Recently on Social Media, a post was made regarding a student that was served frozen strawberries that allegedly expired in 2020. The threaded discussion gained traction regarding the food that is served and other experiences. In reality, the frozen strawberries in question had an expiration date of 2028, not 2020. With the volume of food that is served by our food service team to our students, items are rotated through the freezers multiple times throughout a school year. Consumables are secured from multiple vendors and deliveries take place weekly. Occasionally, items that are received are not up to standard and once this is reported our teams take these items out of circulation immediately and seek credits for future procurements. One specific example is occasionally a crate of milk cartons is spoiled when it arrives from the dairy weekly. But, once a student reports that the milk doesn't taste right, others are sampled by staff to confirm and the cartons are taken out of circulation.
We have over 6,000 individuals in our buildings on any given day and our great food service team takes enormous pride in making delicious and nutritious food available to them. As was the case with the social media post, we always encourage individuals with questions or concerns to call our food service office or notify the buildings. We won't be without mistakes, but a phone call into one of the buildings would have verified that the frozen strawberries were not expired in 2020!
