MINNEAPOLIS — The lunch menu on March 7 at Minneapolis Public Schools included beef and cheddar sandwiches from BAMF Meats and plant-based sloppy joes from Deeply Rooted — both produced in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. 

Bertrand Weber, director for Minneapolis Public School Culinary and Nutrition Services, said once a month for the last 10 years, the school district celebrates “Minnesota Thursdays” over the lunch hour. Everything from entrees to desserts are sourced from around a 200-mile radius outside of the Twin Cities, Weber said.

“It’s a celebration of local harvest, and we try to really showcase those items to our kids,” Weber said. “The acceptance is different based on the grade level, but they always look forward to it on a regular basis.”

On March 7, the menu consisted of a beef and cheddar sandwich from BAMF Meats in Cannon Falls with cheese from Bongards in Perham; a plant-based sloppy joe from Deeply Rooted in Cannon Falls; sweet potato JoJo from Fifth Season Cooperative in Viroqua, Wisconsin; cole slaw from Driftless Organics in Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin; and a freezer pop from JonnyPops in Elk River.

The two entrees came from Kayla and Wade Beyer, who were on hand March 7 to enjoy the school lunch inside of Franklin Middle School in north Minneapolis.

“Today was awesome,” Kayla Beyer said after the lunch. “It really was like the pinnacle of the story we’re trying to share. It’s not all about just eating meat or all about eating a plant-based diet fully — it’s about having better choices and making deliberate choices with every meal.”

Wade Beyer is the owner and operator of

BAMF Stock Farms

in Cannon Falls. The calf-to-cow finishing operation runs about 200 head while also raising hogs and crops. Aside from the eight steers worth of roasts he sold to the Minneapolis schools, the farm has sold hamburger to the Pine Island School District, which is about 20 miles outside of Rochester, for about a year.

“It was different, but they did a good job,” Beyer said of eating the food he raised at a cafeteria table inside of Franklin Middle School. “I thought it tasted great.”

He said it can be a challenge for farmers to make the leap to sell to school districts and to know where to start that process.

“If it weren’t for my wife, I probably wouldn’t have done it,” he said. “She’s already familiar with that network.”

Minnesota Grown, which the farm is a member of, is a place for schools to look if they are interested in connecting with local farms, Beyer said.

“Otherwise, just talking to your local schools, and go from there,” Beyer said.

Kayla Beyer is founder and CEO of

Deeply Rooted

, which began around four years ago and provides shelf-stable plant-based crumble in flavors like Italian, Mexican and Korean barbecue. Consumers simply add water to the product, and she said that 4 ounces becomes 1 pound.

“I’m a food industry veteran who was working for big corporate America — big CPG brands — and wanted to start a food company that makes a bigger impact,” said Beyer, a mom of five who grew up on a dairy farm. “I worked in mass manufacturing where I saw how processed food was, and so not only did I want to put a better product on the retail shelf, I wanted to put a better product on my kids’ trays at school.”

Beyer said the way she made the farm-to-school connection with Minneapolis Public Schools was by making a simple phone call to Weber, who told her exactly what the program needed for Deeply Rooted products to be served to students.

The crumble served at Minneapolis schools went through a sodium reduction process to meet USDA standards, which she said made the product taste better in her opinion.

“I tasted my original formula now and it’s salty to me, so it’s a very good change,” she said. “We just lowered the sodium, the salt, and increased the other spices. So it wasn’t a big deal for us to do that, and we did it willingly.”

Beyer said unlike the many plant-based companies that have popped up in the past few years, she said Deeply Rooted has nothing against meat that’s raised on a farm.

“I thought what a great opportunity to change that narrative and bring it from an agricultural perspective that I have had all these years,” she said.

Another reason Beyer was interested in selling Deeply Rooted products to the K-12 market is that it’s much larger than the retail space, she said. In retail, products like hers are targeted towards vegans and vegetarians, which she said the company’s mission doesn’t align with.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a meat company, and there’s nothing wrong with having a plant-based option,” Beyer said. “Let’s make it palatable, so it tastes good, and they actually come back for more.”