Friday, October 10, 2014

Regarding the SNA "civil war" described in the New York Times article I linked you to in my last post: the plot thickens.

Yesterday, the tweet appeared on my twitter feed:

If you followed my blog through the spring and early summer, you may remember that I occasionally linked to posts by Ms. Siegel, who writes a blog called "The Lunch Tray" about child nutrition and food at school.  It's generally well-reasoned and always well-written, and be aware that Ms. Siegel is decidedly on the side of continuing and extending efforts like the New Regs.  She tweets @thelunchtray (click the graphic above to see her twitter page) and blogs at http://www.thelunchtray.com/.

In the post that the tweet above links to, Ms. Siegel writes,

"[C]learly not all SNA members support the new public stance of the organization [in favor of rolling back the New Regs].  Indeed, several months ago, 19 past SNA presidents took the remarkable step of sending an open letter urging Congress to stay the course on healthier school meals.  And over the last few months, many individual food service directors have also come by this blog and its Facebook page to express their own dismay at SNA’s current position.

"Accordingly, as part of a collaboration between various school food advocates and school food service directors, an open letter directed to the SNA’s Board of Directors is now being circulated with the hopes of getting as many signatures as possible.  It reads:

We, the undersigned members of the SNA, respectfully urge the Board of Directors to withdraw support for any provision in Agriculture Appropriations or other legislation that would waive school nutrition standards."

You can read the whole post and the entire "Open Letter to SNA" at this link:

http://www.thelunchtray.com/sna-member-supports-healthier-school-food-sign-letter/

TODAY. SNA reacted to the post and letter with an "Urgent Message from SNA Board" on their web site.  Seems the letter got their attention:

"Members should be aware that this letter will try to discredit the Association and limit SNA’s efforts to advocate on your behalf for any kind of flexibility under the new standards.

With efforts like 'Are You an SNA Member Who Supports Healthier School Food? Sign This Letter,' it is clear that the letter was intended to divide SNA members and depict those who seek any flexibility under the regulations as not supporting healthy meals."

Wow.  Just wow.

Friday, July 11, 2014

Sorry it's been awhile between posts.  I was on vacation for the end of June/beginning of July, and we've been getting ready to head up to Boston where we'll have a booth at ANC next week.  And anyway, we've been waiting for the legislative process (if any) to run its course before commenting further on the new regs controversy.

Since I last commented, the situation has become much more clear -- for better or worse.

First, as you all know because the start date was July 1, all of the changes that were scheduled to take effect HAVE taken effect.  Nothing has changed.  I argued all along that the most likely outcome was the status quo, possibly with a token giveback on one or more of the requirements.  Because the Senate is Democratic and the President is a Democrat, there was never much chance that any sweeping changes or waivers would take effect, even IF the House passed them.

Which leads me to my second point: the HOUSE didn't even pass the waiver, and this is where SNA's very public position really starts to become a PR nightmare for the Association and frankly, for our industry.  SNA essentially threw in with the least reliable player in this game -- the Republican House -- in advocating vocally for watering down the requirements.  The House Republican majority's main political goal is to embarrass and foil the President (and his wife and his agriculture secretary, and any other person or institution that has to do with actively governing the country).  Whether or not you support this goal of theirs, it is what it is, and political actors in our country (like SNA has made itself) have to be aware of and account for this fact of political life. 

The House Republicans saw the new regs waiver as a minor but painless (for them) way to help accomplish this on-going and all-important goal of nettling the administration.  Moreover, for them, the waiver would not be the end result, but rather the first step in severely and possibly fatally gutting the big-government school meals program entirely. 

Too strong?  Check out this matter-of-fact report from a Salina, Kansas state Republican Party gathering where members suggested that "a trend in Salina toward increasing numbers of students receiving free and reduced school lunches could be halted if the names of those in the program were published. One person suggested signs in the yards of school lunch recipients." 

School Meals, my friends, are big government, and the people in the House that SNA joined up with are the sworn enemies of big government, at least when it's promoted by a Democratic administration.  

This, it should be obvious, is not a mindset that is conducive to the long-term success of your program.  Nonetheless, SNA allied itself with this legislative group, and indeed became the public face of the campaign to roll back the new regs.  And when substantial and unrelenting opposition arose -- from social media, from activists, from the First Lady, from the President, from segments of the public, from 19 past presidents of SNA, even from some of you (SNA members) -- the House Republicans, who never saw this action as a major principled stand, but rather as another way to dig at the President, his wife, and his government, simply dropped the whole thing and moved on to the next scheme. 

