Huband Park Elementary Salad Bar

What an incredible journey and fun time this was!

My Role as the Salad Bar Coordinator

Some of our achievements include:

  • Created check lists for kitchen volunteers – according to feature of the week. What ingredients and how much to be served.
  • Created grocery lists (according to feature of the week)
  • Weekly totals are recorded:  cost of groceries, number of students on list, number of plates served, weight of the waste, what class helped serve, who volunteered and what feature was served.
  • 11 of our 16 volunteers took the food safe course
  • We now have three wonderful ladies that do all our grocery shopping every Monday (the day before salad bar). I create a weekly grocery list and email it to them by Sunday night.
  • Created a nutritional education board that is changed monthly:  Eating a rainbow, what is our carbon footprint, meet the farmers and next month will feature the salad bar volunteers and their kids.
  • Increased our volunteers from 5 to 20
  • Create a schedule for volunteers so everyone is getting time off (salad bar is a full day of volunteering and in order for the salad bar to be sustainable ….volunteers need to be rotated)
  • Added a second salad bar, and doubled the equipment
  • New large cabinet for all our salad bar equipment
  • Created a rotation schedule for student helpers (Gr 4-7) each week.   6 helpers from 11:15 to 12:00.   Each week a different class helps out. 
  • Have aprons made and embroidered in school colors for kids to wear (kids are so proud to wear them).   Helps to increase the buzz around the salad bar and community. 
  • Add Greek day: We now have Mediterranean wraps, Mexican, Asian, Buns, Italian pasta, and homemade pizza day.   These are all special “features” that are an addition to the rainbow of salad. 
  • Decreased waste from 13 lbs to an average of 4-5 lbs.   Education in classes was very helpful.
  • Education in each classroom about waste 2x. 
  • Waste is fed to the local chickens
  • We have been in the local newspaper twice
  • We have a salad bar video on YouTube: Watch Video.
  • Huband salad bar has been featured in the Edible Valley Podcast: Listen to Podcast.
  • Organized 3 Vanier students  from the prep program to come each week from 9:45 till 11:15 to cut all the veggies, help with set up and eat salad bar – they come with a support worker
  • We have had 6 student nurses come to help out from our local college
  • Outsourced more local farms / ingredients / bakery / butcher
  • New principal is very supportive of salad bar which makes all these things easier to implement
  • Almost doubled the number of kids eating salad bar –  130-150 (2016-2017) to 210–220 (2017-2018).
  • Several friendships have come out of the salad bar program along with many social events outside of school.   Proud to say we have created a “salad bar community!”
The Huband Park Elementary Salad Bar Team's Aprons
Shannon is the Huband Park Elementary Salad Bar Coordinator
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