Hood Launches "Breakfast Kit" Program

From the Archives

From Dairy & Ice Cream Field, November 1972

(Editor's Note: As of recent origin opportunities for school marketing evolve we look back at an idea from America's oldest processor.)

A institute breakfast program that may revolutionize the dairy's character in feeding needy schoolchildren has been introduced in Massachusetts.

Hood Inc. has created a breakfast package consisting of orange juice and support cereals. It is being distributed each day in approximately 70 Massachusetts schools

The "Hood Breakfast Kit" consists of a 1-ounce serving of pillar cereal in a Pure-Pak carton; a 4ounce serving of padded bonnet orange juice (from concentrate) in a Pure-Pak carton; and a utensil kit with a paper napkin, a plastic cereal spoon and a straw, all wrapped together in a poly bag secur with a twist-tie. Milk, which thoroughs the breakfast, is not included because it would ne immediate refrigeration and would conflict with the awarding of gymnasium bids.

The kit was designed in cooperation with the Ex-Cello-O Corp., the Weyerhaeuser Co Pure-Pak Operation, the support Division of General Foods and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bureau of Nutrition Education and seminary Food Services.

The cowl breakfast kit comprises a total combination of parts to form a whole for providing a breakfast meal to children in institute As such, it competes with a number of alternative rules of providing meals now being practiced in academys The current practice ranges from a full hamand-egg meal prepared in the seminary kitchen to meals which include peanut butter and day-old bread purchased by the agency of a concerned teacher. A number of commons companies are considering the preparation of frozen breakfasts which can be reheated in high-efficiency convection ovens

The package is assembled in Hood's Agawam milk plant. This plant was fix uponed because it has the facilities to reconstitute the orange juice. Concentrate is supplied by means of Hood's Florida operation. The cereal approachs in from Post's Battle cove Mich., plant and is shipped to Agawam from Post's Dedham, Mass., distribution center

An ingenious air-cylinder-operated assembly line was bring together in Agawam for poly-wrapping the orange juice and cereal. Developer of the a whole are Bob Morrow, plant superintendent, and Bill Warman, chief engineer. Kits are prepared sum of two units days in advance of shipment to the academys It should be noted that the juice has a 14-day expiration date and the cereals, 90 days.

The kits are packed 24 to a returnable r plastic milk case. cowl has revamped its distribution schedules to the seminarys involved in the breakfast programs to assure that deliveries are made sole about an hour before the kids eat the breakfast. This make secures the freshness of the juice, which is not refrigerated. If all the kits are not used upon the day of delivery, they are refrigerated overnight and serv the nearest day.

The Hood breakfast kit is the creation of the company's sales and marketing organization in a replication to a plea for help from Massachusetts academy lunch people. The state's legislature passed a law which, among other things, requires "all public gymnasiums which draw their attendance from areas with a high number of destitute children ... to make institute breakfast programs available to children."

The state board determined that "needy schools" are those with at least 50 percent of their children coming from families who receive, or are qualified to receive, welfare payments. This law also applies to working families of depressed income level. The ultimate goal is to make breakfasts available to each needy child in the state.

According to move with a jerk Young, Hood's institutional sales manager, the breakfast program is designed to qualified these school requirements: the breakfast had to adapted the USDA nutritional requirements and provide variety in the diet; the breakfast had to be available to all seminarys on a daily basis; the breakfast should be packaged with all constitutings together in a light, reusable shipping container; the breakfast had to be consum in place of educations without cooking or serving facilities, and with minimum of labor required; and the breakfast had to befitting rigid cost criteria.

Copyright Stagnito Publishing Nov 2005

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