(Something else happened, too: the House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, was defeated in his bid for re-election in Virginia's Republican primary, resigned as House Majority Leader, and was replaced by California Republican representative Kevin McCarthy, who represents a lot of produce growers, who obviously aren't interested in getting rid of the fruit or vegetable requirement.  It's all politics.)

Which brings me to my third point: SNA made and continues to make disastrous PR moves in this whole process. 

Seriously, who is running their PR shop?  Are there any professionals involved?  They allied themselves with radical politicians and depended on the initiative and commitment of these politicians to get the changes made that the SNA leadership wanted.  That effort failed, as could have been predicted. 

Further, SNA carried water for the evil processed food industry (or at least that's the public perception -- and perception, my friends, is still reality).  In the process, SNA was made to look, not like a group of lovable lunch ladies caring for kids, but like a mere lobbying arm of Big Food, which, it was very publicly disclosed, provides more than half of the Association's funding. 

Meanwhile, SNA repeatedly and vociferously committed (and continues to commit!) the PR sin of denigrating their own product and its members' hard-earned reputation for professional competence (kids don't like our food, whole grains are inedible, we can't make this work, we're feeding the trash can, we give up!), instead of taking a more positive approach to the situation, as I encouraged you all to do in the talking points I provided to you six weeks ago. 

They say that if you're in a card game for 15 minutes and haven't figured out who the patsy is, you're the patsy.  SNA -- not the House Republicans and not Big Food -- was left holding the PR bag in this mess.  

I'm a member of the Association, as you probably are, too, so I take no pleasure in their self-inflicted trouble.  Their arguments are certainly not without reason, and you may well agree with everything they've said.  But whatever you or I believe, the public perception is that SNA -- and by extension YOU -- are actually arguing for less healthy meals to be served in school. 

So I -- and you -- have some digging out to do.  That's one reason why we went with this design for your prices piece on the August/September menus:

It might not be very sexy, but we need to project a rock-solid image and remind folks of the roots of the program and its essential mission.  I've been working very hard for over 20 years to convince folks that "We Serve Education Every Day."  We'll have to redouble our efforts in that regard this year. 

We'll also be making available to you in the next couple of weeks a Parent Flyer along the lines of the ones we've done the last two years for the new lunch regs and new breakfast regs, letting people know that the recent changes to make meals healthier are indeed still in place and have actually even been ramped up this year (as planned) for lunch, breakfast, and snacks. 

Even this morning, there's a report that SNA's talks with USDA are showing some progress, so some fine-tuning or minor concessions by USDA may still be in the offing.  Once we're a little more sure, we'll make menu pieces right away designed to help convey to parents that the march to healthier meals goes on.

And, of course, all of our New Regs point of sale and merchandising materials are still available to you to help maximize awareness, prepare for your reviews, and add color to your lines.  We're working on revisions of the Breakfast stuff to get the fruit/vegetable requirement in there. 

Stop by our booth in Boston (#1283) to see our stuff, get a free Breakfast Dry Erase Board, and say hello to me and Jennifer, and my two sons, John Jr and Tom, who will be helping us man the booth.

As always, we'd love to hear your comments, and please let us know what else we can do to help you deal with the reality that you face. 

And keep smiling!!! 

JB

This cartoon below represents the kind of perception that I hope doesn't become too entrenched.  The worst thing that could happen to us from a PR point of view is for our programs to be generally perceived as being run for and by the big processed food companies.  That's one of the dangers I see in the way SNA has been moved into the spotlight, lobbying for relaxed standards with enduring simultaneous publicity about half or more of the Association's funding coming from these companies.  If this sort of imagery prevails, the association stops being about lunch ladies in the minds of the public (if indeed anyone in the general public ever thought of SNA at all!) and becomes about enabling big companies to profit enormously off our kids by feeding them processed junk.

Don't forget the first commandment of public relations: PERCEPTION IS REALITY!!!  It doesn't matter if we know these things aren't true -- all that matters is that the perception becomes widespread, and then becomes impossible to refute or change.  Like the kids in the cartoon, we can't afford to lose the lunch ladies.  When "Lunch Ladies" were the public face of school meals, that was far preferable to having big business and the profit motive represent our programs in the public imagination.

Personally, I've worked so hard alongside so many of you for 20 plus years to get people to internalize this simple message: "School Meals: We Serve Education Every Day."  It breaks my heart to see that message overwhelmed by sentiments like this.