Comment by jelliclesfarm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jelliclesfarm | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Do they have food trucks in Sweden? Maybe students can pool in money and hire a cook or contract with a food truck to provide meals on time.

When I was in school back in India..and this was many decades ago...me and my cousins would get hot lunch delivered by my grandparents. But there was this group of kids who had working parents and from nuclear families...and a bunch of them hired a lady to cook meals for 10-12 of the kids to have hot fresh homemade lunches delivered. They felt it was better to feed them varied and fresh home cooked meals even if it had to be outsourced

Because it’s India and the cuisine is very regional, all the parents spoke the same language and had the same food habits.

Also..it was usually a good side gig for housewives who had a little extra time and had cooking skills. They are not competing in the market or with restaurants. They just like cooking and kids. I knew that this lady sometimes made extra food for kids who couldn’t afford homemade fresh lunches.

Of course...there were no overheads like incorporating it as a business or paying taxes or working in a paid commissary kitchen or bookkeeping etc...the moms just paid one of their neighbours who was also their friend. It was trust and word of mouth. No one was going to write a bad Yelp review for over spiced curry. So there’s that. It was just ingredients plus a profit margin as far as the housewife/caterer was concerned.

Childhood eating habits shape healthier diets in adulthood. Maybe someone from Sweden in HN can run with this as a startup?

Swedish schools always have school cafeterias, free of charge, it's only in very rare situations like here that this is not the case.

I was specifically suggesting for the non cafeteria ones that the the parent comment from a current student. Not to replace existing programs. I went to a private school. Public schools had free schools lunches in India too. But even then if parents could afford it, they always sent home cooked packed lunches.

Because the population is so culturally and linguistically diverse, there were as many types of regional cuisines too. Especially in urban areas where people migrate for jobs.

Indians can be fiercely protective about their language and cuisine because as cultural markers that are constantly under threat to be homogenized as a ‘single Indian culture’, parents liked to start early with food and language spoken at home. This was my observation from living in India many years ago. Perhaps this has changed now.

Also making the weekly menu for the upcoming school lunches was the fun part of bonding with my grandmother. That was also how I learnt to love food and cooking. I don’t think I would have first gravitated towards food and then later into farming if it hadn’t been for the hours I spent with my grandmother planning those lunches.

I realize that there is a little bit of nostalgia in my reply but it is also a good business opportunity with healthy side effect for hungry kids who must have access to nutritious and healthy meals. I am sure that opinion is global and won’t change with time.

> I was specifically suggesting for the non cafeteria ones that the the parent comment from a current student

And I'm saying that this category of school essentially doesn't exist. It's not that most schools have cafeterias. All schools do, except for a handful.

> Maybe someone from Sweden in HN can run with this as a startup? I like the way you think.

In my country the community would open tons of cheap food stalls that could get students decent food. It also happens that simple bean or chicken briyanis were a hit.

I guess Im finding it difficult to digest the suggestion of burgers as a lunch meal when food really shouldn't be an issue in SWE. Maybe its embarrasing to not eat out?

I can relate to this. We also had trucks and push carts that served quick take out meals near schools but because that was always discouraged by my grandparents. If food wasn’t pre packed or made fresh right in front of our eyes(like dosa and idly in south of India), the general rule is to not to buy anything from food carts.

99.9% of Swedish schools have free school cafeterias. It's a deeply ingrained concept that I believe Sweden invented. This school is an extreme outlier.

The lunch cards are limited to companies that the school allows.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com