How School Nutrition Programs Are Keeping Kids Well Fed With Fresh, Whole Grain, Locally Sourced Dough
“We've had great success with The Good Crust. Kids love it. Staff love it. Some of our elementary students have said, ‘Can we have this every day?’ I’ve even received emails from parents saying their kids have loved the different pizzas. My staff had no problem bringing it in. And we love that it’s coming from Maine, because we want to support the local economy.”
Whitney Thornton
Food and Nutrition Director, York School Department
President, Maine School Nutrition Association
“Everybody's excited for pizza day as it is, but with this crust, it feels special. It feels like that fresh homemade dough that a school pizza usually doesn't get to have… And I think it really gives the exposure of local ingredients to children and families here who wouldn't otherwise get to experience those things.”
Jasmine Bumps
Team Lead & Cook, Educare Central Maine
“I'm trying to make all my kitchens as close to from scratch as we can and to move away from ready-made meals. Because it's easy just to grab it out of the freezer, put it on sheet pans, and stick it in the oven — but I think we all deserve a nice home-cooked meal. That's where the Good Crust comes in… It's got good texture, it's got good taste, it's easy to work with, and it meets all the nutrition requirements. What more could you ask for?”
Dan Chamberlain
School Nutrition Director, Maine School Administrative District 49
The Summary
Why the Good Crust Dough Is Worth It for School Nutrition Programs
Who we talked to:
Whitney Thornton, Food and Nutrition Director, York School Department, & President, Maine School Nutrition Association
Dan Chamberlain, School Nutrition Director, Maine School Administrative District 49
Jasmine Bumps, Team Lead & Cook, Educare Central Maine
Robin Kerber, Former Farm and Sea to School Coordinator, Maine Department of Education
Rob Dumas, Food Science Innovation Coordinator, University of Maine, & Facility Manager, Matthew Highlands Pilot Plant
What they all said about The Good Crust’s fresh, local, whole-grain dough:
Kids love it. Whether as pizza, flatbreads, bialys, or breakfast rolls, young eaters can’t get enough of The Good Crust.
Staff love it. It’s versatile, easy to work with, and allows for more from-scratch creativity while still being efficient to prep at high volumes.
Nutrition Directors love it. As a whole grain that kids actually want to eat, The Good Crust makes it easier to meet daily nutrition requirements across grade levels.
What the numbers say:
60+ schools are using The Good Crust in their food service programs — and loving it.
2x faster to prep. Compared to their previous frozen dough option, The Good Crust has cut pizza prep time in half in Jasmine’s kitchen.
$1 back for every $3 spent. Maine schools can get a third of their money spent on The Good Crust back through the state’s Local Foods Fund rebate program.
95% of college students surveyed throughout Maine loved the taste of The Good Crust pizza dough.
92% of college students surveyed preferred pizza made from The Good Crust to their previous pizza option.
100% of The Good Crust’s grain ingredients are sourced in Maine from a grist mill processing Maine-grown grains..
60+ local farmers supplying Maine Grains pledge never to use chemical fertilizers or pesticides on their grain crops.
81% of The Good Crust’s employees are members of our workforce development program, supporting Mainers with unique needs to enter the workforce.
Heard enough? Get in touch with us to set up a demo in your institution’s kitchen. Or keep reading to learn more about how New England schools are keeping students well-fed with locally sourced, whole grain, from-scratch pizza, breakfast rolls, and more.
The Challenge
Finding a Nutritious Whole Grain Dough That’s Easy for School Kitchen Staff to Use—and That Kids Actually Want to Eat.
Schools need whole grains on their menus to meet daily nutrition requirements across grade levels. “We can't have any white-floured stuff. Everything has to be at least over 50% whole grain,” explains Dan Chamberlain, the School Nutrition Director for the Maine School Administrative District 49.
Dan and his staff have tried different whole-grain pizza crust options in the past, but with every whole-grain product they tried, either the taste or the texture was off. And unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how much kids love pizza or how good your toppings are—if the crust doesn’t taste good, they’re not eating it.
