School spices up lunch menu with fast food

DATE                  09/11/92
NEWSPAPER             THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SECTION               NEWS
EDITION               MORNING
PAGE                  a01
STORY LENGTH          34 INCHES
HEADLINE              School spices  up lunch menu  with fast food
BYLINE/CREDIT         Dan Froomkin:  The Orange County Register
SUBJECT TERMS         OC:SCHOOLS:FOOD:CHANGE
  KEYWORD-HIT.
     Complaining about school food is as American as apple pie.
     But when Capistrano Valley High School started serving Taco Bell
  Combo burritos, Pizza Hut Personal Pan pizzas and Kentucky Fried
  Chicken nuggets and fries at lunchtime Thursday, students were all
  smiles.
     This 2,800-student public high school in south Orange County is
  said to be the first in the nation to establish a mall-style food
  court, serving fast food prepared, sold and marketed by school
  employees to commercial-chain specifications.
     "We finally have real food!" said Mystee Holland, a 16-year-old
  junior. "None of this soybean-patty stuff."
     Punctuating her comments with first-day-of-school greetings,
  Holland said that until Thursday, school lunch meant one of two
  options: gag or starve.
     But tacos, chicken nuggets, frozen yogurt -- that's what she eats
  even when she's not held captive on campus.
     "I live off fast food," she said.
     Around Holland there was coordinated chaos as an overflow crowd
  crept into the sparkling, renovated food line, brightly lighted
  with familiar neon logos hitherto seen only off campus.
     Even with 12 minutes tacked on to the regular 35-minute lunch
  period -- just for the first day -- students were lining up to the
  end.
     The teens can choose among the three chains' products as well as
  the traditional offerings from the school kitchen. For instance,
  $1.85 or a card showing they qualify for a free lunch gets them a
  small pizza, fruit and milk. A 16-ounce soda with unlimited refills
  costs another buck.
     "School lunches, they taste dull," said Rick Carrillo, an
  18-year-old senior holding a Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza and a Pepsi.
  "This tastes good," he said after a mouthful. "A ten."
     "I walked in this morning and I thought, `Wow!' " said junior
  Stacie Higginbotham, 16, eating a bean burrito.
     The decor, the format, the food, the prices -- all are familiar
  to these suburban teen-agers. "It's kind of the mallish look,"
  Higginbotham said.
     Some students couldn't stop at just one entree. Freshman Bill
  Senior, 14, chowed down on a pizza-for-one and a combo burrito.
  "I'm getting ready for a football game," he grunted.
     Freshman Andrew Fribourg, 13, sat across the table chewing on
  the lunch he brought from home and looked on covetously. "I think
  if he wasn't so big, I'd take it from him," Fribourg said.
     "It's great food and it's got a good price," said Todd Mitchell,
  17, a senior. "Last year, it was just a regular old cafeteria, but
  when you bring in big names like Taco Bell or Pizza Hut, people
  want to buy it."
     Classmate Alex Holdridge, also 17, was even less restrained.
  "It's the greatest thing ever at Capo in history," he said.
     Teen-agers are never of one mind, though, and Holdridge got an
  argument from his friend Kyle Berger, sitting next to him on the
  lip of the stage -- lunch-eating territory appropriated by the new
  seniors.
     "I think it's a waste of money," said Berger, also 17. "It's all
  junk food. What about eating right?
     "This is better for me," Berger said, picking over the remnants
  of the lunch he brought from home: a plum, two cans of V-8, two
  bananas and a pear.
     "I think they should have spent the money on more teachers,"
  said Amanda Babusek, 17, a senior looking on coolly as the crowds
  finally began to ebb.
     "The pizza is good, but it's a little oily," said Melissa Saad,
  16, a junior, eyeing a little pool of grease on one of her
  pepperonis.
     Many students defended the food. "It's what we live on," said
  Andrea Lerner, 17, a senior. And certainly no fast food could be
  less nutritious than what Lerner had brought from home for her
  lunch: a bag of sugar-coated Crunch Berries cereal.
     Bill Caldwell, food service director for the Capistrano Unified
  School District, said Capistrano Valley High is the first school to
  be licensed by fast-food chains.
     Many schools buy brand-name fast food from nearby franchises and
  resell it at school. Some county students are already used to
  consuming products from McDonald's, Subway and other chains on
  campus.
     But Capistrano Valley, after having its cafeteria refurbished by
  Taco Bell, is newly licensed to prepare the food in its own
  kitchen, then sell it quickly with a limited markup.
     Caldwell said students get the food they like, fresher and
  cheaper than they could before.
     The chains gain access to campuses and make some money.   And
  school officials get more business and feel confident that more
  students will eat lunch, which Caldwell said they often skip
  otherwise.
     Caldwell said the district culled through offerings from the
  chains, selecting the most popular meals and rejecting those that
  didn't meet district nutrition standards. For instance, Caldwell
  said, the Taco Bell Taco Salad was rejected because it is too high
  in fat.
     Pizza Hut and Taco Bell sent several men in suits from their
  corporate offices in Irvine to oversee the first day. Though they
  detected many rough spots -- most noticeably a real lag at the cash
  registers -- they could barely contain their excitement.
     "It will work," said Mike Johnson, director of Pacific Coast
  operations for Pizza Hut. "We haven't wrestled it down yet, but it
  works. I think it's got a lot of potential."
     Johnson said the profit margin in schools is small, but the
  pennies add up with the potential of so many new "points of
  distribution."
     And, he said, there's a long-term benefit in developing
  brand-name loyalty among the schoolchildren.