B-W Food Service Wins National Grant

Pinnacle Food Service—a producer, marketer and distributor of nationally branded food products like Aunt Jemima, Lender's Bagels, Log Cabin and more—awarded the  a $1,000 grant on Wednesday morning to use toward promoting the district's daily school breakfast program.

Baldwin-Whitehall's Food Service Director , an ARAMARK employee, nominated Baldwin-Whitehall for the grant, which is awarded on a rolling basis to just one U.S. school or district at a time.

Nominated school bodies must have 40-percent-or-less average daily participation in their breakfast programs by their students, and they must express a desire to improve that number through the grant money.

Duff went after that money, and B-W was selected as Pinnacle's winner this time, based partly on excellence in school breakfast already exhibited in B-W.

Robert J. Sheridan, a partner with Concept Food Sales—a food service broker that counts Pinnacle as one of its clients—said that Duff's breakfast program, which is available at all five of B-W's public schools, is in line with Pinnacle's thinking that a healthy breakfast is the ideal start to a student's day.

Sheridan presented Pinnacle's $1,000 check to Duff and B-W School District Superintendent Dr. Lawrence C. Korchnak at the district office.

Duff said that she will partner with B-W's Assistant to the Superintendent for Finance and Operations William D. McKain to decide how to use the money to market the district's breakfast program better in order to get more students to take advantage of it.

"We're trying to get more participation, so the parent is not worried—in the case of double-income where they're leaving for work," Sheridan said, "that their child doesn't have juice, milk, a waffle, pancake, a bagel available.

"And it's not junk food. They're (students are) not getting a McDonald's burrito or something like that. They're getting a healthy breakfast."

Click here for B-W's February breakfast menu and here for nutritional information.

Do you or your child eat breakfast at school? What's your experience been like? Tell us in the comments section below.

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