From farms to FARMS: How school lunches travel to trays

Home to the classic chicken patty sandwich and personal pizza, school cafeterias are integral in providing healthy and affordable food options to hundreds of thousands of students across Montgomery County every day. However, many students are still in the dark about where the food on their plates comes from and what initiatives MCPS has implemented to make school lunches more affordable.

Regarding the origin of school meals, there is no single or easy answer given the wide range of sources from which MCPS gets their food. However, a majority of raw ingredients, such as raw potatoes, and prepackaged foods, such as frozen onion rings, come from contracts signed between MCPS and an ingredient supplier. Usually in the late summer, MCPS sends out an invitation for bid which allows different ingredient suppliers to bid to become suppliers of a certain food item. In the process of awarding a contract, a variety of factors are considered, such as the offered price per unit and ability of product to meet nutritional standards set by Division of Food and Nutrition Services. The bid is eventually awarded to a contractor who then becomes the sole provider of that specific food product for one year.

The raw ingredients are shipped to the MCPS Central Production Facility in Gaithersburg. The facility is split into three sections: a pre-packaging area dedicated to packaging elementary school meals, a cook-chill area where sauces and soups are made and an ingredient control area where ingredients are combined together to create meals. The county also has its own central distribution system since MCPS is the only county in Maryland that has its own food production facility..

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