Photography By Vada Bostian / Aesthetic Images

Kim Coffey has always been ahead of her time. In the 1970s, before “green” was part of the social lexicon, she lived off the land on her parents’ farm in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Now, Coffey may be on the verge of redefining the standard school lunch.

Last fall, she launched The Farmer’s Daughter, a whole-foods company that prepares local, biodynamic, and organic lunches and delivers them in reusable “laptop” lunch boxes to students of nonpublic schools in the Triad. The service gives parents an alternative to the usual lunchroom fare.

The Farmer’s Daughter menu changes every month, but everything her chef, Gil Corrigan, prepares follows four key principals:

Variety and combination — Each entree has two whole-food side dishes, such as snap peas or hormone-free cheese kabobs. A bimonthly menu rotation also ensures kids are exposed to a variety of foods.
Fun — Corrigan plays with textures and addresses what children enjoy, such as finger-foods, fun shapes, and foods they can dip and assemble.
Self-Empowerment — Kids are invited to send in healthy recipes, and The Farmer’s Daughter will add them to the menu for students at all its schools.
Ethnic awareness — Coffey aims to help kids understand the world with compassion and understanding. Each monthly menu includes an ethnic dish such as Lapsi (sweet bulgur) from India.

Those principals are a response to what Coffey saw in school lunchrooms as she researched her business plan. “Kids eat dysfunctional food that doesn’t help the body function properly,” she says.

That said, will they eat the healthy stuff? So far, the answer has been a resounding “yes.” Chicken lo mein, she says, is the runaway No. 1 hit with her clients so far. But in general, many parents say their kids eat almost anything Corrigan makes.

“Just about every night at dinner we ask the kids about lunch, and they say they had the best lunch,” says Sherry Moss, whose 7-year-old son, Chase, and 10-year-old daughter, Rachel, attend Winston-Salem Montessori. “Even now that it’s not quite as novel anymore, 95 percent of the time they said they love what they had.”

Every laptop lunch box includes metal utensils and plastic containers for meals and sides. When the kids are finished, they leave it in a bin in the lunchroom. Coffey then picks it up in the afternoon.

“I was researching on the Internet to see if there was anything else like us out there, and I found a handful of companies doing something similar,” Coffey says. “But most companies are doing biodegradable. We’re the only one doing zero waste.”

Coffey washes, sanitizes, and reuses the utensils and containers. Leftover food is composted. When school is canceled and meals are unclaimed, Coffey takes the food to a local homeless shelter. Parents, she says, love knowing that nothing is tossed in the trash.

Maybe that’s why, despite the sluggish economy, The Farmer’s Daughter keeps securing more customers who will pay $5 per lunch for the service.

“We love the idea about no waste and eating organically,” says Camille Garrett, a faculty member at Greensboro Montessori who buys a lunch for herself and another for her 7-year-old son, Ian. “The food tastes great, and it is one less thing I have to do in the morning. I say it is worth every penny. We eat [these lunches] four days out of the week and will continue to do so.”

Coffee adds that The Farmer’s Daughter offers certainty in an uncertain time. Parents have a set monthly budget for their kids’ lunches, and they know what their kids are eating. Not only does Coffey send out a monthly newsletter highlighting kids’ likes and dislikes on the previous month’s menu, but parents can call her for specific information about their children.

“When you’re doing this day-to-day and seeing a child’s name four or five times a week, you know exactly what they’re eating,” Coffey says. She adds that orders have tripled since the start of the school year, justifying her decision to start the company. The idea to go for it came to her during one of her daily morning meditations. It was an odd epiphany, given that she home-schools her own kids.

“When the idea is ideal, commit,” Coffey says. A growing number of Triad parents and kids are glad she did.

Parents can register for The Farmer’s Daughter lunches online at organiclunchkids.com. For more information, call 336-782-8471 or 336-591-9176.