Culinary Innovation

is on the Menu at Schools Nationwide

The new Aramark Student Nutrition Culinary Alliance brings together top chefs from across the country to expand global flavors in ways that reflect students’ ever-changing tastes.

Students want tasty, on-trend meals they see on social media or the latest bingeable cooking show. Parents want nutritious meals and snacks. Educators want to fuel students to improve attendance, mood, concentration, memory and test scores.

An innovative new program is aimed at meeting the needs of all three groups — the Aramark Student Nutrition Culinary Alliance. The program brings together creative chefs to collaborate on creating innovative new recipes and sharing best practices with schools.

Now students can look forward to a wide variety of new and rotating menu items designed to create excitement and introduce them to new flavors and unique meals — such as harvest grain bowls, honey sriracha turkey burger waffle sandwiches, and chipotle chickpea hoagies.

Cubano Eggoji Waffle Sandwich

Buffalo Wing Tacos

Loaded Breakfast Scones

Spicy Chili dipped crisped Buffalo Wings

Penne pasta with plant based crumbles

Chimichurri Buffalo Wings Power Bowl

First launched during the pandemic by Culinary Development Director Chef Scott Zahren, the Culinary Alliance is now spreading across the country under the leadership of VP of Operational Excellence Beth An Engelland, Senior Executive Chef Laura McMann, and Vice President of Marketing John Kandemir. The program is bringing innovative, chef-designed, and social media-inspired meals to students at a growing number of schools. The new menu items are helping build excitement for mealtimes, as well as more cohesively tying to schools’ special promotions and events, such as holidays, spirit days and national food days.

Culinary Alliance Mission

The mission of the Aramark Student Nutrition Culinary Alliance is to engage our culinary professionals at school districts across the country with tools, training and creative collaboration to provide students with meals that power their potential. To achieve this mission, the program forges relations between chefs from different parts of the country to strategize and collaborate, gather insights from schools and regions, and share best practices, tips and tricks with the nutrition services teams in schools. Chefs and dietitians regularly review the latest insights and food trends and work within school nutrition standards to help students explore their love of food.

We meet regularly in a think-tank setting to collaborate, spark innovation and bring the Aramark Student Nutrition brand to life for schools and students. We work together with dietitians, purchasing, brand and concept development teams to refine recipes and menus based on local and regional taste preferences and trends.”

Beth Ann England, RDN, MBA

Vice President of Operational Excellence, Aramark Student Nutrition

How Do Schools Benefit?

Schools often struggle with culinary development — from identifying and attracting culinary talent, to expanding the skills of their existing staff, to providing meals that excite students and meet regulatory requirements. The Culinary Alliance breaks the mold, bringing staff, students and parents numerous benefits, including:

Working with world-class chefs to learn best practices in student nutrition

Being the first to test innovative new, on-trend recipes

Providing staff with opportunities to learn new food prep processes

Increasing students’ excitement about trying new foods

Key to the Culinary Alliance's success is student engagement. The Culinary Alliance not only uses student feedback and insights to drive new recipe ideas—the chefs also test the new recipes with students, bringing them directly into the development process. Their feedback shapes the menus in their schools. Involving students leads to recipes and menus that are tailored directly to their tastes while meeting regulations.

We’re providing an opportunity for our school staff members to interact with the chefs — learn from them and gain their support. This is especially valuable in schools where districts don’t have chefs.”

Laura McMann

Senior Executive Chef
Aramark Student Nutrition

We had so much fun working with a new dough and getting student feedback. We tried a bunch of recipes. We used it for samosas, flatbreads, empanadas, biscuit sandwiches, and pretzel dogs. The students really liked it when we made biscuits with it. And they gave us a lot of great feedback about the other recipes, which we’re excited to keep playing with to perfect them."

Maria E. Davis

Executive Chef

Meet Our Innovative Chefs

All members of the Culinary Alliance are classically trained chefs with international food service experience. They include restaurateurs, certified research chefs and Culinary Institute of America-certified Pro Chefs — all of whom all share a passion for service and powering student potential.

The Culinary Alliance works closely with Aramark field chefs, chef managers and food service directors on training for recipe execution, plating, presentation and more to ensure consistency and quality, as well as driving meal participation and satisfaction among students. As of May 2023, the Culinary Alliance has 15 nutrition services professionals participating in the program.

Morgan Bell

Sr. Executive Chef,
Food Service Manager and Director
Chicago Public Schools (IL)

Culinary Innovation

is on the Menu at Schools Nationwide

Students want tasty, on-trend meals they see on social media or the latest bingeable cooking show. Parents want nutritious meals and snacks. Educators want to fuel students to improve attendance, mood, concentration, memory and test scores.