May 2025 WaveCrest Cafe Newsletter
April 30th, 2025
In this issue:
• May 2 is National School Lunch Hero Day!
• Spring Menu Survey
• Farm to School Spotlight: Sourcing Local Food
• Harvest of the Month: Strawberries
• Featured entree of the month: Orange Chicken and Fried Rice
• Job & career opportunities
Celebrate School Lunch Hero Day on May 2
2025 will mark the 13th annual School Lunch Hero Day. The day is celebrated on the first Friday of May and was established as a collaboration between the School Nutrition Association and New York Times bestselling author Jarrett J. Krosoczka, creator of the Lunch Lady graphic book series.
We encourage each and every one of our students and staff to honor, encourage, and celebrate the amazing people who prepare and serve more than 80,000 meals every week. Our friends at the School Nutrition Association have created several resources to help celebrate with fun activities to honor our School Lunch Heroes:
• Download & design a card with a thank-you note English | Español
• Download these coloring pages
• Finish these comic pages
• Draw a picture for your lunch hero
• Post to social media and use the hashtag #SchoolLunchHeroDay
A full set of the Lunch Lady book series can be found in each elementary school library in Vista Unified, thanks to a grant received by WaveCrest Cafe that funded the purchase of the books. Mr. Krosoczka, in fact, visited Vista Unified in January 2015 as part of the district’s professional development day.
We can’t say enough about our team – people who care deeply about the job they do and the children they serve. We can say thank you over and over again to this incredible group of heroes, and we hope you’ll join us!
Spring Menu Survey:
We Want to Hear From You!
Your feedback fuels our program. Please take a few minutes and let us hear from you through our Spring 2025 Menu Survey. This anonymous form enables you to provide feedback, ideas, and suggestions on how we serve our Vista Unified Community.
• For the elementary school survey, click here
• For the middle and high school survey, click here
*** If you have children in multiple grade levels, feel free to make a note of that in the feedback section of either survey.
Whether you are a student, staff member, parent, or family member, these surveys provide us with valuable information to help us continually improve our process. From the popularity of different entrees to understanding how we are serving our community, your participation is important.
Thank you for taking part in this process and letting us hear from you.
Farm to School Spotlight: Sourcing Local Food
One of the pillars of a Farm to School Program is local procurement, or, in more direct terms, buying more food from local farmers and food producers. Sourcing local food has a number of benefits, including:
• Local food is fresher: Because it doesn’t spend as much time being shipped, our children enjoy food that is fresh from the farm.
• Local food has more nutrients: Shorter shipping times means that the food retains more of its nutrients than food shipped a long way.
• Local food tastes better: It has more vibrant flavors that are maintained by shorter shipping times.
• Local food invests in our communities: For every dollar spent on local food, $1.80 goes back into local economies.
So far this school year, WaveCrest Cafe has purchased 81,657 lbs of food from farms within 75 miles of Vista. We have also purchased 189,980 lbs of fresh foods from California farms. That is an increase of over 127,000 from last year’s combined totals.
We appreciate the farmers and distributors we work with who help us bring the freshest, tastiest foods to our schools every day.
May’s Harvest Of The Month is Strawberries
It’s May, and in Vista, that means it’s time for the annual Vista Strawberry Festival (Sunday, May 25), as well as having strawberries as our featured item for Harvest Of The Month! Classrooms across our district will have tasting parties and learn all about the goodness (and deliciousness!) that comes with strawberries.
For example, did you know that:
• Strawberries are part of the rose family of plants.
• There are over 600 varieties of strawberries.
• Strawberries are recorded in history as long as 2,000 years ago when a Roman Senator named Cato wrote about them.
Strawberry Nutrition Facts
• ½ cup of strawberries is an excellent source of vitamin C, providing 81% of the recommended Daily Value of vitamin C.
• Vitamin C helps your body heal cuts and wounds. It also helps your body fight infections and sickness. We cannot make vitamin C in our bodies, so we need to eat foods rich in vitamin C, like fruits and vegetables.
