Small Bites Adventure Club

Today our special guests are Chef Asata Reid and Erin Croom of "Small Bites Adventure Club" from Atlanta, GA. 

Listen to them as they share their journey and passion of how they developed a truly one-of-a-kind, innovative program to educate children about nutrition and where their food comes from.

Transcript

Small Bites Adventure Club

Transcript

00:00:06 Michelle

Welcome to the farm to school podcast where you will hear stories of how you thrive and farmers prosper when we grow, cook and eat delicious, nutritious local foods and schools across the country and the world.

00:00:17 Rick

We're your host, Rick Sherman.

00:00:18 Michelle

And Michelle Markesteyn.

00:00:20 Rick

And for today's episode, we have a special guest. We have our first returning guest, Erin Krum from the small Bites small Bites Adventure Club in Atlanta, GA, and she brought… Thank you Chef Asada.

00:00:38 Chef Asata

Hello everyone, we're glad to be here today.

00:00:41 Michelle

I'm like, so excited I before we even were talking, I was saying that to you both and would love to say to the world that you know, lots of people have great ideas.  And some people can take steps towards those ideas, but what you've done is literally remarkable. You've taken an amazing idea based on a whole body of research and evidence, but made it really fun, really like the art and science coming together of, you know, growing happy, healthy kids and someone say thank you. You've grown the idea, you're expanding it and I'm really excited to hear more about where you're headed with it?

00:01:19 Rick

Well, where you're headed and Erin can you can you back up a little bit and tell us how you got there? You haven't been in doing the small bites adventure club forever.  You were doing something I think back when I met you about 15 years ago, why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey?

00:01:35 Erin Croom

Thanks! And thank you for having us on. We're really excited to talk about what we're doing. So yes, I have always been obsessed with farms with school. I did my graduate program in 2002, I think, and my focus was on farm to school with Vermont Feed program up in Vermont, came down, came back South and from the South and from Mississippi. But I moved to Atlanta and worked with a great organization called Georgia Organics to Grow our farm to school program in Georgia, which is where I met Asata. And we've been working together, gosh, us, it has been like 15-16 years. It's been a long time.

00:02:19 Chef Asata

Ohh, that makes it sound really old.

00:02:24 Erin Croom

So yeah, so always just really love farm to school. I love partnerships and doing things, you know kind of looking at a common goal and working together towards that to kind of grow and scale. And so we're kind of using all those same elements with small bites adventure club.  You know, back in the day we used to cross paths all the time because there was only a handful of people doing on the ground from the schoolwork there, a lot of people thinking about it. But as far as people showing up in schools and training, nutrition staff training.

00:03:00 Chef Asata

Teachers working with kids there was only a handful of people and we kept crossing paths and so when Erin brought the idea of small bites meat, I thought it was the most intelligent, brilliant, amazing thing I've ever heard. It's like putting a teacher in a farmer and A food educator and a trainer all in one box. Then make it cute and make it fun and make it accessible. And it was just brilliant. Just absolutely blew my mind. And so kudos to Erin because…

00:03:15 Michelle

That's Erin!

00:03:32 Chef Asata

She's been the visionary behind this from the beginning, and I mean Erin, tell him about the carrots: when COVID hit and we went into pandemic mode and all of a sudden school wasn't in anymore. Kids were at home, she made this incredible pivot - and I hate that word. I wish I could light it on fire and burn it.

00:03:50 Rick

Really.

00:03:53 Chef Asata

Like an ice skater in the Olympics doing it. It was an amazing pirouette, yes.

00:03:58 Michelle

she pirouetted.

00:04:00 Rick

First of all, I will make sure I might try to strike that from my memory when talking to you, Chef ASADA. So. OK, let's hear about it.

00:04:08 Michelle

Let's hear about that. 

00:04:13 Chef Asata

That is what we shall call it going forward.

