Field to Tray: A Guide for Farmers Getting Started Selling to Schools

Two people, Sea and Francis, working in the field.

What is Farm to School

That tiny word ‘to’ can mean a lot of things, but it’s important to think about farm to school in a holistic sense, even if the bottom line is selling more New York grown and produced items to the cafeteria. Farm to school is a movement, and everyone can play a part in helping it spread. We talk about the three C’s of farm to school, outlined below:

Classroom

Introducing kids to a diversity of foods, building healthy eating habits, and developing an understanding of how food makes it to their plate through agricultural, food systems, nutrition, and cultural curriculum. This includes agriculture-based education, agriculture in the classroom programs, school gardens, agricultural educators, farm field trips, and incorporating food and food systems into lesson plans across subject areas including STEM.

Community

Connecting farm to school efforts to the broader school community, including students’ families and loved ones, civic organizations, community gardens, local farms, and neighbors. This component refers to sharing the educational lessons from the classroom with other community members, as well as bringing those community members into the classroom and cafeteria to get involved with farm to school, enriching the student experience with an understanding of how food connects us to one another. Kids can introduce their parents or caregivers to new and nourishing meals by bringing home ingredients or recipes they receive in school, and sometimes re-introducing elders to a food they remember with cultural or familial significance.

Cafeteria

Getting local products into the cafeteria for inclusion in school menus and coupling it with cafeteria-based programming, like taste tests, to get students excited about eating local food. Efforts in the cafeteria reinforce the two C’s above. While it seems simple, getting locally produced products into an institution is not an easy task. Schools are bound by procurement rules, limited and revolving staff, and a very strict budget as well as a short time to get the meal produced, served, and in kids' stomachs every day. Despite these challenges, building these connections can be both personally and financially rewarding.

Why Sell to Schools

With increased interest in and investment for local food purchasing and infrastructure, New York is committed to Farm to School for the long haul. School Food Authorities (SFAs) across the state are seeking to purchase local products, which offers farmers the opportunity to both connect with their local communities and expand markets and revenues. According to the National Farm to School Network’s Benefits of Farm to School factsheet, an average 5% increase in income comes from farm to school sales. Schools purchase their products well in advance and can offer a more accessible and consistent wholesale market channel for small farmers. In addition to your bottom line, selling products to this unique market can have a positive impact on the health of students and the school community in which you live.

How Do Schools Buy Food

Public vs. Private Entities

Private schools often have greater flexibility in food procurement and may not be held to federal restrictions. Many private schools contract their meals through food service management companies (FSMCs) or work directly with restaurants or third-party meal providers. Some private schools do participate in NSLP and are held to the same standards as their public counterparts.

Public schools (K-12) that participate in the National School Lunch Program are subject to all district, municipal, state, and federal procurement rules and must follow the rules of the strictest jurisdiction. K-12 public districts that are not part of the National School Lunch Program are not bound by the federal restrictions but still need to follow district, municipal, and state-level procurement rules. Due to these extra restrictions, public entities face a few more hurdles to purchasing local products because these procurement laws center around the idea that the lowest cost product is the only legal option for awarding vendor contracts. This guide focuses on public schools, as there are a growing number of incentive programs that encourage purchasing New York State food products.

K-12 Public Schools Operations: Self-Op vs FSMC

School food service operates under two models. They can be self-operated or “self-op,” which means the school manages all aspects of food service, as described in the next section. Alternatively, the district may hire a food service management company (FSMC). In this model, a school contracts with a private FSMC to do all the purchasing, menu development, and meal provision. Staff are sometimes employed by the district or by the private company, similar to a catering arrangement. These private companies create and maintain the vendor relationships, although there is sometimes flexibility for a school to purchase items outside of this relationship.

Understanding the World of School Food Service

The School Food Service Director ensures that the business of the school meals program is operating smoothly. These unsung heroes wear many different hats and often know the details of every facet of their business – not unlike farmers! This can include maintaining their cafeteria equipment, managing staffing needs, developing and testing new recipes, while making sure the financial books are balanced and maintaining inventory in a walk-in cooler or warehouse…and all other nuts and bolts of managing a business. Below is a non-exhaustive list of the responsibilities these professionals hold.

