School Nutrition Association • November/December 2022 • Best. Birthday. Ever

Discover three inventive approaches to surprising and delighting students on their special day.

When school districts first began crafting and implementing local wellness policies almost 20 years ago, as part of the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act of 2004, proposed limits placed on foods brought from home for classroom parties generated a firestorm of criticism from parents, dubbed the “cupcake wars” by the media. (The irony of this pushback from parents, who tend to be among the most vocal critics of items served in school meal programs, was not lost on school nutrition professionals.) The backlash prompted many districts to relax standards or exempt classroom parties from the nascent policies. But it also prompted some enterprising school nutrition operations to pitch their services, offering to cater celebratory occasions with menu items that complied with policy requirements.

Fast forward to 2022, past more regulations (including Smart Snacks), past increased attention on food allergens, past COVID-era restrictions on foods brought from home, past the influx of trained chefs to the school nutrition profession, past the rise of social media marketing and past so many other changes. At least two constants persist. Pretty much every kid loves being the center of special attention on their birthday—and innovative school nutrition teams are creating opportunities to make them beam with delight.

School Nutrition set out to discover inventive approaches that today’s school cafeteria teams are taking to bring some birthday sunshine to the children they love to serve. The three programs highlighted here, from districts in Florida, Kansas and Kentucky, represent an impressive blend of professional expertise and out-of-the-box creativity. These ideas are all well worth “stealing”!

Birthday Bites

COVID-19 was a tipping point, but concern had been building for a while. “We really wanted to stop the crazy treats,” says Marisabel Carreja- Wolfi nger, Marketing Manager for Orange County (Fla.) Public Schools (OCPS), Food and Nutrition Services, of the decadent desserts and snacks that were showing up for classroom parties. “We’re very careful about the food we feed our children at school. We didn’t want parents bringing in treats that didn’t fit within our Eat Smart nutrition standards for snacks and beverages.” But it’s more than just nutrition, she adds. There was no way to control for allergens or ensure that items were prepared within food-safe protocols. Then, during the pandemic, the district set a firm safety policy: no more foods from the outside. Food and Nutrition Services reassured parents that their team would create an alternative that would check all the boxes: It would be delicious, celebratory and economical. Birthday Bites was launched in August 2021.

Available throughout the district’s 135 elementary and K-8 schools, Birthday Bites is managed by Carreja-Wolfinger as something of a marketing program, rather than being administered by the department’s catering arm. “It’s less about bringing in revenue, although we do cover our costs,” she notes.

Using an online form, and providing one week’s notice, parents can order from an array of sweet treats, “chips & cheese” and beverages. They can also order a birthday gift bag for their child. The order is assembled by the cafeteria team at the designated school and delivered on a decorated cart. “We make it a big deal. Staff members arrive, singing “Happy Birthday” and take pictures at the event to share with the parent. Our staff really love doing it, and it’s a fun way to celebrate,” says Carreja-Wolfinger. “We make the child feel really special.”

Products are individually packaged and comply with Smart Snacks standards and the OCPS Eat Smart policy. Examples include Cake Batter Birthday Grahams (85 cents each), Sugar Cookie (60 cents each), White Nacho Doritos (85 cents each), Kettle Popcorn ($1 each), Bottled Water (60 cents each) and Strawberry/Banana Smoothie ($1.50 each). Allergens are listed for each product, and kitchen managers cross-check each order against a list of students with special diets. The Birthday Gift Bag is $2.50. The form notes that supply shortages could mean product substitutions. Carreja-Wolfinger estimates that an average order is $25, although it does range widely. “Some parents will buy the gift bag for the whole class,” she reports. The most popular menu items are the chocolate chip and sugar cookies, both of which are baked inhouse.

When the order comes in, the kitchen manager coordinates with the teacher to determine the best time for the party. Ultimately, the principal dictates whether the party can be held in classrooms or in the cafeteria during lunch or at another time, but Carreja-Wolfinger reports that the majority of the principals love the program.

