On a Thursday afternoon in late September, students at Libertyville High School in Libertyville, Illinois, stepped into the cafeteria to find two-time James Beard Award winning Chef Sarah Stegner sampling her recipe for marinated beets that uses local beets and honey.
The recipe is one of many that Stegner is creating for Libertyville’s foodservice provider, Quest Food Management, as part of a pilot project aimed at connecting students to their food.
“It’s about engaging with the kids, having them understand where their food comes from, and that really is the focus of what we’re doing,” says Stegner.
Each month, students at Libertyville and six additional schools in the Chicagoland area will get to try a recipe created by Stegner that spotlights a local ingredient.
Rooted in individuality
Each of Stegner’s recipes she’s developing for the project begin with listening to the needs of the students and Quest staff at each school.
“The only way it’s going to work is if everybody is involved and engaged and has a voice,” she says.
Once the schools have shared their feedback, Stegner then gets started on creating a recipe that “is based on what we feel will work within the school,” says Quest’s Director of Vision and Innovation Daniel Warrillow.
Alongside Stegner’s recipe, Quest’s Corporate Chef Zac Maness also comes up with an additional two to three recipes featuring the spotlighted produce to give schools different recipe options based on their individual needs.
“We’re making sure that that vegetable, that fruit, whatever the focus is, we have a whole supply of recipes that they can use that they’ve had input in,” says Warrillow.
Making sure the recipes are adaptable for a wide range of schools is a priority for the project.
“This is not a cookie cutter pilot, and we’re not pushing for everybody to do the same thing,” says Stegner.
The pilot schools each have different needs based on their location, number of staff, if they participate in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), and more.
Quest intentionally chose schools with different needs and setups so they could learn how to adapt the recipes during the pilot-phase of the initiative to meet schools’ individual needs.
Libertyville High School featured Chef Sarah Stegner’s marinated beets recipe.
Before students get to sample the recipes, the Quest team visits the farm that’s supplying whatever produce is being featured for that month.
“We are building a relationship first,” says Warrillow. We build a relationship with that farm.”
At the cafeteria, connection continues to be the focus, this time with the students. During the samplings, the Quest team is available to answer students’ questions about the recipe and share more about where the ingredients in the dish came from.
Alongside the samples, students get a recipe card to make the recipe at home. Expanding the recipes beyond the four walls of the cafeteria is another focus of the project.
“We want to show that we are part of the community,” says Warrillow.
The Quest team wants to reach the parents especially and has created flyers that go home to the parents to let them know about the pilot and the recipe their kids are sampling at school.
“It’s kind of like introducing our relationship,” says Warrillow. “This is what we’re trying to do and this is what’s coming up.”
As the project continues to evolve, Stegner would like to continue to find ways to connect with the parents.
“One of the things that I would love to do is have a dinner at night with the parents and students where they eat what the kids would eat in the cafeteria,” she says. “It will help people understand who we are and that chefs are in the kitchen preparing this.”
Other ideas for the pilot down the line include having students visit some of the farms that Quest has patterned with so they can get a first-hand look at where their food is coming from.
For now, the team is focusing on October’s produce spotlight which is apples and is excited to have Stegner create new recipes inspired by local ingredients.
“We’re adapting as we go so next year, we will have built this seasonal recipe database with Sarah’s recipes in there,” says Warrillow. “The plan that we have in place is that by February next year, every single Quest location will be featuring a Sarah Stegner seasonal recipe.”
