“Carbonated beverages are generally not permitted in school lunch programs, although many schools have long-term exclusive contracts with beverage companies with machines in other parts of the school. Wellness policies are having an impact on these, but most can only be re-negotiated over time.”

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Referring to the NPD list of preferred foods, McConnell points out that schools have widely switched to baked fries and to not offering them every day. “That has tended to reduce their consumption,” she says.

In her district, baked fries might be offered more often at some schools, but “there are often constraints because of competition for limited oven resources. In our new high schools we are putting in extra ovens instead of fryers and that changes the equation.”

Hillsborough County Schools

In Hillsborough County (FL) schools, Student Nutrition Services General Manager Mary Kate Harrison, R.D., reports there has been no decline in her school meal vending sales in the past two years. “One reason is probably that we have grouped our machines together and built kiosks to showcase them as an option in our cafeterias,” she says.

At one school, where participation had lagged, the introduction of the kiosk approach coincided with a nine percent participation increase. “While we can't attribute that boost just to vending, vend sales generate $1,000 a week there now,” she says.

Harrison says her vending program emphasizes “real food — items like Cuban sandwiches, yogurt, milk and juice,” and gets a lot of traffic in the afternoons and after school, when clubs and athletic groups often use the cafeteria space.

At Hillsborough, “principals have vending machines in other parts of the schools and do vend chips, candy and soft drinks. Their sales may be affected by the new policies — the district is still grappling with this as it plans for the next few years.”

Harrison had looked into vending reimbursable meals but says proposed Florida state regulations would be too difficult to implement practically (they would include, among other things, taking a photograph of each student buying such a meal).

Longer term, “I think there is a lot of potential for a reimbursable vended meal model,” she says. “We're constantly short of employees and the bottom line is that when lunch lines shut down, kids don't get served. They go to the lunch room to eat, but also to socialize. If vended meals give them more time for that, it will have benefits.”

Baked and reduced fat snacks have not experienced a sales fall-off in her district, Harrison says. “However, we tried to introduce a replacement low-fat cookie for one that had been very popular here and we nearly had a mutiny.” Instead, a smaller version of the original was brought back and is now sold in single cookie a la carte servings instead of packs of two's and three's. “Our messsage is — this is a treat, you only should be eating one.”

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