Birthday Bites continues to grow in popularity. Carreja- Wolfinger creates flyers and other tools to help individual schools promote the program. She also buys space on social media, where she can advertise to a niche audience based on, say, geography. “Every time I do that, we get a huge list of orders,” she reports. In some schools, the cafeteria team might do two or three parties in a single day! “But the best advertising is word of mouth.”

Nina Vargas is Manager for both Sunrise and Waterford Elementary Schools, and a big fan of the Birthday Bites program. She loves helping take the cart through the halls and hearing kids in their classrooms ask, “Oh, whose birthday is it?” and she gives “all the glory” to the leads at each school, Ivelys Santiago-Rivera and Lesli Garcia, who do “an amazing job organizing, prepping and making deliveries.”

Carreja-Wolfinger created a process document to provide program consistency across the district. It includes visuals, demonstrating how the cart should look. The document is very helpful for new or substitute managers. “There are going to be some schools where teams get a little more creative, but that’s okay as long as they stay within basic guidelines,” she explains. “We just want to be sure that no one is complaining that one school does a lot more than another.”

Parents receive a survey after the celebration. It asks “if the ordering process was simple, was the manager responsive, did the student enjoy it, would you order it again, would you recommend it,” details Carreja-Wolfinger, who passes along the feedback—usually positive—and various metrics to each kitchen manager. School cafeteria teams that do the most Birthday Bites get their own celebration at the end of the year.

“I think it’s a great program,” says Carreja-Wolfinger. “Our staff love doing it, parents love the opportunity and the kids have a great time. We’re proud to be doing classroom parties in a healthy way, and it’s growing every year.”

Birthday Baskets

Laura Fails, School Nutrition Services Director, Wamego (Kan.) Public Schools USD 320, struggles to remember where she got the idea for her Birthday Baskets program: “I think it was probably one of the Facebook groups?” Her foggy memory is understandable, given all that’s happened since: the pandemic, supply issues and exhausting labor shortages. In fact, Fails has had to put the program on hold for a while, although she is hoping to resurrect it later this year.

Fails recalls pitching the classroom party idea to the district’s wellness committee, which enthusiastically gave the green light to implement it at Wamego’s two elementary schools. Parents completed a Google form, selecting from a short list of sweet treats (which included a birthday cupcake and cookies) a few packaged snacks and a fruit/vegetable. “We all like our treats. But celebrations don’t have to be all about sugar,” says Fails. Eventually, she transitioned the produce item to a juice option. Each child would receive one sweet treat scratch-made by the bakery department, one packaged snack and a beverage. The birthday boy or girl would also receive an inexpensive gift, such as stickers or pencils, which Fails would purchase from a dollar store or Oriental Trading.

Birthday Basket orders were coordinated at the central office by Fails and her assistant Mary Piper. “We’d check with parents about whether snacks should also be available for the adults in the classroom, and check with teachers as to whether the celebration would be scheduled in the morning or afternoon,” says Fails. Payment could be made through the student’s meal account, if desired. The party items were assembled in the district’s central kitchen in the baskets and delivered to school cafeterias in the morning, along with breakfast meals. The final touch was a homemade birthday card signed by Nutrition Services team members.

The total cost to the parent averaged $30 to $40, before today’s inflationary rates, Fails recollects. “This is entirely doable for most families, especially when you estimate the value of the time they save by ordering from us.” But what about children from families where this cost is out of reach?

“An anonymous donor came forward, saying, ‘This is a wonderful project, but I know there are some kids for whom nothing will show up on their birthday, and I want to make that happen,’” recounts Fails. She and Piper work with teachers to identify those students, and the donor underwrites the cost of the Birthday Basket party on their special day. “Every single one,” she reports.

After schools reopened in a hybrid format for SY2020-21, the program thrived, in part because of no-outside-food rules, says Fails. “We had quite a few orders, although it tended to be feast or famine. Three in one week and none the next. Maybe 10 to 12 baskets a month. It didn’t bring in a tremendous amount of revenue, but it was a nice cafeteria-classroom connection, and parents got to see what we do and were very appreciative.”