00:04:16 Erin Croom

So we had started small bytes. You know, it had a lot of different iterations, but it was really getting going in March 2020 and we had our biggest order and it was gonna go out to, I don't know, something like 300 schools was our biggest order to date and…

00:04:35 Rick

What what's in an order? Tell us what that consists of?

00:04:38 Erin Croom

Yes, so.  So and we've kind of made some iterations, but essentially you think about HelloFresh, so it's HelloFresh meets food education, that's what small bites adventure Club is essentially. So we used to actually send all of the pre measured ingredients like fresh food as well as the step by step instructions with stickers, everything a teacher needs to lead a really hands on a really easy, fun hands on education. So also it makes all these great recipes that we kind of breakdown into an easy activity. So we do all that now, except we don't actually put the freight, we don't ship fresh food. We'll we'll work with like Instacart to get the food delivered. But essentially we had all these carrots and my biggest stress on like I think it was March 12 is that we didn't have enough carrots and I was, you know, running around trying to find more carrots, more carrots, more carrots. 

00:05:39 Chef Asata

Local, local and regional carrots.

00:05:43 Michelle

What kind of pounds or tonnage or truck clothes are we talking about?

00:05:48 Erin Croom

Ohh gosh, you know we're, we're… That is a great question and I'll have to go back and look at it that excel sheet, but it would have been enough, you know, for about 5000 kids.

00:06:01 Chef Asata

Yeah, it's a lot and you guys know with farm to school, it's seasonal. So here we are doing that February to March kind of shift and the carrots are like, maybe you know. Ohh right? Yeah.

00:06:13 Chef Asata

Harvest, you know how far in this school- is sometimes something's like according to your growth chart. It's supposed to be in, and it may or may not, and you, you know, that's already an issue and usually we use it as a learning opportunity. We say, well, that's just how it is. But in this COVID, the COVID carrot caper, also known as...

00:06:30 Chef Asata

Yeah.

00:06:33 Rick

The pirouette.

00:06:34 Michelle

But something else happened.

00:06:37 Erin Croom

Yeah. So anyway, I guess that was March Friday the 13th, 

00:06:43 Rick

Yeah, of course.

00:06:43 Erin Croom

We thought that's when Georgia shut down. And so we immediately were like you know, shut it down.  And we donated a lot of carrots the following Monday to we did not ship out all those orders, and we pivoted and I think also to thank goodness, she's so great at teaching, we ended up doing a lot of virtual classes.  And you know, we made it work. We did different home kits, that we worked with a lot of great organizations and you know, continue doing food education in a bit of a different way. So we have reverted back to more of our traditional business plan in the last couple of years.

00:07:22 Chef Asata

Yeah.  But we were able to. Kind of flip what was a classroom kit and turn it into a home kit for kids who are at home with their parent, and took into a lot of consideration the barriers that maybe facing kids and parents around food that turned small bites adventure club into a home kit that kids could use to continue to learn. Just learn, period. Because the learning standards are always education, standards are always embedded. But you know, during a time where there was so much stress.  And so much worry and so much thought around food shortages, kids are still able to learn and have positive experiences and learn about soil and learn about bugs and learn about life cycles and learn about art and all of that through these home kits that we delivered in partnership during that time it was a complete flip from what we were doing.

00:08:24 Michelle

So where did you take it from? Now? You went classroom. Then you went home. Kits like what's been the trajectory since then? Where are you headed?

