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Communities that KARE: The Good Acre

The Good Acre in Falcon Heights is helping schools revamp their menus with culinary training in its state-of-the-art commercial kitchen.

FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn. — Think of it as a field trip without students. Schools like Brooklyn Center High are sending staff to The Good Acre to spice up their lunches.

The Good Acre is a nonprofit food hub in Falcon Heights. It offers cooking classes, a farm share program and a culinary training program to help area public schools create sustainable Farm to School programs.

Tom Schmidt is the head cook at Brooklyn Center High. When we caught up with his team at the Good Acre, they were eager for a fresh take on food prep. "It's a new way of learning how to serve vegetables to our students; just for different tastes, different textures of food," said Schmidt.

Lachelle Cunningham is one of the education coordinators at The Good Acre. She tells us, "I'm really want to get across the versatility of using cooking from scratch and also using fresh local produce and how can we apply different cooking techniques and get different flavors."

The school chefs at Brooklyn Center learned new knife and kitchen skills to get students excited about what's on their trays. Cunningham emphasized, "you want to be basically eating the rainbow, so the sooner we can really incorporate that into their day to day and just make it a way of life, the healthier they'll be in the long run."

Schmidt agreed and said, "It makes it more interesting, so it's not like doing the same thing all the time."

The Good Acre has been around for five years and is now building out its culinary vocational training program. It's expected to pilot in the fall. 

Communities that KARE is sponsored by Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union.

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