The father-son team of Frank and Craig Kohler at SchoolMenu.com is taking a stance against childhood obesity, making themselves an active player in doing something for children throughout the U.S. and giving parents the tools to in turn empower themselves. 
The Kohlers created SchoolMenu.com almost by accident. Frank led the charge on turning the side of milk cartons in to an ad medium in schools 20 years ago, working with Warner Brothers to share kid-friendly messages like saving the environment. That led to learning about the multi-million dollar business that is school food service, and thus begun their school menu service 15 years ago. They had an audience of four million elementary school children who received their “Tooned-In” school menu each month, which in addition to the menu included nutritional games, puzzles, and advertisements from the entertainment industry (for instance Shrek or Harry Potter). Then to complement the printed menu, Craig Kohler tells us that they created the dot-com part of the business as an “ancillary site that was kid-focused with games and puzzles.”
It’s only recently that they stopped printing the menus and started publishing them exclusively online at SchoolMenu.com, a move Craig says was due to “a combination of the decline in print advertising and the increased cost of printing and shipping.” He also adds that the site moved away from being kid-centric and instead more focused on meeting the needs of moms.
Simply put, SchoolMenu.com is a free online resource for schools and parents to share and have as much information about the cafeteria menu as possible. Schools can publish their menus on SchoolMenu.com, and parents can view the menus and their related nutritional information, all at no cost. (more…)
