Beef: It’s what’s for dinner (and school lunches, too)

In the Midwest, beef is a popular main dish on many menus at home. During the school year it’s also one of the more popular items on the menus students prefer.

COVID-19 has closed schools since mid-March, so Beef Month in May was unable to be celebrated this year with special lunch menus.

Special menus now and then using food from local producers have been a focus for Amy Prior, Food Service Director for Lunchtime Solutions, Inc., which provides the  meal program at Chase County Schools in Imperial.

In a recent Beef Month, Prior helped coordinate an effort by Imperial Beef, located north of Imperial in Chase County, to serve steaks to all K-12 on one of the final days of the school year.

Brad Foote, owner/manager at Imperial Beef, said they wanted to acknowledge Beef Month in May and celebrate the beef industry by donating grilled ribeye steaks and all the fixings for lunch that day.

Eight hundred steaks were grilled outdoors by Imperial Beef staff and employees from an animal health company they work with. Students went through a buffet line outdoors, where they were served a tasty ribeye steak sandwich.

“Imperial Beef brought all the people  to grill the meat,” Prior recalled, and also provided all the  other side dishes and drinks.

Student lunch accounts were not charged a cent that day, she said.

Foote told Prior as they planned the lunch that he wanted everyone to have the chance to eat a steak.

It was hugely popular, Prior said, and she planned to get with Foote at Imperial Beef again this year for another beef-centered lunch. Unfortunately, COVID-19 derailed those plans.

Read the full story and many others FREE in the 2020 Salute to Beef special section.