Lunch Kit Chef

Katie, your pitch and website are well laid and and easy to follow. I think you created an excellent product. As a primary teacher, I know the local grocery stores do nutrition tours for school. It would be interesting to approach them with a student centered order form. Besides partnering with local stores, another partnership would be charities. At quite a few schools I know, the firefighters charitable supports the healthy snack program and provides the funds. http://www.coquitlamfirefighterscharity.com/snack-program.html and https://www.vancouverfirefighters.ca/Snacks_for_Kids/ are 2 examples but I believe that most firefighter organizations have community outreach programs like this. This could be created into a program that allows at risk students to help make the choices. I know at my school, we get funds at the beginning of the year to use at our discretion for healthy snacks. Again, great idea as we really need to find a way to reach out to kids and give them control of making healthy choices.

Katie, I think you have a really good venture here. I like that is combining food literacy with a real world application. I think this will help kids develop the necessary skills to understand what they need to do to ensure they have a healthy lunch or diet. I wonder if you could partner up with a catering service that you could pilot this in your school district. My concern is that you might have a hard time getting a foot in a district that already have established food programs. The pitch was engaging and I think you have the potential to at least develop the app into to a easy and simple to to bring food literary to elementary kids. Well done!

I became pretty excited by the idea of rethinking the existing school lunch programs. Thanks Katie! I like how Lunch Kit Chef blends experiencial learning with food literacy and a bit of financial literacy. I also think this could bring a lot understanding about different diets. My family is vegetarian and I am extra conscious about sharing values about eating well, local produce when possible, and supporting small producers. To this end, it would be great if Lunch Kit Chef could partner with small grocers and organic delivery services. One concern I would have is major chains logging data points from kids making food choices. Provided that issues is thought through, You've done a nice job of explaining how food literacy can be fun, engaging and rewarding.

REVIEW: Hello Katie, This is a very interesting premise. You certainly have presented a gap in the elementary educational market in a sense that we are constantly banging on about healthy food options with little opportunity for the students to 'take action' upon what they have learned. I was thinking that a possible strategy to interest investors would be to provide local grocery stores with an opportunity to provide discounted food into the schools. This, in turn, would hopefully help supplement the costs of the child's meal. In exchange the grocery chain would implement a marketing campaign, that would go out to the families, on the days in which they provide the meals. One problem that I can foresee with this product is the implementation in lower-income communities. According to an article written in Macleans Magazine Canada ranked 37th out of 41 countries, in a UNICEF report, in regards to providing nutritious food to children. Currently, we are one of only a few industrialized nations that do not have a national food program. Perhaps another way in which to drive Lunch Kit Chef would be to lobby governments, on a municipal, provincial and federal scale, to introduce further funding for nutritious food programs with communities. This would truly give this product the opportunity to have a positive impact upon our society.

Hello Katie. I think you did a very good job of addressing a pain point that needs to be discussed more in today's education. As I did the first few years of my teaching career in primary schools, I did see a lot of unhealthy lunches that were being brought in. I also recall a couple of times where other teacher had to teach the parent about healthy lunches. This seems to be like a problem that is simply being neglected. If you see countries like Japan (where I did my highschool), they really put a focus on offering a balanced lunch for students. They even have classes, just like your venture would do, in nutrition. Both parents and students understand the importance of a healthy diet and it seems to be having a positive effect on the country itself. I will definitely invest in your venture!

Hey Katie, I love this idea and think that you have a product and company that has potential to disrupt current school lunch program trends. I have three kids and my family is vegan and very conscious about health, exercise, nutrition, and wellness. Generally speaking, and in my experience, I feel that school lunch programs are not healthy. At my kids elementary school for example, they typically do pizza or hotdogs on a weekly basis and fast food such as McDonalds once a month. We opt out every time. I have been a critic of food programs in our school district and feel that there needs to be considerable more education and programming to help students and families be more food literate. Health related diseases amongst youth have dramatically increased in recent years. In Canada, childhood obesity has triped in the last 30 years and those considered obese are at a "higher risk of developing a range of health problems, and wight issues that are likely to persist into adult hood" (Canada.ca, 2016). Your product is a strategic counter to this trend -- a digital app that promotes food literacy and delivered to students in a fun, student-centered approached where they get to make food choices after developing healthy eating education. Partnering with grocery stores is also brilliant because it is fantastic marketing for them. I would think that the various stakeholders in this venture would be pleased to invest - school districts, parents, students, and grocery stores. Ohh and me too! Sign me up. Great job Katie!