Fast Food Slows School Lunch Sales : School Board Reconsiders Soda Pop to Lure Students Back to Cafeterias

When lunchtime arrives at Birmingham High School, observers of the social scene on the Van Nuys campus report, “trendies with cars” head to the Bagel Nosh on Ventura Boulevard, while “non-Encinoites” without cars walk one long block to such fast-food outlets as McDonald’s and Naugles.

Granada Hills High 10th-graders Denise Wallach, Alyssa Blazer and Amy Himmelstein said they never buy their lunch at the school cafeteria. When it isn’t convenient for them to walk to a nearby fast-food restaurant, they call Pizza Hop and have a pizza delivered to them at school.

Even the student body president at Taft High School in Woodland Hills buys her noontime meal off campus.

“I usually eat across the street at Such-A-Bagel,” 12th-grader Gina Bozajian admitted with a sheepish grin, acknowledging that school spirit and leadership sometimes stop at the cafeteria door.

All of these students give indications that the never-ending struggle to keep teen-agers on campus for meals is being lost--at least in the Los Angeles Unified School District. And the only way Bruce Brady, director of the district’s food services division, believes cafeterias can win the hearts and stomachs of its teen-age customers is to bring back soda pop.

Will Consider Proposal Monday

On Monday the school board is scheduled to consider Brady’s proposal to again allow cafeteria sales of carbonated beverages, an idea that already has created controversy.

Thousands of Los Angeles high school students have stopped buying their lunches at school, a phenomenon that has made all of the district’s 49 senior high cafeterias money losers. In the past two years, losses at senior high cafeterias have totaled $2 million. School board member Roberta Weintraub, who chairs the board’s Business Operations Committee, said high schools “just don’t have the volume to justify the cafeterias.”

While the hamburger and pizza franchises near high school campuses are packed during lunchtime, campus cafeterias are virtually empty. At Granada Hills High, for instance, only a quarter of the school’s 2,600 students buys lunch in the cafeteria. On an average day at Taft High, only 500 lunches are served at a school with 3,075 students.

At most campuses, high school students may leave during lunch only if their parents have signed a statement giving them permission to leave. But one exasperated parent of a Birmingham High student said, “They get out, even if you don’t want them to.”

For years, the food service division has balanced its budget by using profits from food sales at elementary and junior high schools--which continue to be buoyant--to make up for the high schools’ losses.

Subsidizing Can’t Continue

But food services director Brady said the lower grades can no longer continue to subsidize the high schools. Although drastic changes have been made in high school menus and the presentation of traditional cafeteria fare has become more creative, Brady said it isn’t enough. He believes he needs soft drinks to pull high school cafeterias back into the black.

It was just five years ago that the school board, in an attempt to improve the nutritional quality of food served by the district, banned the sale of soft drinks and most kinds of junk food.

That ban was partially lifted last year to allow the sale of machine-dispensed soft drinks after the school board learned that student activity funds were losing $5,000 a year on average per campus because the schools no longer received a portion of the revenues from machine sales of soft drinks.

Brady wants the board to lift the soft-drink ban entirely and allow cafeterias to sell carbonated beverages by the cup during morning nutrition breaks and lunch.

“Having carbonated beverages gives us a shot at the students for the balance of the meal,” said Richard Connaughton, senior food services supervisor for the Valley. “If they come to the cafeteria to get something to drink, we have a better chance of selling them something to eat.”

Board Not Convinced

At least three board members--President Rita Walters, Jackie Goldberg and Weintraub, a self-proclaimed “health-food zealot”--are not convinced that the district should place profits over nutrients.

“I don’t want to bring back carbonated beverages,” said Weintraub. “But in order to compete with the outside world, we may have to.”

The move to bring Pepsi back to the cafeteria is likely to be challenged--and not by those who object on health grounds.

High school principals and student body presidents are against cafeteria sales of soft drinks because they fear competition from the cafeteria will cut into the revenue a student body raises from the soft drink machines.

Currently, most campus soft drink machines sell 12-ounce cans of Coca-Cola products for 60 cents. The food services division proposes to sell 16-ounce cups of Pepsi for 40 cents.

