Cost difference for organic at a daycare center?

March 9, 2016 5:45 AM

Our child attends a privately owned daycare center that has a maximum of 8 infants, 21 toddlers and 30 preschoolers. They follow the US Federal food program requirements and provide breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack. What would be a good estimate for cost difference if they moved from non-organic to organic foods?

I have the crazy idea to offer to pay the difference for our daycare provider to provide organic foods instead of non-organic food for all of the students for as long as my child is in their preschool program (2 - 3 years). But I don't want to ask them to do all of the work of estimating how much that would be and find out it is way more than I'd be willing to pay.

To be clear, they provide prepared generic brand dry and canned goods - bagged fruity loop cereal, for example. We do have local store brand generic organic dry and canned goods available in the area (midwest US, about 200k people in the area, generally low cost of living here). Most children are from lower-middle class families, so this is not a high end private school.

Has anyone here done the math already or does anyone here know a ballpark figure for the food budget of a similarly sized daycare center?

I found an example spreadsheet here where they have a sample Bi-Weekly Payroll with "Program Food" set to $1500 for 47 children (my example has 59) that is about $32 per kid a month. That seems incredibly low. It doesn't say what year it is from, so I am not sure how realistic that number is.

We currently supply just our child's food (oatmeal with pears for breakfast, leftovers for lunch, fruit and pretzels/crackers for snack), and, if I can, I'd rather benefit all the kids in the daycare center. (And free up the extra daily brain space of preparing and packaging food every day.)

Many of the cost comparisons I've found online are mostly comparing a fresh basket of strawberries, or other fresh produce and that doesn't really apply to institution-grade quantities of food.

There is definitely the question on nutritional value of dry and canned processed foods, anyway. As much as we try to keep fresh, homemade foods in our meal planning, takeout Chinese food leftovers are sent for lunch from time to time. I'm not sure how much of a difference in nutritional value there is in a prepared box of mac & cheese from non-organic to organic.

posted by anonymous to Food & Drink (7 answers total)

One thought that occurs is that in institutional settings, they receive food shipments from a central provider, like Sysco. This means they can have a standard order, and it all gets delivered in one fell swoop. To go organic, it might not be just a price difference, it might also mean a huge process difference, which has its own cost.

Also, you only want to do it as long as your child is in the school. They can't do a whole change to their nutrition program for just a couple of years.

Organic food means different preparation and storage methods. Things spoil more quickly etc.

I'm not going to touch covering the costs of all the food for all the kids with a barge pole. If it's that important, use the money you would have spent to do that on upgrading to a preschool with organic food, or hire a nanny. It's THAT much more expensive.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 6:07 AM on March 9, 2016 [8 favorites]

I'd be willing to bet folding money that the food they receive comes from a central supplier. No one at that school is going shopping at the grocery store for a weeks' worth of food for the school. They're getting it delivered by Sysco and the items they are getting delivered are pre-determined by the food program as approved foods and meals. There are standards that have to be adhered to as far as food groups, calories, etc.... The program is standardized so that all participating care centers are meeting them in the same way with the same foods.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:31 AM on March 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

It very much depends on the exact products and the quantities in which they’re used. You would need to ask them for a monthly list of what they buy now to be able to make an educated comparison. (And I don’t think they’d appreciate it, unfortunately.)

I frequently buy organic foods for environmental and human rights reasons, but haven’t seen good research that shows they reduce consumer pesticide exposure enough to have any health impacts, even on children. You may want to look into that more if you’d like to save yourself food packing tasks.
posted by metasarah at 6:39 AM on March 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

First of all, it is awesome that you are considering this. Please don't give up yet, not without knowing for a fact that it won't work -- even though the considerations listed are valid.

One other thing to consider in your research is flavor. Some of the institutional food they've chosen might be used by them because it tastes good to the kids. Also, the kids are now used to it. For some, changing might be a little bit of a challenge (but it would be really great, potentially invaluable to some, to get their palates used to whatever's different about the higher-quality food at an early age).
posted by amtho at 6:47 AM on March 9, 2016

Mod note: From the OP:

This is a locally owned daycare center where they have two locations in town and do not get institution-type deliveries of food. The request I would make is for them to buy the organic canned green beans, for example, instead of the non-organic canned green beans. So, little process or preparation change (hopefully).

posted by taz (staff) at 7:01 AM on March 9, 2016

I work in a daycare that offers some organic food. Our chef sources a lot of local organic produce from urban farms in the area, but not everything is organic--it's a mix, which was the most cost-effective at my job (which is somewhat high-end). My understanding is that going fully organic would have been prohibitively expensive and difficult, and so the chef focused on the fruits and veggies which were a) locally available and b) are conventionally grown with a lot of pesticides. A similar strategy might work for you.
If there's a farmshare/CSA in your area, they might be able to partner with the school and deliver some groceries. You might also be able to set up a garden the kids participate in--we have one, and they get really excited when our produce is served for lunch.
posted by Nibbly Fang at 8:21 AM on March 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

If you want to kind of ease into this and test the waters, my daughter's previous daycare had an organic milk "club" that parents set up. They rotated buying organic milk and bringing it to school to put in the classroom fridge, and the teachers knew which kids were in the club and they got different milk. I believe at some point it became the case that all but a couple of the parents in class were in the club, and they were able to use that data to show there was sufficient demand that the daycare should switch.
posted by town of cats at 12:27 PM on March 9, 2016