Cuisine Solutions’ Café + Teria Spices up Lunch for H-B Woodlawn

Cuisine Solutions and its sister company CREA, The Culinary Research and Education Academy, are pleased to announce that their innovative Café + Teria program, which launched in 2017 to provide high school students with a healthy, balanced, customized lunch, is expanding into four Virginia districts for the 2019-2020 school year. The program is also launching in South Carolina at four Pickens County high schools. At each Café +Teria, students select ingredients in four steps to build a nutritious meal. They pick a base of grain, salad or a wrap; a protein: antibiotic-free chicken, ground beef, or Paneer cheese; a topping of vegetables, cheese and sauces, and a dressing. Café + Teria features popular international cuisine types including Mexican, Asian, Mediterranean, Caribbean and Italian designed to address menu fatigue, along with a new BBQ bowl being introduced this fall.

In 2017, Café + Teria was originally introduced to high school students attending Arlington, Virginia’s three public high schools, Wakefield, Yorktown and Washington-Lee. Due to the success at these schools in Arlington it will also expand to The Heights (the new home of H-B Woodlawn) and the Arlington School Career Center on September 3.

The concept for this innovative school lunch program is designed around using Cuisine Solutions’ proteins. Café + Teria resembles a franchise for schools, which can be replicated at any school district in the country. Cuisine Solutions provides the school partners with the recipes, standard operating procedures, name brand and marketing materials to support the program. For example, every Café +Teria in the participating Virginia and South Carolina schools has a serving line with bold graphics that invite exploration, designed with a distinctive, modern look to help attract students to these healthy meal options.

Café + Teria’s protein choices are all prepared with the sous-vide method, which fully cooks and pasteurizes the food. Sous-vide is French for “under vacuum” which describes a cooking technique in which food is vacuum-sealed, then slow cooked in hot water. Cuisine Solutions’ chefs and its Café + Teria team continue to source product selections with recipe creations that will appeal to students and provide healthy, quality, delicious options with pleasing combinations, incorporating local produce from area farms for the toppings. The recipes are also low in sodium, fat and sugar. CREA, the global leader in culinary research, education & consulting, and the sister company to Cuisine Solutions, has been integral in the development of this lunch program.

CREA Executive Chef A.J. Schaller advises, “The Culinary Research and Education Academy (CREA) develops base menu ingredients, spice blends and dressings for Café-Teria. Along with Bill Stablein, the chefs and engineers at CREA enjoy working on this passion project to provide a healthy and tasty option for school lunches.”