“The sale of soft drinks is an opportunity for a school to generate revenue for athletics for the yearbook, literary magazine, band uniforms and the band,” said Paul Godfrey, the senior high division administrator in charge of extracurricular activities. “The sale of carbonated beverages should be the enterprise of the student body.”

Some students say that having soft drinks in the cafeteria won’t be enough to lure them back there.

Coke Isn’t It

“I don’t think serving Coke or Pepsi is going to make a difference,” said Tommy Kim, Taft High student body treasurer. “Most people would rather see the cafeteria improve the quality of the food.”

Many students say they snub the cafeteria because of the poor quality of cafeteria food. They gripe and grumble about “mystery meat” sandwiches, wilted salads and vegetable soup without any vegetables.

District officials counter that they are adding salad bars, fruit bars and potato-skin bars where the students can top the skins of baked potatoes with everything from sour cream and chives to cheese and guacamole. At some schools there are croissants filled with tuna salad, chocolate-chip cookies and large unsalted pretzels. Next year the cafeterias will introduce a two-patty hamburger with lettuce and tomato, a creation Brady calls “the Los Angeles school version of the McD. L. T.”

Campus administrators say peer pressure, not food quality, plays a major role in students’ rejection of the cafeteria. If the cafeteria is out with the “in crowd,” it’s going to be tough to coax its members back to the campus eatery.

Low-income students eligible for federally subsidized meals are particularly sensitive to cafeteria peer pressure, Brady said. A recent survey found that only 38% of the high school students entitled to free lunches took advantage of the program.

Stigma Perceived

The reason: students receiving the free lunches--which come with an entree, a side dish, a piece of fruit and a drink--believed others knew they were participating in the federally sponsored program. Paying customers had the option of not buying a complete meal.

“The kids believed they were being stigmatized as welfare kids,” said Brady. “I think the high school students are the most sensitive about being identified as participating in the free lunch program.”.

Finally, there is the adolescent longing to assert control over their lives. “Self-determination” is how the students characterize the desire. “Freedom” is how board member Weintraub described it.

“Lunch is their freedom, their chance to socialize, their chance to sneak a smoke. We will always have to write off the 20% to 25% who are going to go off campus no matter what we do,” she said.

Food services director Brady realizes that the soft drinks alone will not improve the cafeteria’s image. Since he took charge of the division two years ago, Brady has worked to bring the cafeteria’s menu into line with the tastes of its current crop of customers.

For the students who don’t want to be seen in the cafeteria, Brady is going to bring the cafeteria to them with pushcarts.

These portable cafeterias will be situated throughout the campus and will serve hot dogs, hamburgers and burritos. Granada Hills High is one of the first district schools to have pushcart service, in the form of a hot dog vendor in front of the Highlander Hall auditorium.

Some day Brady hopes to add make-your-own tostada and sandwich deli bars.

“We will give them a shell or a tortilla and they can fill it with whatever they want,” the food services director said. “And soon we’ll kick off the deli bar, which will have cold cuts, sliced vegetables so kids can create their own sandwich. But because it is so expensive, the deli bar will only be offered once a week.”

Brady has also tried to erase the student-perceived stigma of receiving free lunches through the federal lunch program. Last year, any student who bought his or her lunch in the cafeteria received the complete meal, subsidized or not.

Whole Meals Served

“There were some complaints from the kids that they all they wanted was the pizza, not the fruit,” Brady said. “But I told them I didn’t care one way or the other if they ate the fruit. I just wanted to make sure no one could categorize someone else by the lunch they bought.”

The one obstacle Brady has not been able to hurdle--and one he admits he probably will never be able to overcome--is the students’ desire to leave school during lunch.

“It’s traditional for students to revolt against the cafeteria,” said Rodney Crump, a member of Taft High’s student council. “That’s never going to change.”

Amy Himmelstein of Granada Hills High agreed. “It’s not just the food we want to get away from,” she said. “We want to get away from the whole atmosphere of school for a while.”