00:08:31 Erin Croom

Sure. So we have gone…  Some of our main partners have revolved around SNAP ED partnerships, so we have a lot of nonprofits that do amazing on the ground work and so one way that we partner with schools is through those nonprofits that have snap Ed funding, and so we work with those groups to send out every month those teachers that are leading kids and a lot of different activities, they're able to do at least one hands on food, education activity a lot. So a lot of times those are boys and girls clubs, with our childcare programs out in the community that have a little bit of extra time, but also have a big focus on how can we teach these kids some really simple nutrition during this.  So the so every month the schools that we shipped to, you know they get everything they need to lead a really fun recipe with kids that's focused on fruits and vegetables. They get stickers. You can't do anything without stickers with kids. You gotta have stickers, handouts to go home to Mom and Dad.  As well as we've got a great new digital platform. So now teachers can go on and you know, check out the recipe also that does some incredible videos for instructions so kids can watch it. Teachers can watch it on how to make the recipe, but also how to like set up your room for success.  Yeah. So that's another really, really important kind of differentiator with small bytes is we don't just show you how to make the recipe, it's also in saying you can talk about this a little bit as like you know, what do teachers need to know to make food education accessible for kids? So how do you set up your room? How do you have the materials ready? How are you talking about food? So they'll make the recipe. They'll talk about it. So we have all the materials about how to talk about food and how to get kids to discuss it in a way that takes the conversation beyond like you know, you liked it. You didn't like it. It's more about how does it taste? How does it feel? Like, what does it make you think about it? How would you like to taste it differently? And then of course, you know, take on recipes for home.

00:10:56 Chef Asata

So yeah, and I think our kids are, they're very as much as they are rooted in the experiential learning of the kids. It is also very much in mind that this is a teacher tool. This is a turnkey tool that teachers can use as soon as they open the box. We gotta give a shout out to Jenna because Jenna is our farm to school educator extraordinary. And we all have classroom experience that, you know, generally roots us with the teacher, teacher experience. And, you know, she's kind of our barometer on reality. Like, yeah, that's not gonna fly in the classroom.

00:11:19 Michelle

Hey, Jenna.

00:11:31 Chef Asata

Her teachers are gonna love this.

00:11:33 Chef Asata

So when you  get a kid as a teacher, it's not a one and done. It's not just about the recipe. The recipe is sort of like the highlight of the learning experience, but there's all kinds of vocabulary and math and science and even social studies embedded in these kits, so a teacher can return to this resource for a months worth of educational touch points that may line up with something they're already doing in life science that may they may already be doing in math, and the response from teachers has just been consistently phenomenal over the years. They love it. I think they might like it more than the kids, which is amazing to say, right?  Small bites. The response has been phenomenal and that's just really great cause.  It lets us know not only are we reaching the kids and the families that the teachers are behind it and you know, when teachers get behind something it's when that's real, like that is your litmus test of usefulness.

00:12:30 Rick

That's the thing we found out too. How does the message get to the kids? You need the teachers and administrators. If the administrators get it, then that's your secret sauce. They can really push it out to everybody. So let me let me ask you guys about that. In terms of success, how do you measure that? How many homes are you in? Do you partner like how many places do you go to send these out?  And then are you only locally? Do you send out to other states like you know Hello Fresh does?

00:13:06 Erin Croom

Yes. So we have partnered with over 350 school programs. So that includes childcare programs, after school programs and K5 schools. So you know, how do we measure impacts? We're looking at how many kids tried it, how many teachers feel present about leading food education. Those are the things that are most important for us. Is that the teacher leaves the program and they're saying, you know what? I can totally do this with my students again. And I really enjoy doing it. That's when we know we've hit success is that we've got a teacher that is excited about meeting at, you know, beyond the time that there was small bites. So that's really important. But yeah, we're, you know, we started in Georgia and we have, you know, grown a little bit every year and I believe by the time that this episode airs and this will be public, but we just got a USDA Grand grant announcement that we're going to be expanding in partnership with a group called Eat Real. That is a great nonprofit, and we're going to be expanding into an additional 4 states. So I'm really excited about that. Thank you.. Yeah.

00:14:28 Rick

Congratulations.  That's good. We'll put we'll put links to the eat reel and as well as small bites adventure club in in our show notes.

