The School Lunch: Women Saw a Need and Created a Company to Help Fill It

Ruth Ann Wrucke remembers sitting at a traffic light and watching a working mother in another car frantically trying to put on her makeup. A child sat in the back seat, clutching a lunch box, waiting to be dropped off at school.

It was a scene Wrucke never forget. And so the idea of Crocodile Catering for Kids was born.

“I thought, ‘Oh, those mommies with children, how do they have time to do all they have to do?’ ” Wrucke said during an interview in her Portola Valley home.

Fixing a bag lunch for the children was just one more thing for a working mother to cope with. Wrucke, a former elementary school teacher, thought for about six months before she and her daughter, Ann Gomez, opened their business, which provides bag lunches for students at a number of local schools.

The business, launched last October, is a hit. For as little as $2.85 a day, Wrucke and Gomez prepare a lunch of fresh fruit, a cookie, a sandwich and an afternoon snack. Juice is available for 35 cents extra, and a lunch of half a sandwich is available for first- and second-graders for $2.60.

They prepare about 120 lunches each day, beginning about 6:30 a.m. The lunches are delivered to the students’ classrooms.

In schools where the PTA sponsors the program, the organization receives a percentage of sales and, at the request of the PTA at Corte Madera, Crocodile Catering also handles the hot lunch program on Fridays.

Wrucke and Gomez say they have learned a lot.

Lettuce works better on sandwiches if it is washed the night before. Some breads absorb moisture too quickly and become soggy. Too much mayonnaise is bad.

All the same, their simple meat-and-cheese sandwiches have won positive reviews, as have the extras such as bagels with cream cheese that have Gummi Bears or chocolate-covered raisins in the center.

Some teachers also buy their lunch through the business. Wrucke and Gomez hope eventually to be able to offer salads for the teachers.

They are also looking into providing hot lunches at other schools and expanding their bag-lunch business to other schools.

The lunches aren’t expensive when parents consider the cost of pudding cups, fruit roll-ups and the other snacks that go into many home lunches, Gomez said.

The business was set up to serve the community and its children, Wrucke said. It’s not intended as a luxury or yuppie trend.

“It’s not a ritzy thing,” Wrucke said.

“We want to be a convenience for the busy families of today,” Gomez said.