Revamped menu brings culinary twist to Bay Area school district

Scratch cooking with a cultural culinary twist is on the menu this year for 8,000 students of a Peninsula school district while the central kitchen undergoes renovations for the first time in 50 years.

Daisy Li, founder and president of Moonstar Charitable Organization and its catering arm MoonChef, is providing a mix of school lunch favorites plus freshly cooked healthy alternatives for the students at South San Francisco Unified School District and a child development center it formerly served.

“We’re pretty diverse and the staff is diverse. We said we want variety that meets the needs of the community we serve and exposes the kids to nutritious foods as well as various cultures,” said Carmen Lo, executive director of the Friends to Parents center, whose oldest preschoolers move on to transitional kindergarten and kindergarten, often within the school district.

Knowing kids pushed too far out their comfort zones won’t eat, the center hung onto staples like pizza and asked teachers to prepare the children for the incoming surprises of purple lettuce or ground meat in fried rice.

Earlier this month, Li strolled into the center in South San Francisco to see how her youngest clients are doing with the new food coming in hot from Moonstar’s industrial kitchen just across town.

The preschoolers sat in tiny chairs at low, crescent tables, scooping sprouted brown rice and fragrant ground beef studded with broccoli and carrots onto their plates before passing the serving bowl. A teacher sat with each group, helping the little lunchers pour milk from a pitcher, encouraging them to try a bit of everything and ask for more.

Previously, the center’s lunches arrived on individual trays from the school district’s central kitchen. But last school year, the district told the center to identify an alternative vendor and issued its own request for proposals from vendors to feed its 8,000 students for the next 13 months.

Li answered the call, recalling a discussion about childhood obesity between some of the district’s administrators who had visited her Moonstar Buffet in Daly City years ago.

The selection process was tough. The district had a scoring system that awarded points for years of experience as a school nutrition provider, meaning new vendors struggle to land contracts without experience but can’t get experience without landing a contract.

An outlier with the experience and infrastructure to produce food at scale under strict governmental parameters, Li prepared a knockout kaleidoscope of menu samples –turkey corn dogs, tomato rotini with star-shaped veggie patties, a chicken enchilada-fajita duo, chicken tikka masala and creamy tomato beef with spaghetti.

Moonstar won the highest marks among three contenders from a tasting panel representing various district departments who evaluated flavor, appearance, color, aroma, and texture.

Li also won the contract, and steamed forward — with its experience serving seniors, the food-insecure and people stranded in emergency situations — after transforming her 30-year-old buffet restaurant business into a nonprofit operation during the pandemic.

In an independent search, Friends to Parents also selected Moonstar over four other vendors based on its ability to comply with and exceed national Child and Adult Care Food Program nutrition standards.

“You need to develop the child as a whole, and a fundamental part of that is nutrition,” said Lo, the center’s executive director. “It’s important to begin the introduction of nutrition at a younger age.”

At the school district, the challenge is not acquainting kids to foods, but competing with a world of alternatives.

In the final week of the district’s summer programs, staff stood by as students streamed into the cafeteria of South San Francisco High School to choose between processed burgers and fries produced on site and freshly delivered Moonstar meals.

Assistant Superintendent Ted O, who has been at the district for 10 years, said nutrition is the first step to improving learning conditions and praised Robert Chan, director of nutrition services, for increasing participation in the California Universal Meals Program that made lunches free for all students in 2022-2023.

Chicken wraps, salads and sandwiches, pulled pork tacos and yogurt parfaits have been hits. Ramen was actually too popular to implement.

“It held up the lines,” said Chan, who farms his own produce in raised beds at home and piloted some innovations of his own before this year.

So far, the students at South San Francisco Unified School District, who are 52% Hispanic or Latino and 36% Asian, have enjoyed Moonstar’s enchiladas, fried rice, noodles, udon and mac and cheese.

Chan, who became a clinical dietician after shedding childhood chubbiness, knows the tradeoff between taste and health.

Measures like the proposed California State Assembly Bill 1264 to remove ultra-processed foods from schools by 2032, have been driven by a nationwide epidemic of food system diseases such as childhood obesity and Type 2 diabetes. But sugary, fatty foods still lure students to off-campus options that are worse for bodies and brains than anything a school ever dished out.

After the upgraded kitchen at El Camino High School opens in 2026-2027, Chan said Moonstar will remain a resource for ideas exchange and backup in the event of emergencies like electrical outages.

Friends to Parents is feeling things out with Moonstar. The kids have yet to try all the available menu items.

Li is treating this as an invaluable research and development phase before expanding further into early life and student nutrition.

“I want to change history,” she said, grinning after witnessing the satisfaction of her junior customers.

“It’s going to take a lot. But starting small is important,” Lo said.