00:14:39 Erin Croom

Fantastic. Yeah, I think that's Alabama, Louisiana and Oklahoma. And we have had partnerships in North Carolina and California over the last three years as well. So we're excited and you know, I think we're.. Our main vision when we started this is how can you create food education that is really easy. It's really fun. It's evidence based and it's scalable. And I think that's the one piece that we're always thinking about.  If you want something to be equitable, you've gotta have it also be scalable. So how can we create something that any teacher can do that's, you know, working on the front lines with students that they feel like they can take it and go with it and it's you don't have to, you know, invest in a, you know, a three day training that's maybe across the country or, you know, expensive curriculums, they get shelved. You know how easy can we make this for teachers? I think you know we have to respect that food and farm to school just aren't the most important things for everybody out there. So how can we make it something that's easy and fun enough?  And that any teacher could take it and say you know what I can. I can do this with my students an hour a month and the impact that that can make on a child's life to have some experience of positive experience doing hands on food education in the classroom where there's no expectation that they have to eat it, there's no expectation that they even have to like it.  But it's really bringing a positive experience early on while they're still, you know, creating those good habits and you know, their taste buds are changing and their minds are growing. So that's really the impact that we want to have across the nation. 

00:16:37 Chef Asata

And I just want to add on to that like the one of the major focal points in early child care or early child education is that first thousand days of literacy and there's a focus on them knowing their letters and their sounds. There's a focus on number recognition and things like that. Yeah, but what we know about food is that the early lessons that you take in impact the choices and the behaviors you have as an adult. So we're using this literacy window to build food literacy.  About how to feed the kid, which is based on my thesis, work on picky eating and you picky eating kind of picks at eight peaks around age 6.  We're talking about first graders. We're talking about second graders, so imagine if they'd already had five years, four years because you know, the first year's, like the liquid diet four or five years of positive food exposure, positive taste experiences. One of my joys is really working with those toddlers because we're taking for granted they know what an apple or a watermelon taste like. They don't. They don't know what it looks like. So when you bring in a farm watermelon, you bring in local fresh apples and it's amazing and sweet and juicy and the juices running down their arms and those faces are covered in like watermelon juice. And they're like in it, having this whole sensory experience and like a watermelon, isn't something to see. A watermelon isn't something to bite. A watermelon is something to dive into and relish. Tell me that's not going to stick with them. Tell me that's not gonna be a kid who's like. Ohh. Wait, what? Watermelon? That's the bomb. Apples. I'm here for it. And so if that same experience is in cucumbers and that same experience is in green beans and that same experience is in spinach. This kid is just like bring it. You know. So now we're working against their natural neophobia and we're encouraging their natural curiosity override it. You just created an adventurous eater. You just created a kid whose norm is what we “call healthy.”   They're rooted in fruits and vegetables. It's not scary, it's not new, it's completely normal, and I want more of it. I expect it. That's my norm. Yeah. And you don't have to force it. There's no coercion. There's no, I mean, granted, when we are in a group setting, like a classroom, there is positive peer pressure. So we just use that to our benefit like Erin loves the story that I tell about a little girl named Priya. I had a pre-K class who was very enthusiastic. She participated in every food cooking activity that we had. I mean, she was just in it refused to eat anything. Not a bite. And I have this class for six months, so every two days for six months. And these kids are being exposed to food through fun hands on activities, you know, not to toot my own horn, but we had a good time the last day. Priya ate. I don't even remember what we were making, but she ate it. Only. Did she eat it? She ate it all. I could not wait for her parents to come into the room. I think it was her dad that day. But like, you're not gonna believe this, though. Priya actually ate the Spence, you know? And it was just like a moment of an unbelievable... She's she was like the epitome of picky kids.  And it was just a phenomenal thing to see that after all this repeated exposure in a very comfortable environment where there was no pressure, she took it upon herself to do that. I mean, you know, I could have retired at that moment.   Yeah, we're done here,  it’s done.

