students’ favorite breakfast foods repurposed for lunch.
Cereals from brands kids love
Who said cereal is just for breakfast? Cereal makes an easy grab-and-go snack, and adding milk helps kids get the dairy they need and the nutrients that come along with it. General Mills Foodservice has 25% less-sugar options for some of kids' favorite brands, such as Cinnamon Toast Crunch™, Trix™, and Honey Cheerios™. Plus, General Mills Foodservice K-12 cereals come in a 1 oz bowlpak or 2 oz equivalent grain package. Both size options include room for milk. (If you’re confused by seeing different size packages for the 2 oz equivalent grain package, don’t be! The package size is dependent on the volume of each cereal.)
Chef Monica highlights the autonomy cereal gives kids when it comes to making food choices, and the ability to come up with their own creative food combinations. She said, “I think of cereal with children as a favorite snack. The ideas I’ve come up with in the Crunch for Lunch [recipe book] are based on snacking . . . it gives them choice.” As a foodservice operator, you can embrace the unexpected with cereal-based trail mix using bulk cereal and products you already have.
