CulinArt opened the 2023-’24 school year with 10 new independent school clients in six states, including five in Pennsylvania, two in New Jersey, and one each in California, Delaware, New York, and Massachusetts.
CulinArt has breathed new life into dining services at Darrow School, in New Lebanon, N.Y., with its approach to scratch cooking, visiting chefs, and student engagement activities including PopUp Cafés and the FenderBlender.
A year from now, The Kiski School, east of Pittsburgh, will welcome young women for the first time in its 135-year history. They, and their new classmates, are certain to appreciate CulinArt’s changes to dining services that the current enrollees are now enjoying. In fact, a recent parent satisfaction survey saw the dining experience score rise from 63% last year to 91% in just this year’s first month.
CulinArt’s philosophy in taking over dining services at Applewild School, in Fitchburg, Mass., was straight-forward—serve kid-friendly food and engage students in fun and unique ways. The effort started by enhancing the all-you-care-to-eat program for Applewild’s 300 pre-K to grade 9 day and boarding students with a new salad bar featuring fresh and local options.
At The Ellis School, an all-girls school in eastern Pittsburgh, CulinArt implemented something new in nearly all facets of the dining services program when taking it over for the new school year, including new entrée, a Market offering snacks and beverages, technology such as Odin POS with self-checkout, and a fully renovated and redesigned café.
The Pennington School, in a town of the same name just north of Trenton, N.J., is an athletics powerhouse. No surprise, then, that one of the most popular lunchtime destinations in the café that CulinArt took over last month is Power Plates, a new concept designed specifically for Pennington to target the student athletes with proper nutrition. Pizza is also tremendously popular at Pennington, not least because CulinArt, in reimaging the entire dining hall, replaced a fountain beverage counter with a full-service Tuscan Bistro station.
All-inclusive meal programs, typically the bailiwick of schools with substantial resident populations, are becoming more popular in the day-school segment as well. Case in point: Tower Hill School, in Wilmington, Del., whose nearly 1,000 lower, middle, and upper school students are thrilled at CulinArt’s return to the campus.
One thing cadets at a military academy know is regimen. Their days are scheduled, their dress code is strict, and their adherence to guidelines is expected. When it comes to meal periods, however, the cadets at Wayne, Pa.’s Valley Forge Military Academy and College must think they are on furlough, now that CulinArt has taken over dining services. That is likely due to the dining hall’s new salad and fruit bars, rice bowl and pasta stations, build-your-own and composed delis, and Urban Eats, plus new smallwares, display pans, and salad bar crocks.
The improvements CulinArt made at Academy of Notre Dame de Namur, in Villanova, Pa., comprise a familiar package—entrees, grill, deli, full salad bar, hot breakfast—and students have responded as expected. Sales and participation started strong and have stayed strong since the opening. But the real story at this 167-year-old, all-girls school, nestled between two golf courses and a 17-acre private estate in the farm country west of Philadelphia, is CulinArt’s new Market, complete with an Odin self-checkout system driven by the MyKidsSpending payment system.
Upon assuming dining services at Marin Catholic High School, in Kentfield, Calif., late last summer, CulinArt marked its return to California’s Bay Area at a school—like Pennington in the East—considered an athletic dynamo in the region, having produced at least two NFL quarterbacks and several college standouts. What better place to implement Kickin’ Chickin and Urban Eats, two of CulinArt’s most popular concepts? That was just part of CulinArt’s total transformation of what is now called Into the Deep Café, which evokes the school’s affiliation with Duc in Altum, a faith-centered network.
Tradition and history abound at Grier School. Founded in 1853, Grier—a boarding and day school for 250 girls in grades 7-12—has a dining room that now, following CulinArt’s arrival, is much more functional with new equipment such as a panini press, Turbochef oven, grab-and-go coolers, and smallwares on the serving line. And the coffee shop, known as 1853 Café, now offers students the ability to make purchases with online accounts or credit cards through the new Odin point-of-sale system.