00:20:03 Michelle

So to that point, teachers are really busy. There's a lot of things going on. Like you said, you're making kids to make it more simple, but what are some other specific things teachers can do?

00:20:15 Chef Asata

I think again, with us making these very teacher accessible, one of the things we had to do was get off our farm to school high horse and realize not everybody cooks. Not everybody wants to cook and that includes teachers. So that's a barrier. How do we overcome this barrier? Well, one is we've got a virtual introduction, like an orientation that they can do just a couple of minutes and then two when the kit arrives, it literally answers every question, everything you need, everything you could want is in the kit. It's like open the booklet and begin. If you just go sentence by sentence. Even by having students read the booklet, it will walk you through preparing a simple recipe. In fact, the visuals in the booklet are kids preparing the recipe. It's literally childbirth. So I think with our intentional focus of making these non cooked recipes and cooking recipes and like assembly.  These non-cooked recipes that are step by step that even a child could do it takes away that burden on the teacher. Like you need to be an expert, you need to know how to cook. You need to know about nutrition. You need to know about anything. It's all explained. It's all there.  And I think that that has been the biggest hurdle to clear as far as making it accessible for teachers.

00:21:48 Michelle

I love that some of our, you know, observational studies and things have also shown that when you know when youth and adults grow and learn together, it's so powerful. You know, I think as a parent, Erin, you mentioned that but as a parent and an educator, you know there's this, this internal sense I have of like, what I'm supposed to know?  And then you know, you impart experiences or knowledge or something. But I always think like it's so much better when youth and adults grow and learn and explore together.

00:22:11 Chef Asata

Right.  Been doing some of this early. Farm to school work, but we're going to go way back into like the Obama era, where shifts moved to school, got started. I was working in or volunteering at my kids’ school with another local chef, Michael Deal, and we'd come out and we do these things. Sometimes we use beets, sometimes we'd have mushrooms. And these are challenging, quote UN quote, challenging foods supposedly for young people. Inevitably, there's always an adult in the room, a teacher, a pair of somebody who's like, this is the first time I've ever had it and I like it and the kids are making. They're like, how did you get to your big age because, you know, all teachers are like 1000 years old in their eyes.  How did you get to your big age and you never had a mushroom?  But the bravery of a teacher to say I've never had these. This is like an admission of humanity, you know, in front of 35 kids, 45 kids cause they usually collapse the classrooms and the kids were late, like, oh, wow, we're doing this together. And I like it, too. And it's just it's just something really lind of human where a teacher gets to take off her official hat and just be a person with their kids, which they do in the classroom all the time. And that's just another moment of bonding brings everyone together. There's a couple of things we have to do to continue living, breathing, drinking water, eating. You know what I mean? Like, it's just like however you feel about it. Whatever you think about it. Whatever.  Politics get assigned to it, it still has to happen. So what a great tool to bring people together. It always has, and it always will. But on top of that, it's the perfect medium to find continuity between curricular silos. It doesn't really work to teach math in a silo if you can't make math real. I just made because I have a sourdough starter, so I have to bake every day now. I didn't realize that, but I just made blueberry muffins and bread and all the stuff with my kid, she's 7.  I don't know. I forgot she's going into third grade, but with my, with my daughter. And it's all mixed, and she's just in here scooping and measuring, scooping and measuring, you know, now it's real now a fraction makes sense. It was 1 / 2, but now it's half. Ohh, I get it.  It's totally different understanding of fractions. Had someone taught me fractions that way back in 1900s? It would have been a whole lot worse since and I would have struggled a lot less.

00:24:47 Rick

Yeah, we've we found not only that, but I think food is the great equalizer. I think it brings. people together, it teaches us about cultures. It, you know, family. It's just, you know, when you get into food, it's such a great opportunity for learning and especially like what we're talking about where your food comes from and stuff, it's just it's wonderful.

.