“The two key things are taste and texture. If you can't get a kid to like either one of them, then they're not going to eat it,” says Dan.
Whitney Thornton, Food and Nutrition Director for the York School Department and President of the Maine School Nutrition Association, has had similar experiences with whole grain doughs.
“We've had other whole grain products that have been very dry, harder to cook, or lacking in flavor. And they're not local to Maine, which is a huge selling point for me, my staff, and our district,” Whitney explains.
Many Nutrition Directors would love to buy fresh, local ingredients because they know it’s healthier for kids, the planet, and the regional economy. But they have practical barriers to consider.
There are lots of wonderful local products out there, but they’re often not a good fit for schools because:
They’re not carried by the biggest distributors
They’re not efficient for high-volume production
They require cooking skills that school kitchen staff may not have
They’re too expensive to be worth all the downsides
Robin Kerber, Former Farm and Sea to School Coordinator for the Maine Department of Education explains that these barriers have led to “freezer to oven” operations being the norm in schools.
“Over time, school kitchens have evolved to operate from freezer to oven. There's not a lot of scratch cooking. And when you use local ingredients, you're often using less processed ingredients. So it's going to demand the kitchen staff to have those kitchen skills and efficiencies that they might not have needed to have in their roles,” she says.
This challenge is true for all farm-to-school ingredients, but whole grain dough is an especially tricky ingredient to bring in fresh.
Besides not being kid-approved in terms of taste and texture, a lot of the whole grain doughs Dan and his team tried were hard to work with.
“One of the biggest problems was stretching out the dough. You get used to working with white flour that's easier to work with. But the textures in the whole grains are not the same. You're battling with rolling out the dough, keeping it rolled out, and trying to get the shape you want and the thickness that you want,” he says.
Jasmine Bumps, the Team Lead and Cook at Educare Central Maine, explains that even frozen sheets that don’t require stretching and rolling can take forever to prep, and often perform unpredictably.
“We used to buy frozen sheets of dough and it required this long, tedious rotation of proofing the dough. Sometimes it would proof great, sometimes it wouldn't. Sometimes it would cook great, sometimes it wouldn't. And that was frustrating,” she recalls.
Eventually, Jasmine and her team switched to a frozen flatbread base that was easier to use and took less time to prep — but that meant compromising on taste and texture. “We sacrificed the flavor because it was just a plain flatbread base for a pizza. It was a much more dry, much more dense, much harder crust,” she explains.
Rob Dumas, Food Science Innovation Coordinator at the University of Maine and Facility Manager of the Matthew Highlands Pilot Plant, says this is a typical experience with ready-made products.
“There's a limit as to how good a par baked or a frozen product can be. And I do agree that it's very easy and quick to work with, but it’s not going to have that degree of texture and flavor that you're going to get out of working with raw dough, naturally leavened product,” explains Rob.
School kitchens often have to compromise taste and texture for efficiency during high-volume production.
“Time is of the essence, because when you're trying to get meals out for kids, and there's a time that they're coming down, you want to make sure that you get everything out and ready for them. So I did have a couple of kitchens that, because of time constraints, were going with the frozen, ready-made pizzas,” says Dan.
“But I'm trying to make all my kitchens as close to from scratch as we can and to move away from ready-made meals. Because it's easy just to grab it out of the freezer, put it on sheet pans, and stick it in the oven — but I think we all deserve a nice home-cooked meal,” he says.
In addition to lacking taste and texture, many ready-made, boxed frozen pizzas are too processed to truly be healthy, even if they meet basic nutritional requirements.
“If it's a ready-made meal, then you know it's overly processed. Convenience is convenient, but it’s not always not the best. And I want to make sure that the kids get the best meal that we can give them,” says Dan.
Whitney, Dan, and Jasmine had all tried whole grain products with pros and cons. But they still hadn’t come across a dough that checked all their boxes:
Good taste and texture
Easy for kitchen staff to learn and use
Quick and efficient to cook at high volumes
Worth the price of a fresh, local product
And that’s when The Good Crust came into the story.