More Strawberry Facts
• California is the largest producer of domestically grown strawberries, supplying almost 90% of the strawberries grown in the United States.
• On average, more than 30,000 acres in California produce over one billion pounds of fresh and frozen strawberries each year.
• If all the strawberries produced in California this year were laid berry to berry, they would wrap around the world 15 times – enough to provide every household in the United States with 12 one-pint baskets.
• The common wild strawberry, Fragaria vesca, is believed to have been the first species cultivated in the early 17th century.
Strawberries are delicious on their own, in a smoothie, with yogurt and granola, or infused in water to give you a simple and healthy beverage that helps you limit sugary drinks.
Harvest of the Month Resources
Learn more about strawberries with your class during a Harvest of the Month activity. You can download our Harvest of the Month resources for families here.
Harvest of the Month is available for any classroom that wants to participate. If your child’s teacher wants to sign up for the program, it’s easy. For more information about the program, classroom tasting parties, and more, email Aleeza Hendershot.
Menu Spotlight: Orange Chicken and Fried Rice
Orange Chicken and Rice is a perennial favorite lunch entree across all grade levels. Not only is it a familiar item to a wide audience, but our team does a fantastic job of preparing and serving this meal.
Tender chicken chunks are lightly breaded and served atop a bed of whole-grain rice. The chicken is then topped with a tangy, slightly sweet orange sauce.
Our Orange Chicken and Rice is a delicious, nutrient-packed meal perfect to power a day of learning. It also comes with 82% less sodium, 5x less cholesterol, 4x less fat, and half the calories of a similar dish at a place like Panda Express. And unlike restaurants that focus on entrees, every student can build their perfect plate by choosing from a selection of fresh, seasonal fruits and veggies.
Check your school’s menu to see this and other menu items. You can explore nutrition information for every menu item here.
*** Menus are subject to change based on ingredient availability and staffing needs.
Summer Meal Information Coming Soon
We are finalizing our Summer 2025 meal program, which will run Monday – Friday from June 9 – August 8th (with no service on June 19 or July 4). We will announce meal times soon, but you can expect breakfast and lunch meals to be offered at Foothill Oak Elementary, Grapevine Elementary, VIDA Middle School, Rancho Buena Vista High School, and the Vista Boys and Girls Club. Be on the lookout for more information in our June newsletter, and please join us this summer for breakfast and lunch.
All meals are offered free of charge to children 18 years and under, with no paperwork or forms required.
Statistically, just 1 out of 7 children who qualify for free or reduced meals during the school year eat lunch during the summer months. Our summer program is a way to close that gap and provide nutrition to the communities and children that we serve.
Build Your Perfect Plate:
Giving Students Choices For Every Meal
Not only do we offer a variety of menu choices every day, but every meal comes with a selection of fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables.
This selection allows every student to build a plate with the things they like best from all our offerings. Want to load up on jicama and spinach? Go for it! Are pomegranates and grapes more your thing? Help yourself!
While the focus of meals can often be on the entree, building a perfect plate is a way of developing a habit of creating full, well-balanced meals that can last a lifetime.
We encourage each student to build their plate daily and hope that parents, families, teachers, and staff will join us in encouraging our students to take advantage of the wide range of fresh foods offered daily.
No Cost For Student Meals!
California is one of eight states across the country that has made school meals available at no cost to all students! In addition to providing fresh, healthy, delicious foods to our students, there is no paperwork required.
We’re Hiring!
Join Our Amazing Team.
School nutrition is an extremely rewarding job. You can be part of the nation’s largest restaurant group, serving tasty and nutritious meals to our children each and every day. What’s more, you’ll meet amazing people who are skilled, dedicated, and passionate about their roles.
Our team has the unique opportunity to interact with almost every student, every day. Those interactions make a big difference in our kids’ lives and lead to long-lasting and meaningful friendships.
See all of our available positions here: https://wavecrestcafe.com/employment-opportunities/
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(C) 2025 WaveCrest Cafe / Vista Unified School District
This institution is an equal opportunity provider.
Esta institución es un proveedor de igualdad de oportunidades.