00:25:10 Chef Asata

I love that and our kids too. There's like a map of Georgia for the Georgia kids, and you can see this is exactly the farm. There's a picture of the farmer.  This is from Georgia, you're here. Your food came from here. Look at that. 

00:25:22 Michelle

Erin, you mentioned that you were expanding into four different states. Are you going to be continuing this similar program or are you doing something different?

00:25:31 Erin Croom

Thanks for asking. We actually are working on a brand new program called Veggie Ready and I'm really excited about this because the vision is a real big focus on four and five year olds and helping them become veggie ready by the time they get to 1st grade. So what that means is it's a 5 month program that teachers can lead in preschools, pre-K programs or, you know, even kindergarten. And it introduces kids to for new vegetables and how to make their own for healthy vegetable based snacks that they can make in the classroom and they can bring it home and learn how to make. And it's also teaching them how to become adventurous eaters. So teachers are trained to do this program, to lead it, and the kids get certified and becoming veggie ready so teachers become veggie ready certified and we're really excited about launching this and not just Georgia, but with, you know, four different states. So yeah, the call to action like definitely check us. Check out the program at small Bites.club/veggie. And if you can't do it, I my, you know, call to action for teachers or parents is, you know, think about doing something easy with kids around food. You don't even have to make a recipe. Just put a sweet potato in a bag and have kids feel around and you know, explore what it feels like or, you know, guess what might be in there or, you know, grow something simple out in your garden. Or go to the grocery store and look at different fruits and vegetables together and kind of think, talk about, you know, what they might taste like or where they might have grown so food education doesn't have to be hard, but it can be really fun and it can make such a big impact on small kids for the rest of their lives.

00:27:28 Chef Asata

Yeah, and food exposure isn't always eating the food. I would love for parents and teachers, but especially parents, to know it takes so many years of exposure. Sometimes, depending on the child, before they're willing to try and eat something. Aren't my stepsons pushing 30. But I remember when broccoli just looking at it made his stomach turn like to try and force him to eat it. The kid would literally rich. He's just fine now. Like, that's something he had to grow through and it just took time. So when your kids are, you know, and I get it, I'm a parent. I have three kids, which is why I can't remember the birthdays and the five total. But the, you know, come in the kitchen and just stir this rice or measure this rice that has to go into the pot and stir it for me. That's it. That's an exposure. You know, there's times you want to get in another grocery store. You don't want to bring your entourage because they're going to cost you 50 more bucks just by being there in the grocery store to get it. But there are times when I can have one or two kids. We're going to the grocery store. It's like, hey, can you measure out a pound of green beans? Can you find the black beans with the lowest price? That's food exposure? Yeah.

00:28:32 Rick

Well, thanks for that.

00:28:32 Chef Asata

Don't eat when you’re not hungry. That's a really good message. 

00:28:38 Rick

Thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate you having you here.

00:28:44 Michelle

And thank you are amazing. Farm to school podcast was written, directed and produced by Rick Sherman. Michelle Markstein with production support from The Amazing Leanne locker. Thank you, Leanne, and was made possible by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

00:29:00 Rick

The content and ideas on the farm to school podcast does not necessarily reflect.

00:29:05 Rick

The opinions of Oregon State University, Oregon Department of Education and the United States Department of Agriculture, the USDA, Oregon Department of Education and Oregon State University are equal opportunity providers and employers.

00:29:20 Michelle

Do you want to learn more about Farm to school? Check out this episode. Other episode show notes and much more.  Get in touch with us by Googling Up Farm to school. Podcast, OSU.

00:29:30 Rick

We would love to hear from you. Stop by the website Michelle just mentioned to say hello or give us an idea please for a future podcast.

00:29:37 Michelle

Yeah, we'd really love to hear from you. And thanks again, Chef, Asada and Erin, we really appreciate you sharing your story.

00:29:44 Rick

See you next time, everybody. Alright, bye bye.

00:29:45 Erin Croom

Thanks for having us.