Mention “school food” and most people probably think of the scary lunch lady dumping a scoop of slop on an innocent child’s tray.The Chandler Unified School District has made it a goal to change that stereotype.

CUSD Central Kitchen in responsible for all of the food and beverage items served at the 49 Chandler schools. According to director and spokesperson Wesley Delbridge, Central Kitchen was voted one of the top five nutrition departments in the nation, receiving perfect scores in health inspections and customer service, and has even been recognized by First Lady Michelle Obama. Moreover, out of their 300 staff members, four are certified dietitians, which is the best the state.

Delbridge has also stated that Central Kitchen was the first in the country to create a school nutrition app (CUSD Food) which provides nutrition and allergen information, lunch money tracking, and other school food news.

“Our thought is to…revolutionize school nutrition,” he said. The app also provides an electronic school menu to replace printed menus. This along with environmentally sound packaging are steps they are taking to become more eco-friendly.

Central Kitchen is also a non-profit organization, serving over 5 million meals a year for the same price it takes to prepare them. Even select vendors like Church’s Chicken and Chick-Fil-A are not big money makers for the program. They are, however, local Chandler franchises.

“We’re all about supporting the local economy,” Delbridge said, adding, “[They’re] just there to kind of improve the lunch environment.” The food has met nutritional guidelines and therefore, Central Kitchen has had no problem giving the businesses exposure thus far.

However, the Smart Snacks in Schools guidelines have been released, which means slight change for CUSD’s menu.

“You’re going to see over this time this year a transition from the traditional Chik-fil-A [and] Church’s that you’ve always seen into a healthier product,” Delbridge said. This act calls for food to be replaced with more nutritional options, but rather than getting rid of all the food that doesn’t meet the new standards in one clean swipe, Central Kitchen is opting to slowly transform the menu.

This won’t be a difficult process, seeing as the menu is already fairly healthy. The balancing act of creating foods that are satisfactory for the students and nutritionally up to par is nothing new for Central Kitchen.

“All the studies have show that…a student who is eating well and has the nutrition that they need will perform better on their tests, will feel better with their moods, have less behavior problems, have less attendance problems, less instances of them getting sick,” Delbridge reasoned. It’s all about eating healthier to in turn, do better.