CHICAGO — Students at Legal Prep are eating up the changes to their breakfast and lunch menus.
Legal Prep, 4319 W. Washington Blvd., switched from using the Chicago Public Schools lunch program to food served by OrganicLife, which bills itself as the "leading foodservice provider of healthy lunches in the state of Illinois."
Legal Prep CEO Sam Finkelstein said his students and staff were excited about the meals, and said the difference between OrganicLife and the CPS fare was like comparing “night and day.”
OrganicLife Vice President Joe Kreeger said his company focused on cooking food from scratch, so meals would be fresh every day. Students would enjoy chicken strips that hadn’t been processed, Kreeger said, and whole-grain, brick-oven cheese calzones, teriyaki beef stir fry, honey barbecue chicken breast, and fresh fruit and vegetables would also appear on menus.
“We’re really excited about them,” Finkelstein said. “We have meals even the staff are excited about.”
Meals at Legal Prep are free for students, but Kreeger said his company’s bid priced lunches at $2.80 and breakfast meals at $1 apiece for the school. OrganicLife placed the bid in June and was immediately selected — which was good, Kreeger said, because he believed Legal Prep wanted OrganicLife. The OrganicLife crew has been working on Legal Prep's menus for the last six weeks and will launch the menus when school starts Monday.
The company aims to provide students with restaurant-style food, and uses fresh fruit and vegetables to make them more appealing to Legal Prep's high school students.
“The key to what we offer is a higher level of quality, which comes both through the product that we procure and use in our schools and also the method in which we prepare it,” Kreeger said.