“Time is of the essence, because when you're trying to get meals out for kids, and there's a time that they're coming down, you want to make sure that you get everything out and ready for them… But if it's a ready-made meal, then you know it's overly processed. Convenience is convenient, but it’s not always not the best. And I want to make sure that the kids get the best meal that we can give them.”
Dan Chamberlain
School Nutrition Director, Maine School Administrative District 49
The Process
Trying the Good Crust With an In-Kitchen Demo, Loving It, and Then Making It Their Own.
Making sure staff feel comfortable using new products is key to the success of any kitchen. That’s why all our school partners get started with an in-kitchen demo.
Dan remembers staff members who, before trying The Good Crust, were certain they’d rather stick with the frozen pizza option—but once they did a demo, they changed their minds.
“Staff said, ‘oh my God, I didn't realize it was that easy.’ It helps when you have someone come in who knows the dough, so they can explain it to you step by step and give you all the shortcuts,” says Dan.
As easy as the dough is to learn in a short demo, Jasmine says she really appreciated that The Good Crust team came to help serve their first lunch. “When you’re feeding 200+ children, you have one shot at it. If you've messed up the pizza, you don't have time to go back and do it again to serve lunch in 20 minutes. The fact that they came to help us the first day really, really helped us out. They went above and beyond,” says Jasmine.
Whitney says that connecting with local people making local products helps with staff buy-in, too.
“The Good Crust team came and did samples with us, which was huge, because then my staff got to see it, got to understand it, and now it's just been a hit,” says Whitney. “It's so much more well received from everyone when you get to see where it came from and hear how it's impacting people’s lives, and learn how it’s coming from Maine, supporting Maine.”
School kitchen staff quickly discover that The Good Crust is easy to stretch, simple to prep, and works efficiently during high-volume production.
“We've followed The Good Crust’s exact instructions about taking it out the day before, and we haven't had any problems with the amount of dough we need to be able to cook off,” says Whitney.
Rob explains that The Good Crust dough is very friendly and amenable to advance prep.“So even working on it hours ahead of service, it wouldn't just become a soggy mess, like a par-bake product,” he says.
Compared to the frozen dough sheets Jasmine used to use, The Good Crust is twice as fast.
“You can go from the freezer to the fridge overnight, and then the next day you pull it out for an hour and you're ready to work with it. I would say it's at least twice as fast because you skip the proofing and resting stages completely,” she explains.
“The Good Crust is the best-case scenario of fresh dough that’s easy to work with and that isn't so time-consuming,” Jasmine continues. “You can go from the bag to the pan and it stretches beautifully. And it's a quick setup, like an assembly line. You pull out the dough, get it all stretched out, and then you put the toppings on — and it's really not that much more time compared to having a frozen flatbread.”
While The Good Crust is efficient enough for high-volume production, it’s still flexible enough to encourage from-scratch creativity.
“I've let my staff have free range of being creative and fun,” says Whitney. “We've just been trying out different things, seeing what things work best, seeing what things seem fun, and using the different dough ball sizes to try different things.”
Robin says this kind of creative experimenting is made possible by the demo and onboarding process.
“Doing the in-person, hands-on training that The Good Crust does in schools gives confidence, skills, and opportunity for school nutrition staff to bring their own preferences and experiences to the food they’re cooking,” she says. “I see pizza as this blank canvas where you can put any of your personal interests. It's a way to express yourself. And I think we need more of that in school kitchens.”
Beyond getting creative with just pizza toppings, kitchen staff have used The Good Crust to make all sorts of delicious meals and treats at high volume for both breakfast and lunch, including:
Calzones
Flatbreads
Bialys
Danish
Fougasse
Pain d'epi
Apple cinnamon breakfast rolls
Breadsticks
“The dough tastes delicious. It can stand alone as its own delicious bread product,” says Rob.
