'We can't learn on an empty stomach': School breakfast program feeling impact of inflation

The School Breakfast Program in Ottawa is dealing with rising food prices and increased demand.

Demand is up and so are the costs for a program that provides thousands of healthy meals to students at schools across Ottawa every day. 

"We can’t learn on an empty stomach and it’s really important that we start the day with a nutritious, healthy breakfast," says Heather Norris, the president and CEO of the Ottawa Network for Education.

Its School Breakfast Program serves 14,500 meals every school day, which is an increase of 1,000 from previous years. Norris says the program is feeling the pinch of high inflation and soaring food costs. 

"While we’re anticipating about a 10 per cent increase in the cost of food this year, inflation we’ve been feeling for the last few years," she says, noting major changes had to be made to the program during the pandemic. 

"We used to be able to purchase bags of milk and pour cups of milk at the school and when we had to switch to the single-serve carton of milk that was a $250,000 increase to our budget for that one item."

The program receives some of its funding from the Breakfast Club of Canada which has itself launched a fundraising campaign to help with rising costs. 

"Capacity to really sustain those programs with three food items per child per day is really at risk," said Judith Barry, the co-founder of the Breakfast Club of Canada which runs about 3,500 nutrition programs across Canada reaching more than 500,000 students. 

She says food and transportation costs have gone up and demand is so high, not everyone will be able to participate this year. 

"We have hundreds of schools that have submitted a request to Breakfast Club of Canada and we won't be able to onboard those schools within our network, it's really impossible to add new programs," she says,

Without more donations or funding, “even for the existing programming we won't be able to sustain them and help them at the level than in the past two years."