Write menus: Food Service Directors or staff create menus, often on a 6-week cycle for each meal served, but planning can vary by district. They need to follow nutritional guidelines established by the USDA Food and Nutrition Service, which amounts to serving a variety of vegetables, grains, fruit, dairy and meat or meat alternatives across a one-week period. For a general outline of these guidelines, see the National School Lunch Program Meal Pattern Chart.
Purchase food: Food Service Directors are responsible for all food purchasing. This means they must figure out what to buy and how to buy it (either by formal or informal methods of procurement, depending on the purchase amount and procurement law) each year to meet the needs of their food program. The USDA released new rules (April 2024) that allow schools to specify that they would like NY food items when bidding formally, with the intention of making it easier for them to purchase NY state food items.
Cook and distribute meals: This mainly includes breakfast and lunch, but some schools serve dinner, snacks, or offer catering for events and meetings. Districts will also sometimes operate vending machines in schools. Some larger districts provide meals to smaller schools, specifically private schools or specialized schools such as magnet or Title 1 schools that are entitled to support from the district they are located in. Often, this includes operating summer feeding programs, either in summer school or through options that are also open to the community.
Staffing: Food Service Directors hire and train employees, coordinate staff schedules, and handle all other aspects of managing personnel. Because many schools experience staff shortages, you might even find them in the kitchens on the line cooking!
Everything else: The main role of the Food Service Director is to make sure the ‘business’ of the school meals program is operating smoothly, so they are a jack of all trades and often know the details of every facet of their business – not unlike farmers! This can include maintaining their cafeteria equipment, managing staffing needs, developing and testing new recipes, while making sure the financial books are balanced and maintaining inventory in a walk-in cooler or warehouse…and all other nuts and bolts of managing a business.

Food Service is most often a completely separate budget from the rest of the school, and the revenue comes entirely (or almost entirely) from the reimbursement it receives for meal and from selling the meals. The reimbursement from the state and federal government is approximately $4.30 for lunch and $2.50 for breakfast. That means all costs – food, labor, equipment – must be paid for within those dollar amounts. Much like farmers, Food Service Directors are typically price takers and operate within tight margins.

Frameworks for Buying NY Food Products

Ideally, all schools would be purchasing raw, whole foods from farms, but we are not quite at that reality. To make purchasing NY food more accessible, New York State has invested in purchasing incentives and other buying programs that offer opportunities for schools to get creative with local food. New York has a set definition of a NY Food Product:

“A “New York State Food Product” is a food item that is grown, harvested, or produced in NYS; or a food item processed inside or outside NYS comprising over 51% agricultural raw materials grown, harvested, or produced in NYS, by weight or volume.

Incentive Programs

As a way to encourage Food Service Directors to purchase more local product, the State of New York has sponsored the 30% New York Food Purchasing Incentive, which reimburses schools for $0.19/lunch meal served if they are able to spend 30% of their National School Lunch Program food dollars on New York State Food Products. You will hear this referred to as “the 30% Program. In 2023, Executive Order 32 (EO32) was issued, which requests State Agencies to purchase NYS food products “whenever feasible,” while setting a goal for them to incrementally reach 30% by 2027. While EO 32 does not apply to schools, it applies to state agencies, so it may support other institutions in purchasing more local foods.

Buying programs, such as the ones above, encourage local purchasing and are often used by Food Service Directors to allow greater accessibility for schools to increase their local purchasing.

Harvest of the Month (HOTM)

Each month during the school year, according to what is seasonally available, one New York grown or produced item is featured on the menu, either as a tasting, part of the meal, or just featured at a special time in the cafeteria. These items are usually a part of several meals or featured repeatedly in other ways throughout the month. This is a good way for a Food Service Director to try out new items/meal components and make an event out of their local purchases. For smaller farms, this also allows them an introduction to the school, since their product would be a limited, featured item on the menu rather than a standard ingredient. HOTM provides farmers with the opportunity to pilot a relationship with school procurement in order to better understand how to work with the district on larger bids in the future.

New York Thursdays or NY Food Days

These are special days of the month, usually but not exclusively on a Thursday, where every item on the meal tray is sourced from a NY farm or using NY ingredients. The NY Food Days are integral to highlighting “center of the plate” items, or animal or plant-based proteins. In this way, a school’s NY Food Day can celebrate dairy, meats, plant-based proteins, and eggs, which are available all year round, instead of only fruits and vegetables.

Farmers and Schools meet and greet at Mabee Historic Farm

Procurement and Purchasing

‘Self-Op’ School Food Directors purchase food either using their own food dollars they receive via federal reimbursements, or they can ‘purchase’ food for no cost through a USDA entitlement program where they receive items the USDA purchases in bulk. Farmers and intermediaries can supply local foods purchased with food dollars that the schools are required to procure through procurement methods mandated by federal law. Depending on the total dollar value required, these items are purchased through “formal” or “informal” means. These rules are subject to change depending on current federal rules, but the bottom line is that schools must take the lowest cost item when sent out to bid through either method.

Formal Bids:

Formal bids must be used if expected purchases from any one vendor are going to be greater than $150,000, if they follow the state guidelines, but often schools, counties, or municipalities have lower thresholds that must be followed. These are often sealed bid documents put out that must be delivered to the schools and are opened all at once. The awards are mostly made to the bidder offering the lowest price. Responding to formal bids can be an intimidating process, especially when schools often require drops in multiple buildings. Often, working with a local distributor is an easier path to getting your food into schools.

