Photo courtesy of Beyond Green Partners website
Written by: Liz Lukehart, Communications Manager, Seven Generations Ahead
For over 20 years, Beyond Green Partners has been transforming school kitchens across Illinois, proving that it’s possible to shift from processed foods to scratch cooking and local ingredients, all while staying within budget.
In 2024, Beyond Green Partners’ “Buy Local, Cook Fresh Illinois” project won an Innovation Collaborative Award grant from the USDA-funded Lake Michigan School Food System Innovation Hub. The funding supports a cohort of three rural Central Illinois schools, which are collaborating and learning from each other while Beyond Green Partners helps them transform their food service programs to scratch-cooking operations that use locally sourced ingredients.
Greg Christian, founder of Beyond Green Partners, is passionate about bringing fresh, healthy local food to kids through collaboration with students, school staff and kitchen staff. “Kids love it because they have a say,” says Christian. “We always call them customers. We tell them: ‘We want your ideas because we want you happy.’”
A cornerstone of this approach is helping school kitchens cut costs and increase efficiencies while cooking meals students love. The money is already there for this work, he says, emphasizing that schools just need to learn how to unlock it.
Sourcing Local and Connecting with Schools
Beyond Green Partners takes a holistic approach to procuring local food and engaging with schools to develop menus that work for both the kitchen staff and the students. This approach includes:
Vendor Collaboration. They start by working with existing food vendors to see what they can get locally, then seek out local food aggregators, attend farmers markets or find other avenues to procure local food for schools.
Empowering Kitchen Staff. Beyond Green Partners focuses on teaching kitchen staff how to cook in bulk. The emphasis is on building skills and confidence in washing, cutting and cooking fresh ingredients. Once staff adapt to this new way of working in the kitchen, they can cook almost any vegetable.
Kid-Centric Menus: Beyond Green Partners prioritizes what kids want to eat and what the kitchen staff enjoy making, recognizing that cooks know their community best. They start with meals that feature primarily conventional items, gradually introducing scratch-cooked and local elements. This approach allows schools to set their own pace when transitioning to scratch cooking.
Taste Testing and Feedback: Meal ideas and feedback are gathered from students in classrooms (which helps avoid peer influence in cafeterias). Beyond Green Partners collaborates with cooks to develop recipes. Before a new dish is rolled out to the school, it’s taste-tested by small groups, tweaked and re-tested until it’s a hit with the kids. This inclusive approach means the school community is more invested in the meals, and it also means kids are more forgiving on the occasions that a meal is not a “home run,” in Christian’s words.
Financial Sustainability and Impact
The ability to procure local food ebbs and flows, but Christian says he’s not concerned about being able to continue this work.
That’s primarily because Beyond Green Partners has found ways to reduce food waste. There can be a disconnect between the front office and the cafeteria, Christian says, which often leads to food waste because kitchens wind up with more food than they need. Part of Beyond Green Partners’ approach includes bridging that communication gap and having a more accurate understanding of the needs in the kitchen. Schools end up saving money, even though they’re buying fresh local food, because they’re buying less.
The result is that Beyond Green Partners often has schools achieving 40 to 50 percent local food within budget, operating at cost-neutral or even saving money. Christian is so confident they can work within budget that Beyond Green Partners guarantees the change will be cost-neutral.
The other way they achieve cost savings for schools is by optimizing labor in the kitchen. They introduce a style of kitchen prep called “swarming,” where staff work together without fixed stations and jump in where needed.
While this can be a challenging shift from traditional, “European style,” siloed kitchens, where each person works at their own station, it significantly improves efficiency. Many school district food leaders are initially skeptical that this approach is cost-neutral and doesn’t require more labor, but Beyond Green Partners has proven it’s possible.
Beyond Green Partners aims for schools to reach 40 percent scratch cooking by the end of the school year, a goal that Christian says schools often embrace and achieve. Twenty years of experience in this work has taught Christian that it’s not only possible to cook nutritious, local food from scratch in school kitchens; it’s also a win-win for their students, staff, and budgets.
A Success Story: Pawnee Elementary School
Pawnee Elementary School in Sangamon County is a prime example of Beyond Green Partners’ impact. Funding from the county covered Beyond Green Partners’ services, so there were no upfront costs for the school. After two years, Pawnee is at 92 percent scratch cooking and 40 percent local food, with no additional labor. According to Christian, the kitchen staff have said the difference in the food they’re now serving is “night and day” from what it was before.
Christian notes that the kitchen staff is thriving and happy, with a palpable sense of purpose; “they really want to make the best food.”