Jasmine agrees. “The versatility is great. It's basically the unflavored base where the flavor is in the product itself. You can go sweet, you can go savory, you could even just probably do it plain, and the product itself would be a good standalone,” she says.
At Dan’s school, bagels are usually the big seller. But the day Dan’s team served those apple cinnamon breakfast rolls made with The Good Crust? “That day, the kids didn’t even touch the bagels,” he says.
“The Good Crust team came and did samples with us, which was huge, because then my staff got to see that, got to understand it, and now it's just been a hit. It's so much more well received from everyone when you get to see where it came from and hear how it's impacting people's lives, and learn how it’s coming from Maine, supporting Maine.”
Whitney Thornton
Food and Nutrition Director, York School Department
President, Maine School Nutrition Association
The Results
Fresh, Local Dough That Checks All the Boxes, Helps School Kitchens Exceed Their Nutrition Requirements, and That Kids Can’t Get Enough Of.
Whitney, Dan, Jasmine, Rob, and Robin all said they’ve heard nothing but positive feedback from eaters delighting in The Good Crust.
“We've had great success with The Good Crust. Kids love it. Staff love it. I’ve even received emails from parents saying their kids have loved the different pizzas. And my staff had no problem bringing it in.”
Dan said he remembers one kid asking what changed from their previous pizza option by saying, “What happened to the cardboard?’” And Whitney recalls some elementary students asking, “Can we have this every day?”
In addition to great taste and texture, The Good Crust’s versatility in taste and variety of dough ball sizes makes it easier to meet and exceed nutritional requirements across grade levels.
Students of different ages, naturally, have different nutritional requirements. That means school kitchen staff have to account for different minimum ounces of whole grain for different groups of students.
The Good Crust offers pre-portioned dough ball sizes — 18oz, 16oz, 12oz, 8oz, 4oz, and 3oz. “With the different-sized dough balls, you can hit every grade level,” says Dan. “Sometimes the ounces that you have to meet are skewed all over the place, and you have to double up on something to make sure that it qualifies for the older kids. But with all the options that The Good Crust offers, we can get it in one shot. It takes a lot of the guessing out, and it makes the work easier. So it saves time and money, and it's perfect.”
Plus, when schools cook with The Good Crust, they support the local grain economy, and give kids exposure to more fresh, local ingredients.
“What really appeals to me about The Good Crust is that it's a great way to put into action supporting local food,” says Rob.
“Sometimes there are some barriers for consumers at the residential and the commercial level to utilize local food because it comes in a less ready-to-use or convenient form than larger commodity foods might. But pizza dough is a perfect vehicle. It's so easy to use. It's very easy to cook. And it's also a platform for so many other delicious foods that can also be procured locally. It's just a win-win.”
In addition to supporting local food in itself, The Good Crust gives schools an opportunity to foster the value of locally grown food in kids and take pride in what we can produce right here in Maine.
“We made signs because we want to make sure that everybody knows where The Good Crust is from,” says Whitney.
“That wholesome local feeling is really important, and it’s awesome that Maine alone can produce everything that’s in The Good Crust’s product,” adds Jasmine.
The Good Crust contributes to a more equitable food system by making locally sourced, nutritious, and delicious food options more accessible for kids of all economic backgrounds.
“I think it really gives the exposure of local ingredients to children and families here who wouldn't otherwise get to experience those things,” Jasmine says.
“Most of the children and families here fall under the poverty level. And as we all know, locally sourced ingredients tend to be on the more expensive side. So there's a good chance that a lot of our families here don't get to experience local and fresh foods as often as everybody would like to. Not only is it cool for us as employees to be able to be proud of the fact that this is from our area, but it’s also great that the kids and the families here get to experience that as well.”
And for Maine schools, the cost of The Good Crust is cut significantly by the Local Foods Fund.
“Cost is often a barrier to buying local,” explains Robin, “And thankfully the Local Foods Fund directly addresses that barrier and really eases that burden on school budgets, which are very, very tight.”
