The Healthy Lunch Box has been making big changes!
Our biggest goal has been to transition to a higher standard of food production and quality for the families that we serve. To that end, last year we moved into a new commercial kitchen in the city of Houston, at 614 West Greens Road. This new facility drastically improved our cooking capacity as we moved from 2,100 sq feet to 7,000 sq feet. This extra space tripled our kitchen equipment and refrigeration.
We truly enjoyed our old-fashioned ‘pot and pan’ kitchen since 1996, but we have now transitioned to safer stand-alone kitchen equipment such as huge tilt skillets, floor mixers, food steaming cabinets, kettles, etc. We needed the extra refrigeration and cooking equipment to make these changes a reality.
As a caterer for many Houston schools, we recognize that we cannot address every health concern or dietary preference. However, we can do our very best to ensure that the food we produce is of the freshest quality that we can afford. We discovered that by 1) upgrading our food purchasing standards; 2) changing our cooking methods, and 3) increasing our fresh food storage capacity, we can address many health and nutrition concerns common to most school lunch programs.
The changes last year were vast, and more positive changes are still to come. Since our inception in 1996, The Healthy Lunch Box began producing school lunches using traditional, homestyle cooking methods. In recent years, concerns about school lunches/child nutrition have evolved. By moving to a better equipped facility, The Healthy Lunch Box was able to address these concerns by eliminating most manufactured or processed foods from our school catering menus – making most menu items completely from scratch.
Upgrades to our service include:
- Eliminating canned vegetables from our production, serving only fresh or frozen vegetables and fruits.
- Steamed fresh/frozen vegetables, rather than boiling vegetables, preserving more nutrients.
- Transitioning toward brown and multigrain breads, pastas, and rice.
- Steak fingers and tilapia fillets are ‘made from scratch’ (similar to our current Chicken Strips).
- Chicken sandwich will switch to white meat breast.
- Soups are made completely from ‘scratch’, including fresh meats, poultry, and vegetables.
We’re not done growing and improving!
We still have many more changes in the works, such as finding how to best utilize our brand new bakery department. We’re looking forward to the fun. Come by and visit — “samplers” are always welcome!
