Dear Fellow Parents,
We know firsthand how great it can be for your child to have a special hot lunch at school and for your family to have a break from preparing lunch! With this in mind, we are very excited to announce that the APA will be offering hot lunches twice a month on the following dates:
Friday – September 28, 2018
Friday – October 12, 2018
Friday – October 26, 2018
Friday – November 16, 2018
Friday – November 30, 2018
Thursday – December 13, 2018
While we plan to continue with the hot lunch program throughout the year, we intend to review everything at the end of the fall term and make any necessary adjustments before setting all of the dates and menus for the New Year.
We have made some important changes to the hot lunch program this year. Please read on to find out more!
Ordering Deadlines
All orders must be submitted by 5pm on the Friday before the upcoming hot lunch date. We know that you have a lot going on so we will be sure to send you two email reminders before each deadline. We will also post reminders on the APA Facebook page. Join here if you aren’t already a member: APA on Facebook
New Hot Lunch Providers
You’ve told us that healthy options, variety, value and age-appropriate portion sizes are important to you. With that in mind, we’ve come up with some wonderful new hot lunch providers that we believe can deliver what you’re looking for. We will be trying out a few different vendors over the course of the fall term and we’ll send you more information once the MunchaLunch system goes live. If you have any feedback along the way, options you love or things that could be better, please reach out and let us know!
Environmental Efforts (Updated Sept 12)
With Aspengrove’s values of principled global citizenship in mind, we’ve decided to make an ambitious and worthwhile change in how our hot lunches are served. We hope that you’ll be excited to join us in our efforts to reduce packaging and food waste. This year, we will be asking our vendors to deliver food in bulk wherever possible. The hot lunch items will then be served directly to students. In addition to feeling good about reducing your environmental footprint, you’ll also be able to feel good about the cost savings that we will be able to pass along to you because of our vendors’ reduced packaging costs.
Volunteers Needed
Parent (and grandparent!) volunteers are an integral part of the hot lunch delivery process. We need your help to make each hot lunch day run smoothly. Whether you can offer your time for one hot lunch or several, we would very much appreciate your help and we promise, the big smiles and full tummies of our kids make it all worthwhile. In order to make volunteering as easy and effortless as possible, we have created an online sign up which can be accessed here: Volunteer!
MunchaLunch
We will be using the MunchaLunch online ordering system again this year. We will send out an email to let you know when the system is online and you can begin ordering those tasty hot lunches! You will also be able to pay the one-time Enviro Fee through the MunchaLunch system.
Any Questions?
Please send us an email! We’d love to hear from you at apa@aspengroveschool.com
Yours Truly,
Dawn King, Hot Lunch Coordinator
& Aspengrove Parents’ Association
Awesome! I’m excited. Thank you.
Thank you Jody! We’re excited, too 🙂
Hi Dawn
It really sounds like you have been working very hard to organize this. The changes sound great and my kids will be excited to have more variety and more frequency. I am sorry to say that I work on Fridays and will be unable to help but wish I could. Thank you so much for taking this on?
Hi Jennifer,
I agree… we are so lucky to have Dawn spearheading this effort! Thank you for your willingness to volunteer. We understand that it can be hard to fit in with busy work schedules. Please consider joining us on the evening of October 3rd for our General Meeting. There are many great ways to get involved with the APA!
This lunch program sounds amazing! My suggestion is to have the older students (grade 5 and up) help with hot lunch serving- we did this growing up at our elementary school. It was an exciting opportunity to be responsible for feeding our fellow students.
Thank you Nikki! That is a great suggestion. The APA will keep it in mind as we are brainstorming how to best serve up the food on each hot lunch day. We encourage you to join us at our General Meeting on the evening of October 3rd… all great ideas and energy are welcome!