A new regional kitchen, set to open in late 2027, is expected to largely boost the amount of locally sourced ingredients used in school meals across the state Department of Education.
The hopes, goals and logistics of the kitchen were a focus at the first Nourishing Hawaiʻi’s Future food summit on July 27. Hosted by the Hawaiʻi Agriculture Foundation, the event invited hundreds of food industry leaders, state lawmakers, and department heads to discuss the future of food service and security across the state.
The state DOE has a goal of hitting 30% locally sourced ingredients in school meals by 2030, mandated by a 2021 law. As of last November, the department reported about 7% of its food budget was spent on local ingredients, while the rest was imported.
Sean Tajima, the assistant superintendent at the department’s Office of Campus Operations and Support, said the regional kitchen is “on track” to make up the gap over the next four years.
“We expect a significant spike when the kitchen opens because it’ll be a hub for farmers and distributors to deliver larger volumes of local food to one central location, instead of delivering small batches to individual schools,” Tajima told HPR. “Although the gains have been relatively small up to now, we plan to make more gains this coming school year, even before the kitchen opens.”
The DOE serves more than 100,000 meals every school day and, at its full capacity, the regional kitchen is expected to produce about 60,000 meals daily, serving 85 schools across central and leeward Oʻahu.
Phase 1 of operations is expected to start in late 2027, which will serve five schools in the Leilehua Complex Area and will add an additional four to five schools each quarter that follows.
Experience from the continental U.S.
The summit also invited food service leaders from the continental U.S. who have experience with implementing and adjusting to centralized kitchens within their own school districts.
Garey Joaquim, the food service manager at Orange County Public Schools in Florida, said the kitchen has boosted student participation in school meals because it’s allowed a larger variety of foods to be offered. He also emphasized the need for increased participation in Hawaiʻi specifically, pointing to the food insecurity rate among keiki, which stands around 34%, according to a 2025 report from the Hawaiʻi Foodbank.
“One in every three of your kids aren't sure where their next meal is coming from,” Joaquim said. “We want to make a safe place and have meals that the kids are going to enjoy, that are going to run home and tell their parents, ‘Hey, this is fantastic, and the farm is right down the street.’”
An economic opportunity
Beyond the nutritional benefits that local food sourcing can provide kids, Tajima noted that the kitchen can serve as an economic opportunity for Hawaiʻi, keeping money local and strengthening the state’s workforce.
“This’ll benefit everybody — it's going to keep a lot more money in the state of Hawaiʻi, it'll boost local agriculture, and it's definitely going to benefit our schools and our students because it'll provide more local products, which means fresher, healthier meals for our kids,” he said.
Hawaiʻi has roughly 6,500 farms, most of which are small farms that operate on 50 acres or fewer. Many leaders within the centralized kitchen said it could serve as an opportunity for small and mid-sized farmers to secure a stable market.
Advocates at the summit described it as a mutual win, as farmers would have a dependable buyer, and the kitchen would be able to consistently rely on local sourcing.
“If we start to ask ourselves: what are we dependent on that continuously is imported, and how can we produce that here, and what does it take to produce that here?” asked Deputy Director of the state’s Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism Dane Wicker.
“That's where we start to be more resilient. We get off of the need to be dependent on outside sourcing.”
Wicker also noted that Hawaiʻi farmers have to constantly battle things like weather, invasive species, and human error, which could all contribute to a failed or missed crop.
“But if the state, through the regional kitchen, can commit to saying, ʻOK, your next growing season, I need X amount of pounds of a certain commodity,' and if the farmer is able to hit that, great,” Wicker said. “But if not, then we just go back to the standard process of importing in. But this is where we get that flexibility.”
The DOE broke ground on the $35 million Whitmore Village kitchen late last year and operations are expected to begin in fall 2027.
