Fresh Ideas: Reimagining the Salad Bar with Menifee Union School District’s Judy Mireles
April 28, 2026
In communities all over California, School Food Professionals are thinking outside of the box, coming up with innovative ways to bring fresh, nourishing and sustainable meals to students.
From expanding scratch cooking to operating farm-to-school programs to sourcing sustainable seafood, California’s School Food Professionals have put the state at the forefront of a national movement to build school food programs that create healthier futures for our kids, communities and planet.
One leader charting a new direction for school food is Judy Mireles, Nutrition Services Site Support Lead at Menifee Union School District. For more than 15 years, she has helped the district’s school food team embrace a greater commitment to scratch cooking, fresh and local produce, and sustainable practices. In 2024, she launched a district-wide project to make farm-fresh, organic produce and proteins available to every student.
The Food Bar Meal Campaign
Judy is a graduate of the Chef Ann Foundation’s Healthy School Food Pathway Fellowship program, which helps mid- to upper-level School Food Professionals realize their visions for healthier, more sustainable and more equitable school food. For her Fellowship capstone project, Judy developed and launched The Food Bar Meal Campaign, which revamped school salad bars in her district into a farm-fresh, flavorful experience for all students.
- Fresh forward: Judy’s campaign transformed the layout of the cafeterias in participating sites, placing the Food Bars right after the entree station. Students can now easily customize their meals by adding healthy fruits, vegetables and proteins that suit their tastes.
- Delicious, organic and local: The district’s Food Bars provide students with a diverse range of organic, locally sourced produce, such as strawberries, cara cara oranges and broccoli. They also offer cold salads, house-made salsas, healthy proteins like eggs and chicken and more.
- Healthy meals for all students: Every student needs nutritious, fresh produce and proteins in their diet. The Food Bars are available to all students, meaning even those who bring their lunch from home can select healthy fruits and vegetables to be part of their meals.
The campaign started at a handful of sites across the district, but word quickly got out. Students raved about the fresh, delicious offerings and the schools saw greater overall meal participation. Other sites requested improvements for their own Food Bars, and they have now been rolled out across the entire district.
Judy believes the campaign’s success fits in with a larger pattern at Menifee Union School District of more nutritious, scratch-cooked and sustainable school meals. “We’re supporting local farms, which is awesome. Today, 70% of our produce comes from farmers in our communities,” she said. “We’re no longer ordering things pre-wrapped, so we don’t have all the package waste. Even our trays are compostable.”
Planting Seeds for Change
Real change doesn’t sprout up overnight. It’s a long-term commitment, one that requires determination, creativity and, most of all, patience. “That’s a lesson I had to learn myself: go slow,” Judy said. “It’s not how fast you get to the end. It’s that you keep moving the needle to get there.” By taking the time to build buy-in, keeping the goal in mind and working out the details, she believes that School Food Professionals can give their programs the greatest chance of success.
Over a decade and a half at Menifee, Judy has seen incredible growth in the capacity of the district’s nutrition program and the quality of the meals that they’re able to produce. “I love all the innovative things that we’re doing, all the scratch cooking. I’ve seen the change in the meals,” she said.
“It’s like the sky’s the limit for Menifee. I love it, and it all comes back to the kids.”