Culinary Innovation
is on the Menu at Schools Nationwide
The new Aramark Student Nutrition Culinary Alliance brings together top chefs from across the country to expand global flavors in ways that reflect students’ ever-changing tastes.
Students want tasty, on-trend meals they see on social media or the latest bingeable cooking show. Parents want nutritious meals and snacks. Educators want to fuel students to improve attendance, mood, concentration, memory and test scores.
An innovative new program is aimed at meeting the needs of all three groups — the Aramark Student Nutrition Culinary Alliance. The program brings together creative chefs to collaborate on creating innovative new recipes and sharing best practices with schools.
Now students can look forward to a wide variety of new and rotating menu items designed to create excitement and introduce them to new flavors and unique meals — such as harvest grain bowls, honey sriracha turkey burger waffle sandwiches, and chipotle chickpea hoagies.
First launched during the pandemic by Culinary Development Director Chef Scott Zahren, the Culinary Alliance is now spreading across the country under the leadership of VP of Operational Excellence Beth An Engelland, Senior Executive Chef Laura McMann, and Vice President of Marketing John Kandemir. The program is bringing innovative, chef-designed, and social media-inspired meals to students at a growing number of schools. The new menu items are helping build excitement for mealtimes, as well as more cohesively tying to schools’ special promotions and events, such as holidays, spirit days and national food days.
Culinary Alliance Mission
The mission of the Aramark Student Nutrition Culinary Alliance is to engage our culinary professionals at school districts across the country with tools, training and creative collaboration to provide students with meals that power their potential. To achieve this mission, the program forges relations between chefs from different parts of the country to strategize and collaborate, gather insights from schools and regions, and share best practices, tips and tricks with the nutrition services teams in schools. Chefs and dietitians regularly review the latest insights and food trends and work within school nutrition standards to help students explore their love of food.
"We meet regularly in a think-tank setting to collaborate, spark innovation and bring the Aramark Student Nutrition brand to life for schools and students. We work together with dietitians, purchasing, brand and concept development teams to refine recipes and menus based on local and regional taste preferences and trends.”
Beth Ann England, RDN, MBA
Vice President of Operational Excellence, Aramark Student Nutrition
Vice President of Operational Excellence, Aramark Student Nutrition
How Do Schools Benefit?
Schools often struggle with culinary development — from identifying and attracting culinary talent, to expanding the skills of their existing staff, to providing meals that excite students and meet regulatory requirements. The Culinary Alliance breaks the mold, bringing staff, students and parents numerous benefits, including:
- Working with world-class chefs to learn best practices in student nutrition
- Being the first to test innovative new, on-trend recipes
- Providing staff with opportunities to learn new food prep processes
- Increasing students’ excitement about trying new foods
Key to the Culinary Alliance's success is student engagement. The Culinary Alliance not only uses student feedback and insights to drive new recipe ideas—the chefs also test the new recipes with students, bringing them directly into the development process. Their feedback shapes the menus in their schools. Involving students leads to recipes and menus that are tailored directly to their tastes while meeting regulations.
"We had so much fun working with a new dough and getting student feedback. We tried a bunch of recipes. We used it for samosas, flatbreads, empanadas, biscuit sandwiches, and pretzel dogs. The students really liked it when we made biscuits with it. And they gave us a lot of great feedback about the other recipes, which we’re excited to keep playing with to perfect them."
Maria E. Davis
Executive Chef
Executive Chef
"Each member of the Culinary Alliance
is an experienced chef who brings their unique perspective, expertise and passions to the team. It’s a great way to connect and share innovative ideas and best practices among colleagues.”
Beth Ann England, RDN, MBA
Vice President of Operational Excellence, Aramark Student Nutrition
Achievements in 2022
During its first year, the Culinary Alliance achieved several milestones:
- Created flavor-packed plant-forward meals and menus
- Amped up salt-free offerings with new spice blends
- Tested out global spicy cuisine menus
- Developed marketing resources accompanying new recipes to engage and educate students
- Conducted live food presentation, color blocking, and action station implementation trainings
- Built up the morale of school staff with career growth opportunities
- Improved food excellence in several schools
- Held a live chef demo for staff on crafting the perfect pizza
- Held in-person meetings with Aramark Student Nutrition managers across the country
What’s on the Menu in 2023?
The Culinary Alliance continued its innovation mission. New initiatives introduced in 2023 include:
- Developed faster processes to create and train staff on recipes based on recent food trends
- Introduced and tested new flavor profiles and recipes
- Produced short TikTok-ready videos to promote the program
- Introduced new limited-time offer meals to grades 6–12
About Aramark and Student Nutrition
Aramark has a long history and proven track record of finding creative ways to deliver tasty meals students enjoy — while creating positive dining habits that can last a lifetime. Aramark partners with 375 school districts nationally for both food and facility service. We serve 250 million meals to more than 2.4 million students annually, and we ensure all school meals adhere to the USDA Child Nutrition guidelines for breakfasts, lunches, after-school snacks and beyond.
