To a student armed with a lunch tray and an appetite, a cafeteria line looks deceptively simple. The food magically appears, with no hint of the legalities, formulas and contracts that get it from the producers to the trays.

Behind the scenes, there’s a lot going on, including work with state and federal agencies and local producers to get children the food they need. It isn’t always easy, and adds nuance to an already complex system.

 “In New York State there are general laws that outline the different procurement thresholds and tiers that all businesses or institutions, schools, state agencies and county governments need to follow to ensure proper procurement,” said Meghan Dohman, North Country Farm to School Procurement Specialist for Cornell Cooperative Extension Harvest New York.

The laws are in place to prevent sweetheart deals, favoritism and conflict of interest, but the process can be very cumbersome. Typically, the laws require schools to have three quotes from prospective local vendors to submit before moving forward with contracts.

North Country school districts participating in the Champlain Valley Educational Services (CVES) scratch-cooking program, which seeks to jettison sugar and ultra-processed foods in favor of whole foods grown closer to home, do have tools that can help.

Districts can, for example, prioritize geographic proximity or special criteria when ordering foods. But there are complexities. Geographically prioritized food must be in a raw state, which eliminates products like tomato sauce, even if it’s healthy tomato sauce. Cafeterias can write in criteria that help local farmers compete, but that just recalibrates the formula; it’s not a sure-fire way to guarantee cafeteria foods will be locally sourced.

“Geographic Preference bids have criteria that favors more localized producers, but there are still times when a statewide producer may have a product that’s cheaper, and even though they’re not hitting all of the criteria, they might still win the bid,” Dohman said.

School menus are as much about math as they are about food. Nice as it might be to get every element of a meal from healthy, local sources, federal funding presumes big commodity purchases from corporations that may not be in line with the mission but are necessary to lower the overall cost per meal.

Districts make tactical purchases of cheap products, knowing that it will allow them to work more healthy, local food into their menus and budgets.

“The cafeterias have their own budget line, and they have to be self-sufficient,” Dohman said. “So they’re putting meals together for pennies on the dollar, and a commodity allocation from the government is the only way that they can spend any money on local food and afford the meals they do.”

Along with the federal government, the state has a hand in the process, rewarding districts that obtain 30% of their food from New York — a goal CVES-affiliated districts exceed, said Julie Holbrook, Shared Food Service Director for CVES. 

Once all the paperwork is done, cafeterias can focus on putting healthy foods into cafeteria meals.

“There are a lot of ways we can use local ingredients,” Holbrook said. “With the way that we do our program with scratch cooking, it allows us to incorporate local food, and not just fruits and salad bar items — we incorporate things into our recipes like local onions in all our sauces. All those things add up. We have a farmer who just reached out who said, ‘Hey, I’ve got a lot of butternut squash,’ so we have the ability with our ovens to actually bake down a lot of butternut squash, freeze it in sizable portions, and make muffins out of it, or serve it as a hot vegetable.”

Barrett Miller, school lunch manager at CEWW BOCES, whose territory includes four North Country counties, said the process must be focused enough to do long-term meal planning, but also flexible enough to account for what foods are available in-season and the popularity of foods among the kids — which can vary from school to school.

“​​We always try to listen to and allow the cafeteria staff that’s actually there every day to have their opinion on what they know that the kids are really enjoying, because they’re seeing it there firsthand,” Miller said. “Local food doesn’t do any good if the students don’t want to eat it.”

At the same time, cafeterias are enticing children to try new things, and there are multiple tricks of the trade to encourage them to do so. For example, they might not care much about nutritional values, Holbrook said, but if you suggest that a menu item is “brain food,” they are more apt to try — especially if they have a test coming up.

“We know that physically, mentally, emotionally, it makes a difference in their days when they have local organic eggs and local organic yogurt for breakfast,” Holbrook said. “They’re going to have a better day, academically, emotionally and physically. So it doesn’t take long before the buy-in comes.”

Cornell Cooperative Extension programs, including the Rooted in Learning program, also help, with hands-on lessons and education that prepare kids to think more deeply about the foods they eat and where these foods come from.

Those programs supplement cafeteria staff that are more aware today of the importance of good food — and feel empowered to do their part in educating students.

To get kids to try something new, little tastes or “bites” will be put on their trays. Even if students are reluctant to eat it, they can smell, touch, observe its color, and basically become more familiar with new things.

Because food directly contributes to educational outcomes, cafeteria staff find their work more rewarding. 

“For us food is about more than what’s on the lunch tray,” said Sasha Pulsifer, a cook at Boquet Valley’s Lakeview campus in Westport. “We’re helping students learn that food fuels their bodies and connects them to our community. By serving local products whenever possible, we’re giving kids a chance to experience fresh foods, try new things, and build healthy habits — without pressure.”

Making the buy-in easier is the quality of local foods, Miller said. A carrot that’s just been pulled from a local field is sweeter, crisper and more colorful than those that show up in a box from a continent away. It also matters to students that it was grown a few miles from their school and makes them more curious about their local farms and agriculture.

“Our school lunch program supports learning beyond the classroom,” Pulsifer said. “When students see and taste local foods, they connect lessons from science, geography, and health to real life. Our goal is simple: create confident, curious eaters who feel good about food.”

Rather than an afterthought, the cafeteria becomes a classroom in its own right, inspiring discussion not just of food, but of all the things that food touches.