As of the 2023-2024 school year, the cafeteria has added new breakfast, lunch, and dinner options. Sysco San Francisco,a local food distributor, has been providing food to Mt. Eden for over 20 years, and commonly supplies cereal bars, bagels, and muffins for breakfast, followed by pizza, sub sandwiches, and cheeseburgers for lunch. Produce is supplied by Ag Link Inc and Daylight Foods Inc, which are also local. This year, the company introduced new munchable dishes including walking tacos and tuna sandwiches.
The school had received a majority of its funding for school lunches from grants to produce a variety of higher-quality meals. The new grants only last for this year’s school lunch. Head staff members working in the cafeteria have added their input: “Our production has boosted from almost 150 to 200 more [lunches] and 100 more breakfasts,” said Judy Cabada, an employee at Mt. Eden Kitchen who has been working in the school district for 17 years.
Cabada also mentions the addition of more food-distributing locations around the school for breakfast, “The choices are what the kids want.” Cabada emphasizes the happiness of the students as her top priority, “I want to have some [food] left, knowing a student was able to get what they wanted … making their day always makes my day.”
Last year the average number of students eating lunch daily was 550, this year the average has risen to 700 students eating lunch daily. “I think the new menu pulled the kids into eating, everything is looking a lot better,” Cabada specified in terms of the school lunch Students eating school lunch. Head staff members shared their opinions on the new lunch scene. When asked if she thought the new school lunch was an upgrade, junior Jazmin Parada Figueroa, who has been eating school lunch since her freshman year, commented, “definitely, there are more options than just pizza. The tuna sub sandwich and the walking taco, those two are the best.”
“The new school lunch is pretty good, better than during my freshman year,” stated junior Catherine Yee. “The walking taco or the salad,” she mentioned as her favorite items.
In addition to students’ feedback on the new school lunch, The Monarch Times surveyed 120 students at Mt. Eden. Around 45.8% of the students said they only enjoyed the lunch sometimes, 34.2% liked it, and 20% did not like it. And when asked to add their dish to the menu the most popular responses were pasta, burritos, more chicken dishes, and quesadillas.
