Goodbye, Children’s Choice. Hello, Choicelunch!
If you’ve visited choicelunch.wpengine.com before, you’re probably noticing that the site looks different. WAY different. The hallmark candy apple red is gone, with the colors looking more “Granny Smith” than “Red Delicious”. And the scrawled “Children’s Choice” has been replaced with one word: Choicelunch.
I’ve been on the other side as a customer, and I know what’s probably going through you’re head – “Why the name change? Did they get bought? There’s gotta be an ownership change. Wow…that site must have taken a long time to build. Are they crazy? Who’s investing time and money in something like that in this economy? I wonder what the heck is going on over there!” Well, that’s what I’m here to tell you.
Let me first tell you that we’re the same people you’ve dealt with for years. No ownership change, no sellout…just a dedicated company of family and friends who are insanely passionate about feeding your kids well. But for the past couple of years, we’ve heard the same thing over and over from the parents we’ve had the pleasure of talking with and exchanging ideas in person – “Wow, you guys really do all that? I never knew!” It was becoming more and more evident that we needed a better way to get our message out to our customers and friends than our site allowed.
While our website has always been easy to use, the content always seemed a bit static and not fully representative of the amount of passion, love, and diligence we put into preparing your children’s meals from the best ingredients. So over a year ago, I put the wheels in motion to change the way we get our message out and communicate with our customers and communities at large.
The process started by talking with some of you, and finding out what you love about us, what we could do better, and what we were doing that you didn’t know about. We wanted to know what was important to you, and what we may have been spending time on and emphasizing that just didn’t resonate with you. Then we talked to your kids. We did taste panels and focus groups, asking what was important to them, and how they felt about us. We asked them about our food, our ingredients, what “green” means to them, how they feel about food, what they think of our name. We had them draw pictures of what healthy looks like to them and explain it. We did everything short of holding up pictures of black ink blobs and asking them what they saw.
The results were fascinating. Our parents loved what we were doing, but needed an easier way to stay informed. Our kids loved the food, but wanted to be more involved in the process. They wanted their voice heard, and wanted to feel like they were partners in bringing awesome lunches to their school. But one of the key take-aways was this – they don’t particularly care for being referred to as “children”. What can I say? They grow up fast.
Fast forward to today. What you see here is the result of over a year’s worth of self-discovery, preparation, passion, and a ton of hard work. We’re now Choicelunch (which should be easy to remember because you had to type it to get here anyway). The apple logo remains largely unchanged, but our colors have been changed to better reflect our commitment to sustainability, both in our ingredient sourcing and our packaging. But mostly, we’ve spent countless hours on our content – telling you our story, what we stand for, how we do things, the foods we prepare with love and how they’re made, and, plain and simply, what makes us the best school lunch program on the planet.
So dive in, poke around, and check out everything that Choicelunch has to offer. We think you’ll love what you find. And as always, talk to us! Do you like the new site? Anything else you’d like to see? What’dya think? Good, bad or indifferent – give us your feedback. We thrive on it!
Enjoy the site, and welcome to the new Choicelunch!
Justin Gagnon, CEO
