In May of the 2024-2025 school year, students may have walked into the HBHS cafeteria to find QR codes on the tables inviting them to follow “Sau41 lunch,” the  Instagram account for the cafeterias at the Hollis-Brookline schools. Upon following it, they saw school lunches, the cafeteria staff and even their fellow students starring in posts about nutrition and what was for lunch at the HB schools that week. The new advertisement for the account came in conjunction with a new purpose for it: an inter-school competition based on who could post the most. 

The account was started by Amy Cassidy, the director of food services in SAU41, to get more of a public-facing presence for the school kitchens. Their message is portrayed in the accounts’ bio section: “Serving nutritious meals and snacks to the great students of the Hollis Brookline schools! We love what we do!” 

Terri Bair, the assistant director of food services who works at HBHS, works closely with Cassidy and is the one who uploads the posts created by staff in the cafeteria. She echoed this mission, saying that the main idea of the account is “to show that we have good food here and that we’re having fun.”

Initially, the posts were created by a school here and there, showcasing food or possibly cafeteria staff. But towards the end of the year, the accounts’ followers saw an increase in creative videos and pictures of staff and students. This was due to the competition created in order to get all six of the school kitchens (RMMS, HPS, CSDA, HUES, HBMS and HBHS) across the district more involved in posting on the account. 

During the month of May, the kitchens at each school competed to make the best posts on Instagram, based on a point system. Each post got one point for posting, one point for a caption, and then additional points for things like creativity and showing a person.

Megan King, head cook at HBHS, found that this drove the uptick in posting for the schools, with most of the schools posting every day and some posting multiple times a day. “To me it was like, okay, we post every day, we get a point, at least a point, so we tried to be creative,” she said.

Creativity did increase as the month went on. Some posts consisted only of a picture of the day’s lunch and a caption about what it was, but others went above and beyond the standard lunch post. On May 4, widely known as Star Wars Day due to the play on words of “May the fourth be with you”, the HBHS cafeteria posted an entire cinemagraphic video of one of the cafeteria staff decked out in a Darth Vader costume, saying (in a traditional Darth Vader rasp) “May the fourth be with you. We hope you enjoyed your spring vacation. Don’t forget to visit the HBHS kitchen to enjoy special meals made to commemorate special occasions and people throughout the coming month. We look forward to feeding you.”

Other special posts included staff at HUES wearing sombreros and holding trays with a special enchilada meal, and a ‘take me out to the ball game’ themed skit at HBHS for hot dog day.

The inclusion of students in posts also increased throughout the month. Students were featured in posts trying a new type of salad and getting a sticker (making it a ‘try-day’) or doing the chicken dance on chicken patty sandwich day. Whilst this earned the post an extra point, King said that it also increased overall engagement. 

“I think as we went in the month we saw what people responded to. The #1 post actually had the kids in it,” she said, “So if you look at all our posts in May of last year, you’ll see we incorporated the students more and more. That seemed to get the most likes, so we’re like ‘okay people want to see themselves,’ So we just had to make sure you guys could be in it.” 

Posts from each cafeteria were identified by a marker with the school’s name on the image. At the end of May, the points were tallied up, and two schools were declared winners: HBHS and RMMS. CSDA and HPS were declared the runners-up.  The prizes included a golden tree statue with gift cards for the staff and a poster board decorated with bows proclaiming the win. 

In addition to the competition, there were also posts highlighting staff across all six schools, with captions about how long they had worked in the cafeteria, their favorite meal to serve, and what they enjoyed doing outside of work. This was mainly done by the SAU41 food service directors, a break from the fun videos and pictures posted by the cafeteria staff. 

Although it was lots of fun for all, it did produce extra work for staff. Terri Bair said she would often have to post things outside of school due to the lack of internet connection in the cafeteria. Megan King reflected on the stress it added to a regular work day in the cafeteria: “We pretty much are straight out all the time– I usually don’t sit down until 1. So that was pretty much before every meal, we were like, okay, we have to spend five minutes, ten minutes making the clips. People did it outside of their time here to do it, to put the music to it.”

The competition served its main purpose last year, to get the kitchens more engaged in posting. This year, posting has generally returned to normal, with schools uploading closer to a few times a week where it fits into their busy schedule. There is a possibility of another competition this year just for fun, although it may be shorter than a month to put less strain on the kitchens. Still, the HBHS kitchen is game. 

“Oh, we’ll do it,” King said, “We’re very competitive. We want to win.”