My first grader’s school outsources hot lunch to a local company, Choice Lunch. The school provides organic, often locally sourced, nutritious meals…at a hefty price. For just under $5.00 a lunch, hot lunch is not something that we partake in on a regular basis.
While on a business trip, I paid $6.40 for my own lunch at the company cafeteria. Paying almost the same amount for a six year old’s lunch is a little ridiculous. Even if it is organic, locally sourced, and nutritious.
I try not to think about how much of his $4.65 gets thrown out in the trash considering that my kid regularly eats two slices of turkey, 10 goldfish crackers, and half a piece of fruit for lunch. At least two days a week comes home with food still LEFTOVER in his lunch bag. If I had to guess, he’s eating about $1.75 worth of food.
Imagine my surprise when I received an email from Choice Lunch asking for payment of $6.10 for an “Emergency Lunch.”
What the hell is an Emergency Lunch? It better come with lights, sirens, and it’s own police escort for that price.
Turns out that Choice Lunch sends a few extra meals in case a child did not have a lunch. I think it’s admirable that the company would make sure that no child goes hungry.
But what happens when the child that they claim would go hungry without their lavish Emergency Lunch did not in fact go hungry because his mother packed him a lunch? I may be a working mom and I may be busy, but I’ve never once in all of Darius’s life ever forgotten to pack him a lunch. And I’ve been packing lunches since the kid was 27 months and started preschool.
On the day that they are claiming that Darius didn’t have a lunch, I know for a fact that he had a lunch. A lunch that I personally packed with lots of love and nutritional goodness. For a whole lot cheaper than $5.00, let alone $6.10. I personally put that lunch in his backpack along with a fruit leather for morning recess and an eco-friendly reusable water bottle for PE.
I don’t know if the lunch lady marked down the wrong kid or what. But I know that there was no need for an Emergency Lunch. I quickly sent their customer service a note explaining that there has to be a mix-up. I’m not paying for an Emergency Lunch.
Then I received a very lovely email from Keith in customer service. He asked me to double-check with my child about whether or not he had received a hot lunch that day. He said that they’ve heard of kids eating their entire lunch for morning snack and even a few cases where a kid has ditched their home-lunch for something better in the hot lunch line.
I never considered that Darius himself asked for a hot lunch when he had a home lunch. Did he forget? Did he see something he liked better? Was he so hungry that he ate both his home lunch and the hot lunch? When I picked up Darius from school that day, I casually asked about it. He was truthful… he hadn’t double-checked his backpack and just got in line with his friends into the hot lunch line.
I guess I should be charged for a Non-Emergency Lunch.
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I remember when we were in grade school, I would rather go hungry then eat the “HOT” lunch. And my mom refused to make lunches. LOL
My mom was nice enough to let me pick which days I wanted hot lunch. I think I stuck to the cheese pizza and hamburger days. But our hot lunches were nasty. D’s hot lunches are good (you can even order sushi!).
Remember when Ya-Ya would pack my lunch in Junior High? That was an awesome homemade lunch (always with fresh cookies he had baked). I still remember sitting around the kitchen table with Yaya making barfing noises while you ate oatmeal for breakfast. hahahaha
I remember being so jealous of the kids who got to buy lunch. My mom let me buy once a month and it was heaven. But I think it was $1.50…not $5.
I was such a picky kid that I think I only asked for hot lunch once a month. Most of the time whatever they were eating DID NOT look appealing to me.
Choice Lunch offers a regular portion and larger portion (I’m guessing for the older and hungrier 5th graders). Oh how I wish they offered a small portion for those of us with kids who eat so little you wonder how they are standing up.
My kids are not a fan of the hot lunch, but what’s happened with us is Donovan was asked if he’d eaten and he said no. He didn’t say he had a lunch and just wasn’t hungry
they took him to the cafeteria but he didn’t want anything, so ended up eathing graham crackers in the principles office, where she had to reassure him he wasn’t in trouble 
then there was the time a teacher misread his lunchbox and gave it to anther kid. Urgh. Ours is 3.24 I think, although many kids are on reduced/free, but I so wished we could have a better lunch option.
You bring up a good point – what about the kids who just aren’t hungry?
And going to the principals office would have made me pee my pants as kid. I was terrified of any authority figure. That would have scared me to always eat my lunch no matter what.
Donovan is no stranger to the principles office, this was just his first visit for not being in trouble. She’s really nice and easy going, though, and visits the class, so it’s not a big deal to him
Probably not a good thing, but they have one of the zero-tolerance so the littlest things get them sent there.
My son’s elementary school hot lunches are pure indulgence – pizza, tacos, etc. They only offer them twice a week, and we usually only buy once a week. It’s worth it to me to get one more off from packing lunch, but I do wince when I pay $5.50 for something I’m not entirely certain I should be ordering.
We order hot lunch for Fridays only. Just like you, I see it more as a convenience for me than anything else.
Nice post! GA is also my biggest earning. However, it’s not a much.
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