Central Kitchen

The Central Kitchen will provide a location where the majority of breakfast and lunch ingredients for student meals are stored, cooked and packaged for delivery to schools. The new building will be approximately 30,000 square feet and include production kitchen, food storage, offices for kitchen and purchasing staff, training areas for staff and students, and support space. In addition to building the central kitchen, the project includes upgrading kitchens across the district to accommodate new meals.

The district has planned for a central kitchen model as a cost-effective way to provide more options for students. Rather than relying largely on commercially processed and pre-packaged foods, a central kitchen will allow for better meal quality and a wider variety of menu items with healthier, fresher ingredients, including more meals made from scratch. Currently, student meals are heated or prepared at 56 individual locations throughout the school district. With no centralized storage or central food preparation capabilities, the school district is limited to the few larger vendors who can deliver to so many sites, often paying higher prices for such products and services.

The Central Kitchen will be built on a newly purchased existing warehouse site in West Tacoma. The location is part of an effort to streamline and improve warehouse and facilities operations. One building will be used primarily for central kitchen purposes, and the other for a variety of operations that will be moved from the district’s location at Union & Center.