Informal Bids:

Small purchases: Using this method, anything over $5,000, but under the small purchase threshold, can be purchased as long as three solicitations or quotes are received (often known as “3 Bids and a Buy.”) This is often how farms are first able to provide products to schools.
Micro-purchases: Schools have the authority to purchase items from any vendor, if the price is reasonable, for under a total of $5,000. These are usually used for trying new products or providing sample menu items to students. For some smaller schools, they can purchase all local items this way.

food service director and farmer in field

Identifying Products Schools Use

Find and Replace: Looking through a school menu can help farms figure out what they could potentially provide to the school, simply by replacing an existing menu item. This could be a product served daily, like milk or yogurt if the farm volume production is enough, or it could be an item that is replaced occasionally, either within or outside of the frameworks mentioned above. The Food Service Director might not know the full extent of what nearby farms have available, so farms can look at school menus to determine what items they have that could easily be provided.

A few examples of how to approach a school menu:

Replace what’s already being served, like whole apples or ground beef
Offer a fresh item in place of a canned or cooked product, like grapes instead of canned peaches
Offer a new item that is not currently served, such as a julienned beet and carrot salad in place of cooked carrots.

Serving new local products often requires special kitchen equipment or culinary preparation skills and can seem more difficult for schools, but with the right Food Service Director, these changes can help bring more freshly prepared items to the school menu. If a school has a garden club, a farm could provide greater volume of what is grown in the garden (such as lettuce), so that they can support the introduction of those garden items into the cafeteria.

Getting on the Same Page: Schools are mostly used to getting items packed from a distributor – often processed, cleaned and prepared in advance. They might not be used to receiving, storing, prepping, and serving items just off the farm. Talking about post-harvest practices might help Food Service Directors understand why it’s best to store potatoes unwashed or that hydrocooling lettuce to get the field heat out is necessary and why they might find ice in the box. Just as farmers might not understand the nuances of running a school kitchen, some Food Service Directors aren’t familiar with the nuances of how farms operate, how the food is grown or raised, and how it gets off the farm and into the warehouse. But all that means is that there is room for better communication and reciprocal learning from both parties to get local food onto school cafeteria trays.

Estimating Volumes: Food Service Directors work from recipes scaled to serve hundreds of meals a day, with the portions of each meal component – fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy and proteins – required to be served at very specific amounts for different grade levels. If they are interested in purchasing items directly from a farm, or even through a distributor, there are publicly available tools that help estimate needed volumes for a student body. To help determine where a farm could start working with a school, if there is enough capacity to provide a years’ worth of carrots or just supply the quantity needed for a tasting event, the USDA Yield Tables are a great resource. Farmers can talk to the Food Service Director to get specific details on their menus and products used, but an estimate of the number of meals served at each district is available on the latest New York State Education Department’s “NY State Report Card.” Using the enrollment as a rough estimate of meals served (usually 20-30% less than the total) and USDA’s Food Buying Guide for Child Nutrition Programs will give you a rough idea of pounds of products a school uses on a daily basis.

Adding Value: This term usually refers to some form of product processing, which in itself is very valuable for schools, but there is another way to make farms attractive to schools. Working with farms adds a valuable and much-needed connection a local producer that is not available through the mainline distributors. Even if an intermediary is delivering product, farms can still connect to the schools and create an added value to their products. This can and often is built into the procurement requirements, making it easier for farms to win bids. Keep these opportunities in mind, even if you are working with a distributor.

Can the farm provide educational events, such as talking with a classroom or hosting a classroom on the farm for a visit?
Does the farm grow products not available through the mainline distributors, those that may better meet the tastes of the demographics of a changing community?
Can the Farm provide technical assistance, seeds, or resources to help develop or start a community or school garden?
Are there other services or products the farm can provide the school that can be mutually beneficial for the school and farm business?

Additionally, classroom visits and strategic branding within the cafeteria are ways in which schools can help promote farm visibility and community engagement, which may help increase a farm’s retail sales.

Best Practices for Talking to Food Service Directors

Food Service Directors want to serve kids good, nourishing food that they would like to eat, but are often saddled with many competing objectives and obligations. If you express a genuine interest in working with them towards a mutual goal, they will often respond positively.

Just as the general public is not very aware of how food is grown, some Food Service Directors are not connected to details of the agricultural sector. They might not know exactly when items are available seasonally, how meats are processed, or what milk pasteurization and separation looks like, but they are often eager to learn about the provenance and preparation of their ingredients. Beginning the discussion about what your constraints are, and being open to theirs, will go a long way in developing the relationship.

Pro Tip: Look out for Farmer and Buyer Meet-up opportunities to network with schools in your region! Join the Farm to Institution New York State newsletter to be aware of upcoming events.

Food Service Directors have to manage all aspects of a business and wear multiple hats, often at the same time! They need to know how to scale up a recipe, teach culinary skills to staff, deal with employee issues, maintain their equipment, accurately manage the books, work effectively with administration, and please their discerning customers –students! They often have a plethora of skills and can and do jump in wherever they are needed, innovating and problem solving much like farmers do on a daily basis. Lean into that commonality when starting up initial conversations and down the line when sustaining long-term connections with school districts and their food service teams.