School Food System Innovation Grant
The School Food System Innovation Grant supports innovative and collaborative pilot projects that reimagine what the local school food system could look like and have the potential to be sustained and/or scaled. Projects address the unique barriers faced by schools when trying to increase their use of local items in school meal programs and propose creative solutions.
Full Plates Full Potential, in collaboration with USDA, funded 7 projects in June of 2024. These grants have a 4 year project period, beginning in July 2024 and ending in June 2028.
Grantees
School-Based Food Hub
Website: www.auburnschl.edu/departments/food_services/school-_based_food_hub
Partners: Lewiston School Department, Lisbon School Department, Healthy Androscoggin, Good Food Council Lewiston Auburn, Cultivating Communities, St. Mary’s Nutrition Center, Blackie’s Farm Fresh Produce
Auburn Public Schools seeks to develop a collaborative, regional, school food processing hub located within the combined school districts of Auburn, Lewiston, and Lisbon. This project will improve the quality of school meals in the region through culinary training opportunities and building capacity for local food processing and storage, as well as strengthen the school food marketplace for local growers and producers. In addition, this project will develop a streamlined regional ordering system to increase local food procurement and build upon existing partnerships with regional local farmers and producers. This project will engage students in multiple ways and through different partners.
Five Pillars Butchery
Website: www.fivepillarsbutchery.com
Partners: Auburn School Nutrition Program, Waterville School Nutrition Program, Andy Valley Collaborative, Haali Halal Cuisine
Five Pillars Butchery seeks to establish a halal meal program for K-12 students that will incorporate locally produced vegetables and locally raised halal meat products into cultural meals, starting with Auburn and Waterville school districts. This innovative project will address barriers to participation in Maine’s School Meals for All policy for Muslim students statewide, while simultaneously addressing the needs and challenges faced by under resourced, understaffed, and underequipped school kitchens. This project includes strong emerging partnerships with local food growers, producers, processors, distributors, and SFAs. Students will be engaged through taste testing as products are developed.
Maine Coast Fishermen's Association
Website: www.mainecoastfishermen.org
Partners: Regional School Unit 12, Regional School Unit 10, Brunswick School Department, South Portland School Department, Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Hurricane’s Premium Soups and Chowders, Graffam Bros., Maine Farm and Sea Collaborative
Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association has been providing frozen local fish fillets to Maine K-12 schools at no cost through the Fishermen Feeding Mainers (FFM) program, and through that process they have built relationships with Maine school food authorities and developed an understanding of the barriers and challenges K-12 schools face in sourcing and serving local seafood. This project will build upon FFM by expanding to more schools through the development of sustainable distribution channels, culinary skill building, and awareness raising. It also aims to develop local, value-added seafood products that would increase school capacity and ability to serve local fish. Students will be engaged through Sea to School curriculum and taste tests.
Maine Food Convergence Project
Website: www.mainefoodconvergence.org/local-food-switchboard
Partners: Regional School Unit 12, Lewiston Public Schools, Tootie’s Tempeh, Peak Season, Maine Farm & Sea Cooperative, Maine Network of Community Food Councils, Maine Farm & Sea to Institution, New England Food System Planners Partnership
Maine Food Convergence Project seeks to develop The Local Food Switchboard to serve as a virtual central hub for coordinating logistics and services within Maine's local food system intended for school usage. The Switchboard will function as a central hub with an “operator” to connect and coordinate the local food system with food purchasing institutions, including K-12 schools, in Maine. This project responds to the significant challenges and gaps in connecting, communicating, and coordinating local food system infrastructure, businesses, and food buying institutions that hamper local food procurement, processing, storage, distribution, and consumption. Project partners represent local food system experts from across Maine’s food system, including school food authorities (SFAs), growers and producers, processors, distributors, and other food system stakeholders.
Peak Season
Website: www.peakseasonmaine.com
Partners: Daybreak Growers Alliance, Regional School Unit 12, Regional School Unit 19, Good Shepherd Food Bank, Waldo County Bounty, Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness, Emery Farm, Maine Department of Education (Child Nutrition Department), Maine Farm and Sea Cooperative, Maine Food Convergence Project
This project seeks to make a greater variety of Maine-based products available to schools through Peak Season’s centralized online ordering system by sourcing from additional Maine growers, producers, and processors and expanding their distribution channels to reach more K-12 schools. This project will fill significant gaps in Maine’s K-12 food supply chain by addressing the need for aggregation of bulk and varied local products, providing a streamlined ordering system to meet school nutrition needs and ordering practices, growing the market for small local growers and producers to sell to schools and other large food buying institutions, and increasing storage and distribution capacity to more parts of the state.
Regional School Unit 54
Partners: MSAD 59, MSAD 74, Somerset County Jail, Somerset Public Health’s School Nutrition Workgroup
This project seeks to increase local food being served in Somerset County K-12 schools and builds upon a partnership that began in 2019 to build raised beds at the Somerset County Jail to grow fruits and vegetable seeds planted by students at a local elementary school. This project responds to challenges faced by schools of sourcing local food in this region of the state, as well as the high price point for local produce. The collaboration between the schools and jail will ensure that schools are able to plan their menus ahead and receive the products and quantities they are counting on for their school menus. This project will support inmates to process the produce through peeling, chopping, and freezing and will store the minimally processed produce for schools, helping to boost the schools’ capacity to provide products throughout the school year outside of the growing season. This project aims to grow and scale to incorporate more schools in Somerset County and has the potential to be replicated in other counties as there are local schools, public health districts, and county jails across the state.
The Good Crust
Website: www.thegoodcrust.com
Partners: MSAD 75, Valley Unified Education Service Center (Madawaska School Dept, MSAD 33, MSAD 27), University of Maine School of Food and Agriculture, Maine Grains, Maine Grain Alliance, Maine Cooperative Extension- Maine Agriculture in the Classroom
The Good Crust seeks to use convenient hand-held breakfast and lunch foods made with Maine-grown ingredients to inspire processing innovations, supplier collaborations, advance local grain value-added processing, and transform school nutrition menus back toward local procurement. This project responds to a challenge voiced by Maine school nutrition professionals that lack capacity for daily scratch cooking. It also replaces existing popular, but highly processed school menu items with healthier, minimally processed options made with local ingredients. This project will incorporate student voice and engagement through ongoing taste testing to gather student feedback, as well as the inclusion of educational and curriculum opportunities for students to learn where their food comes from.