Smoothie Program For Flagstaff Schools – Who doesn’t like smoothies? Especially if they are good for your too!

Two Flagstaff middle schools joined the nationwide school smoothie program Thursday. This program is sponsored by Chartwells and the National Dairy Council.

Students at Mount Elden and Sinagua middle schools in the Flagstaff Unified School District (FUSD) got the chance to try the new breakfast and lunch options Thursday as they were added to the school menus. The FUSD schools were among 144 around the United States to take part in the launch events.

Smoothies were selected as an “on-trend” way to appeal to the Gen Z population, another reason the pilot is beginning in middle schools.

A total of 15 new smoothie flavors were created for the program, including chocolate-oat, avocado-kale-mango, dragonfruit-banana and a mango-chili-lime smoothie bowl. Samples handed out at MEMS Thursday were strawberry-banana, chocolate-banana and mixed berry.

Flagstaff’s morning launch handed out more than 100 samples and sold more than 80 smoothies to middle school students, said Cori Hanson, Chartwells’s Arizona district manager. The program’s lunch premiere distributed over 350 samples.

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“The plan is to pilot the smoothie program out of these few schools to really see what smoothies they like, let the kids respond to them, how often they want to see them on the menu, and then expand that to all the other schools in the district,” Hanson said.

Though it’s too early for data to tell which flavors will be the top picks, he was at the Flagstaff launches lat week and said “the kids really seemed to like it.”

The Dairy Council provided grants for equipment to create the program, including immersion blender buckets, signage, and insulated bags designed to carry cups for a grab-and-go version of the program. Culinary teams with General Mills and Chartwells helped create the recipes.

Hanson said Chartwells’s menus are created by regional dietitian teams to make sure they are compliant with Food and Drug Administration’s national school lunch program regulations and can count toward reimbursable meals.

The pilot program will continue through the end of the 2022-2023 school year. Both Hanson and Blake say they hope eventually to add the options to the menu at other schools.

“We want it to be on-trend for the students, we want it to taste good, and one of the main focuses is nutrition in schools,” Blake said. “There could come other programs after this, but we hope to see this do well and expand further across the country.”

“Our hope in the long term is really just to get more kids participating in the national school lunch program and school breakfast program,” Hanson added. “Also just helping educate kids on what’s a nutritious breakfast, so they have the energy to stay successful during the school day.”