But in SY2021-22, Fails was overwhelmed by staffing challenges in the wake of some resignations on her small team. The labor pool in her rural community wasn’t very deep, and she couldn’t be selective in hiring. “We spent a lot of time on people who we knew weren’t going to be a great fit, but we didn’t have a choice,” she admits. By last spring, the team was down 25%, and “extra” projects simply had to be eliminated. But Fails is optimistic that the staff now seems more stable, and she’ll be able to launch Birthday Baskets again in the second half of this school year. “We’re back to doing other catering projects that we’d stopped, so I think we’re in a position to bring it back after the holidays,” she says.

For other districts inspired to create a similar program, Fails’ top advice is ensuring that you have a point person who really understands and is comfortable with the ordering system. “We’d never used Google forms before, so we had a bit of a learning curve with that,” she notes. Plus, while they were lucky to have someone step forward to pay for Birthday Baskets for disadvantaged youngsters, she suggests that other districts be proactive about ensuring some kind of angel fund for this at the start.

Finally, prioritize economics over vanity. “Initially, I purchased these really cute baskets, but they often didn’t come back to me after the party,” Fails recounts. “I had to find cheaper replacements. But the kids really didn’t care about what the basket looked like the way that I did. So, choose something that’s more economically in your favor!”

Birthday Bus

The Birthday Bus program conceived and organized by Maggy Livingood, School Nutrition Services Director, Grant County (Ky.) Schools, isn’t a catering program, parents aren’t charged anything and parties aren’t served in the classroom. But it’s a best-in-class birthday-centric example of a resourceful school nutrition professional going above and beyond to serve the kids in her community.

Last summer, Livingood transitioned from being an 18-year teacher in the district to signing on to lead its school meal operation, tapping into the culinary arts degree she’d earned before turning to teaching. Among her first responsibilities in the new job was managing summer meal service delivered throughout the county via a converted school bus that her predecessor had procured five years earlier. Realizing the bus had untapped potential the rest of the school year, she asked the superintendent for permission to use it for birthday parties and class reward/incentive programs. Livingood got the go-ahead and got busy putting together a plan.

The Birthday Bus visits one of the district’s four elementary schools every Thursday. Students in all grades who have a birthday during the month are invited to eat a special pizza lunch on the decorated bus, instead of going to the cafeteria with the rest of their class. It’s a fairly simple concept, but the novelty is priceless. “We collect the birthday kids from the cafeteria or front office, and when they round the corner and see the bus, it’s like they’ve come downstairs on Christmas morning!” says Livingood.

The biggest challenge is scheduling meal service so the birthday kids eat on the bus at the same time as their classmates are in the cafeteria; this ensures they eat one meal and don’t lose instructional time. Although it’s not always possible with different lunch blocks and grade levels, teachers appreciate her efforts. If birthday kids need to be in the cafeteria after eating on the bus, Livingood provides them with an activity booklet that she’s downloaded from the internet.

The program has minimal costs. The children are getting only one meal, and it’s fully reimbursable (pizza, fruit/vegetable, milk, SmartSnacks-compliant birthday cookie). They also receive an inexpensive birthday crown. The School Nutrition Services department does pay for the bus driver, who also drives for summer feeding. The driver, Livingood and one volunteer (usually her father) manage service and clean-up.

There’s one hiccup in this easy-to-replicate approach: The bus was designed for summer feeding, so it has air conditioning but no heater. Thus Livingood will suspend Birthday Bus visits December through February and then double up birthday months, as she did at the start of the year, when she served both August and September birthday kids. She’s also had some requests to add the middle school and anticipates feeding some 1,000 kids by the end of the school year.

Grant County Public Schools is a CEP district, and Livingood knows that for some children, the Birthday Bus may be their only celebration. It means a lot for her to see their excited faces and hear positive reports. “We had one parent write on our Facebook page that their child came home saying, it was their best birthday ever!”