But even so, Robin explains that the Local Foods Fund is underutilized. “Unless you're one of the two districts that used the entire Local Foods Fund last year, you've got money to use,” she says. “So, use it on The Good Crust.”
That’s exactly what Whitney is doing. She and other Food and Nutrition Directors have fought hard for a Local Foods Fund to be able to receive money back if they provide food to students to vendors or farmers that are local to Maine. “We want to support the local economy,” explains Whitney.
With the money they get back from the Fund, Whitney feels like she can easily bring in The Good Crust. “It's not like I'm bringing in lobster every day. We're bringing in a crust that's a little bit more expensive, and that I feel as though it's very easy to do.”
Even if you don’t have access to The Local Foods Fund, customers say The Good Crust is worth the price.
Robin explains that the comparative quality of The Good Crust is ultimately an investment for school kitchens.
“Kids know the difference between what tastes good and what doesn't,” she says. “If it's a cheese pizza with an amazing flavorful crust—versus on a piece of cardboard—they're going to want more of it. More kids fed equals more meals reimbursed equals more money coming into the school kitchen.”
Rob says there may be other workarounds to cost, too. “When I ran a pizza operation, it wasn't the dough that was my most expensive ingredient proportion — it was my cheese. So if you're trying to be competitive or at parity with your previous product, look at your formula for pizza and see if you could back down your cheese by a couple of ounces,” he suggests.
“Cost is always a challenging thing and sometimes there's not an easy workaround,” Rob acknowledges, “But when you’re purchasing The Good Crust, you're supporting farms in your community. You're supporting processing here in Maine. You're voting to make sure that we have the ability as a region to take those raw ingredients and turn them into food. And you're supporting a company that's got a social mission that is really admirable, and that’s creating opportunities for people who might need accommodations around their physical or mental abilities and giving them an opportunity to work. And I think those things should factor into your decision and your calculation around price.”
Dan agrees. “Price-wise, it's compatible. Maybe a little higher, but you're getting the quality,” he says. “It's local and it's fresh, so you could probably go get something that's cheaper. But you get what you pay for.”
“If you want to take taste and texture right out of the equation and serve something that the kids are going to love, then the Good Crust checks off all the boxes. It's got good texture, it's got good taste, it's easy to work with, and it meets all the nutrition requirements. It is the best crust I've seen made out of whole grain. Plus, it's a double shot local, because all the grains they use are local. And I'd rather give money to the local guys than to some out-of-state vendor.”
So, let’s review those boxes one more time…
Good taste and texture? Check.
Easy for kitchen staff to learn and use? Check.
Quick and efficient to cook at high volumes. Check.
Worth the price of a fresh, local product? Definitely.
Plus, The Good Crust makes it easier to hit daily nutrition requirements, encourages from-scratch creativity in school kitchens, strengthens the local economy, is available through local distributors, and supports a Maine-based, mission-driven business.
To put it in Dan’s words: “What more could you ask for?”
“As Food and Nutrition Directors, we've worked really hard at fighting for a Local Foods Fund to be able to receive money back if we provide food to our students that is purchased from a vendor or a farmer that is local to Maine. Because we want to support the local economy.”
Whitney Thornton
Food and Nutrition Director, York School Department
President, Maine School Nutrition Association
“The Good Crust checks off all the boxes. It's got good texture, it's got good taste, it's easy to work with, and it meets all the nutrition requirements. It is the best crust I've seen made out of whole grain. Plus, it's a double shot local, because all the grains they use are local. And I'd rather give money to the local guys than to some out-of-state vendor.”
Dan Chamberlain
School Nutrition Director, Maine School Administrative District 49
“A lot of families here don't get to experience local and fresh foods as often as everybody would like to. So not only is it cool for us as employees to be able to be proud of the fact that this is from our area, but it’s also great that the kids and the families here get to experience that as well.”
Jasmine Bumps
Team Lead & Cook, School
GET GOOD CRUST. KEEP KIDS WELL FED.
Talk to a Good Crust team member about how locally sourced, high quality dough can make a difference in your kitchen, your school, and your community.