Lunch Box News

Online food delivery companies sprouting up in leading cities to cater for hungry mid-day office workers

A click of a smartphone button has revolutionized the one-hour lunch break and turned those snaking lines of customers outside city restaurants into a distant memory.

With the rise of online food delivery companies, customers are now surrounded by an array of options that have triggered a boom in the online-to offline, or O2O, business.

Even a high-profile home-cooking service, Shaofanfan, has moved into the marketplace to grab a lucrative slice of the pie by morphing into Taste Bud.

"Compared to the home-cooking service, making and delivering lunch boxes will place us in a more sizeable market," Zhang Zhijian, who founded Shaofanfan in December 2014 before it was transformed into Taste Bud last month, said

"Even though Taste Bud covers a small area in Shanghai and the profit for each lunch box is limited, we can receive 1,000 orders every day. And that amount will increase in future," he added without disclosing detailed financial figures. Read more...

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Lunch break at school is the time each day when kids grab a bite to eat and relax with friends. School lunch has been around for decades, but has dramatically changed over the past few years.

"They're getting a much better meal than in the past," said Matt Dwyer, Director of Food Services with Guadalupe Union School District.

No longer are students being served greasy pizza and tater tots. Instead, school lunch nutrition is vastly improved.

Each school meal must now offer five featured components of fruits, vegetables, meats, grains, milk.

Each student much take at least three of those components at lunch, two at breakfast.

"Over the course of a week, you have a meat target, then you have your grain target, then you have your fruit and vegetable target and then you have your milk," said Dwyer.

During the week, meals must offer nine to 10 ounces of meat, eight to 10 ounces of grain, half of cup of fruit per day, 3/4 of a cup of vegetables per day and milk. Read more...

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Tea consumption is a Burmese way of life.

Instead of bars, tea houses serve as the social gathering place of Myanmar people; and instead of rowdy frat boys, peaceful Buddhist monks sit and enjoy warm cups of brew.

Every neighborhood has at least one of these corner shops, and they are easily recognizable by the small plastic tables and stools that spill out on the street. A few famous tea shops are open 24 hours — they're a popular place to go when hungry.

The importance of tea in Myanmar tradition has a rich history. During pagoda or nat festivals, people seek favor from the spirits to appease creatures from the other realm, including Belu, which are ogres and Nats, Myanmar spirits who were once humans who have suffered sudden and unfair deaths.

Villagers organize a donation of a whole coconut, with banana branches placed around the coconut, and tea leaves in the outer circles. The tea leaf offering is done to prevent disruption to the festivities. Read more...

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The scene: It turns out you can go back again — back to school. Quirky Lunchbox Eats in Memphis has a schoolhouse theme, as evoked in its name. The parking lot sports a basketball hoop and mural on the brick wall. After entering what feels like an old one-room schoolhouse, you are greeted with a sign that says “For an A, Please Seat Yourself.” The stainless steel tables are accessorized with mismatched old elementary school seats — some swivel, some are colored plastic, many are very low. The menu is in a three-hole punched college-ruled notebook, and you place your order by filling out cards at the tables. There are plenty of chalkboards of course — and chalkboard specials — and sandwiches have names like the “School Bully Crawfish Sloppy Joe” and “Honor Roll Burrito.” There are old filing cabinets about, exposed and well-worn brick walls covered with sports posters, some random giant letters on the wall and an old school clock — as well as a large projection TV playing sports.

Despite the theme, Lunchbox Eats is not kitschy, and is more cozy than anything. The menu skews toward soul food, and there is beer and an outside front garden patio, two things typically missing at actual schools. With a huge slate of board games laid out for diners' use, and the TV and beer, it’s an odd combination of family lunch spot and sports bar, and it is only open for lunch, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. It is located a block or two off a main drag, so you need to seek it out, yet it is convenient to the FedEx Forum, the National Civil Rights Museum and downtown Memphis. Read more...

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Get picky kids excited about lunchtime with these creative tips and nutritious meal ideas.

Go Beyond the Basics
While it might be tempting to stick to sandwiches, plain PB&Js can quickly lose their appeal. Instead, experiment with anything from whole-wheat mini bagels to protein-packed kebabs, which will get kids excited about trying new foods, says Janice Newell Bissex, MS, RDN, co-founder of Meal Makeover Moms. Pasta salad keeps well and can be tailored to kids' preferences, while baked whole-grain tortilla chips are fun for scooping up salmon or tuna.

Breakfast for lunch is always popular with kids, says Bissex, who suggests whipping up whole-grain pancakes on Sunday and packing leftovers throughout the week. For an added punch of protein, layer peanut butter between two pancakes. Vary the pancake flavors by trying pumpkin, banana-blueberry, or gingerbread. Read more...

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In just about every major train station in Japan, you’ll find a stand selling boxed lunches called ekiben. A combination of the words eki (“station”) and bento (“boxed lunch”), ekiben serve as a tasty, convenient meal for travelers to dine on as they watch the scenery slip by outside their window.

Given that trains are terrestrial transportation, and that Japan is an island nation, until now you’ve generally had to come to Japan in order to get your hands on authentic station bento. That’s changing soon, though, with the opening of an ekiben stand in a rail station in Paris. Read more...

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Our cool My Little Pony Starshine Lunch Box video with Ken Burns panning. If you grew up in the 80s and 90s, we know you can't help humming along either!

When I first started working in an office full-time, my favorite part of the day was walking around Midtown Manhattan and marveling at the food choices available to me. Within a three-block radius, there were more than 20 eateries from which I could buy breakfast, lunch, or coffee – and for my first few weeks on the job, that’s precisely what I did.

I’d start each day with a pit stop at the nearby Starbucks for a morning latte. At lunchtime, I’d wander into a different deli or to-go cafe and buy whatever tempted me – sometimes soup, sometimes salad, and sometimes both.

After about a month of treating myself to store-bought coffee and prepared lunches, I got my first credit card bill since starting my job, and it was a real eye-opener. I discovered that over the course of just three to four weeks, I’d managed to spend nearly $200 on food and beverages alone.

From that moment on, I changed my ways. Instead of buying lunch every day, I packed my own soup or sandwich and brought it with me to work four days per week. I allowed myself one treat day a week, where I’d purchase something fresh or go out to lunch with coworkers to socialize and commiserate. Read more...

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Bento lunches are great. They give the opportunity for you to pack anything you want. Some people just use leftovers. Others find creative ways to make food look really fun and cute, as is the case with this Mickey Mouse Bento Lunch for Halloween. Here’s how to make it.

LUNCH DETAILS

Mickey Mouse sandwich with ham.
Trail mix candy corn
Green jello slime with mini chocolate chips
Salad with Mickey Tommy tomatoes, RIP mini Babybel, Colby Jack Cheese flower(snack cheese

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