Nutrition Templates
Marketing School Breakfast
As you leave school on Thursday afternoon, you glance at the flat screen TV in your cafeteria. Tomorrow’s breakfast is whole grain mini-waffles with fresh fruit—your favorite!—and your friend is playing guitar in the Friday Café. Bonus! As you head out to catch the bus home, you pass posters about school breakfast designed by your school’s Students Taking Charge group. You didn’t know you could sleep in and still make it to second chance breakfast at 8:30 or that your school’s cafeteria was on Twitter now. Good to know! That night, you get a text from the school cafeteria with the menu—oh, right, waffles—and a reminder to bring your breakfast card in the morning. Every time you get five stamps on your card, you’re entered into a drawing for a gift card or another prize at the end of the month. As you get off the bus the next morning, you can’t wait to enjoy some mini-waffles with your friends before your Chem II test. Your brain is going to need all the help it can get.
Does this sound like your school or like science fiction? Find out how your Students Taking Charge group can market your cafeteria and make it the place to be in the morning!
Better Breakfasts
Is your cafeteria more “meh” than “mmm?” Are the whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and proteins served just not appealing? Do you wish there were better options, fresher fruits, and even the occasional mango smoothie or spicy breakfast fajita to mix things up? Even the best restaurant menu needs to be changed up to keep it fresh, interesting, and appealing for its customers! And, in school, the customers are you and your friends. It may be time for your Students Taking Charge group to partner with your cafeteria staff, connect with key teachers and student leaders, and mobilize your friends to investigate what students want. Investigate whether your school needs a food reboot!
Energize Your Cafeteria!
When you walk into your cafeteria for breakfast, what’s your first impression? Is the space bright and clean, with walls featuring student artwork, colorful murals, and news about events, menus, and healthy nutrition? Is there flexible indoor or outdoor seating that works with the way that you and your classmates use the cafeteria? Are there fun events like music, movies, comedy, or other entertainment that make breakfast fun? By energizing your cafeteria, you can take your school’s space from blah to beautiful AND encourage more students to come to campus for breakfast and stay on campus for lunch. Investigate whether your school’s eatery is ready for an extreme (or easy) makeover!
Eat Local at Your School
Are you interested in having better-tasting, fresher fruits and vegetables in your cafeteria? Would you like to go green as you eat greens? You’re not alone! Join high school students from across the country who are eating healthier, improving the environment, and learning new skills in advertising, accounting, and food production through school gardens. By planting a school garden with your Students Taking Charge group, you can grow fruits and vegetables that students enjoy and provide your school with very fresh and very local healthy food choices. You can also sell your produce to students, parents, and community members to keep your garden growing for years to come! Would a garden work for your school? Investigate whether your community is ready for an “edible schoolyard!”
Create a Healthy School Market
Looking for a way to improve healthy eating, develop entrepreneurial skills, and learn about issues that affect your health and the health of the community? Consider starting a healthy school market. A school market is a place where students can sell fruits, vegetables, smoothies, snacks, beverages, and other products to their friends, teachers, school staff, and community members. A successful school store can raise money for student clubs while improving healthy food choices for students who are on the go before school, after school, or at special events. Would a healthy school market work in your school? Read more!
Stay Updated
STC on: 
Steal These Ideas
Brainstorming as a school
Sometimes a group of 6 or 8 students can have hard time deciding how to make their school a healthier place. While surveys, interviews, and focus groups can all help, one school in Kansas decided to bring their whole student body together for two Students Taking Charge forums.
Seeing is believing
Are you getting a lot of resistance from your principal or school nutrition director? Does it seem like you're just not speaking their language? Or do they not understand what your changes will really look like? Find out how Northampton High School took their school leaders to visit another high school that has already put their ideas into action!