Back in 2019, students at the Canadian International School in Hong Kong made it known they wanted more plant-based dishes on the menu.
Unsure how to proceed, the school reached out to Grassroots Initiatives. Chef Peggy Chan, Founder and Executive Director of Grassroots Initiatives – following an extensive audit of their menu and procurement process – wrote 60 plant-based conversions of some of the more popular meat-based menu items for the caterer and trained the chefs.
Grassroots also worked with the school’s sustainability committee to create a marketing and communications campaign around these changes. These posters are still used in the cafeteria to this day!
Designing a sustainable dish for inclusion in school lunch menus
Fast-forward to 2023, when students from the Chinese International School (CIS) hosted a one-day summit on sustainable school food with support from The Alliance for Sustainable Schools (TASS) and Grassroots Initiatives.
The summit explored the sustainability challenges associated with the food system, how these issues can be addressed in the context of schools, and what role students can play. The focus was on generating concrete actions and strategies to catalyse change. Approximately 70 students from all across Hong Kong attended the event!
The purpose of the summit was to elevate the conversation about the sustainability of school food and to bust some common myths that are obstacles to sustainable school food becoming more widespread and popular such as – “sustainable food is too expensive”, “most students don’t like/won’t eat sustainable food”, and “sustainable food isn’t possible at scale in Hong Kong.”
As part of the summit, a select number of well-known sustainability-minded chefs were invited to create a sustainable dish suitable for inclusion in a school lunch menu and to serve the dish to summit attendees on the day of the conference. Chef Michael Smith from Moxie, Marc Briol from Kin Foodhall and Tina Barrat took on the challenge of changing the narrative around school food.
Students evaluated the entries, and an independent panel of experts and stakeholders based on sustainability factors and other predetermined criteria. School lunch providers committed in advance to serving each chef’s entry on a rotational basis on the menu at the schools they work for throughout the subsequent academic year.
