In April, students got their taste of salmon wraps, a serving of about 2.5 ounces of sockeye salmon with essentially a taco-flavor that's wrapped in a flour tortilla and prepared by Taco-Loco, an Anchorage business.
"I think it went over pretty well," said Vicky Johnson, cook at McNeil Canyon Elementary School. "All those that tried it seemed to like it."
The school served it with a cream cheese dip and salsa.
"It's a nice choice to have Alaskan salmon used," Johnson said. "I was really excited about that. I hope to see it again next year."
Rave reviews also came from Paul Banks Elementary School.
"They ate it pretty well," said Principal Benny Abraham. "I think it's a good move, a good healthy choice for them."
KPBSD is the second Alaska school district to introduce the product, following Mat-Su, who added the salmon wrap it to its menu in March.
"We tested the product with students at Redoubt Elementary School in the fall," Dean Hamburg, KPBSD's director of Student Nutrition Services, said of steps taken to bring the salmon product to the peninsula. "Following that success, we introduced it district wide (April 17)."
Hamburg said the salmon wrap is liked most by elementary and middle-school students.
It will probably be rotated through next year's menu about once every four or five weeks.
"The cost is a little higher than other entre items, meaning it's about 78 cents for the Taco-Loco entre, which is about nine cents higher than other entrees," Hamburg said. "But we work with what we menu with the product that day so we can keep the total tray count at a limited food cost expense."
On a typical food service tray, the average revenue for a school lunch for kindergarten through eighth grade is about $3.60, with 53 percent going to labor and the balance for food.
"That gives about $1.80 to operate with for all the food that goes onto a lunch tray," Hamburg said. "It's a difficult challenge, especially with the food prices coming this fall."
Besides the district's enthusiasm for having an Alaska-based salmon product, there are the nutritional benefits salmon provides "with the Omega oils and protein that you can really only get from Alaska salmon," Hamburg said.
Adam Galindo, who, with his sister, Anabel, owns and operates Taco-Loco, said he was looking for a way to add nutritional value to the company's tortillas, when they hit upon the salmon-wrap idea.
"Originally, I was looking at a tortilla with Omega-6 and -3 added, and I was thinking of salmon oil. That led us down the road to a ready-to-eat product and that led us to experiment with the wrap craze," he said.
From there, the idea began to take shape with sockeye salmon provided by Copper River Seafoods.
"We went to individual school district last year with prototypes, gathered feedback, revamped and tweaked (the idea)," Galindo said. "We had to make it generic as far as spiciness."
Interestingly, feedback in its truest form came from younger test groups.
"It's kind of funny, but we found that the little ones are your most honest ones," Galindo said.
"They actually liked it much spicier than high school kids and we would have thought it would be just the opposite."
Now with two school districts to their credit and a third Fairbanks also considering the salmon wrap, Taco-Loco also is spreading to other markets, including Target and Wal-Mart. Safeway will begin selling them this week.
"It's just a little different, an actual eight-ounce, bigger version of it in a retail package," Galindo said of the grocery story variety.
Providence hospitals will launch the wrap May 6. And Alaska Native Medical Center has its eye on how well that goes before deciding whether to include it in the ANMC menu.
"This is definitely different," Galindo said of the expanding market his company has found, riding on the current of Alaska salmon.
"It's extremely challenging. There's a lot more FDA and USDA guidelines for us to follow. It's a big learning curve."
Taco-Loco began in 1974, with Galindo's parents, Cecilia and Adam Galindo Sr. Its 18 employees produce 900 dozen tortillas an hour, five days a week, at its Anchorage headquarters.
"We've outgrown this facility," Galindo said.
"Actually, we've looked at other cities in the state, but it's a matter of economics, as far as land values right now Gas, whole wheat flour prices are going up. We're just stuck here until something changes in the near future."
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Homer Alaska - Seawatch -
Story last updated at
8:47 PM on
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Wild Alaska salmon becomes part of school district's lunch menu
By McKibben Jackinsky
Staff writer
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