About the same time husband and wife team Glenn and Jennifer Huggins launched Little’s Lunches, their nutritional meal preparation and delivery service for children, they took in two foster boys. “When we first got the foster kids, one of them only ate McDonald's cheeseburgers. That's all that he would eat,” Chef Glenn says. “Now he eats raw oysters, grilled oysters, and he'll eat anything that you give him. And that's just because we just we tried to give him everything.” They now have a third child whose expanded food choices include olives and blue cheese. Chef Glenn says that a lot of parents get stuck in the rut of allowing their children to dictate whatever they want to eat. “That’s not necessarily the best thing,” he says. “We try to expand their palates—”
“Slow-ly,” Jennifer adds. They both agree.
Little’s Lunches & Kitchen launched in Sept. 2019. The Huggins’ concept to provide nutritious, affordable, and convenient meals to children at school and home was a perfect fit that combined Jennifer’s extensive background in child and family development and Chef Glenn’s experience as a classically trained French chef from Le Cordon Bleu. “To get the children to eat was a huge topic of
conversation amongst the parents,” Jennifer says, reflecting upon her experience working closely with youngsters as a preschool director. Glenn suggested that they fill the need to provide education and serve the children quality meals.
Serving children locally was the impetus for the business model, which grew into a storefront operation, with a full commercial kitchen and a full team that includes cooks that work under Chef Glenn, a marketing team, school staff, and delivery drivers that have had background checks. “All of our staff is certified and trained,” Jennifer says.
Little’s Lunches now contracts with 13 private schools in Bryan College Station, serving grades K through 12 and preschools, that hire the company as a third-party entity to handle all of their food service needs. “We provide hundreds of meals a day for an average of 2,000 meals a week,” Chef Glenn says. “We prep the meals from scratch in the morning, and our staff goes on to serve a full lunch service,” Jennifer says. “Then we do have a lot of parents in our program whose schools don't offer our lunches because they already offer food, or they have other options, but want our food. So they can sign up individually, and then we still deliver to them independently at their schools.”
In addition to school meals, Little’s Lunches also provides family-style dinners. “We've had a lot of people coming in, asking Chef Glenn to prepare meals for their loved ones, as opposed to take out and other options,” Jennifer says. “Since we were already meeting all the standards in the kitchen for the Texas Agricultural Commission, we launched that in January, with a high demand for people
specifically wanting nutritious meals for seniors.” She adds, “We are held to a higher standard for health and sanitization because we serve a highly susceptible population — so seniors and kids.”
“It’s the same concept,” Chef Glenn says. “Kids are really picky, so are seniors. We try to give them stuff that they already know and they've eaten their whole life.”
Little’s Lunches also partners with Caprock Hospital in Bryan. “We serve all their patients,” Jennifer says. “Their dieticians have gone through our menu and have a dietary recommendation through our food that they give to their customers and their patients as well.”
Prepared meals can pre-ordered through the Little’s Lunches website and are available fresh or frozen, ready to heat and eat. Entrees from the full menu include Chicken Parmesan, meatloaf, chicken pot pie, King Ranch chicken, baked spaghetti, and more. Prices range from $14.50 for two servings, $28 for four servings, to $42 for six servings. Full menu orders that are placed by 1 p.m. can be available for delivery (two-order minimum) or same-day pickup between 4 and 5:30 p.m. Chef specials are posted on Mondays on the BCS Meals and Deals Facebook page and are available all week, or until supplies run out.
“We do offer vegan and gluten-free options,” Jennifer says, and they are also willing to make accommodations, if possible, for dietary recommendations. “We have a lot of seniors come in. They'll say it needs to be low sodium, it needs to be within so many calories, things like that, and so we will meet those needs, if possible,” she says. “But we are not dieticians.”
Little’s Lunches partners with BCS Together, John’s Boys, and Unlimited Potential Brazos Valley (UP) to provide free dinners at placement for the foster parents in Brazos County to get them through their first couple of difficult, transitional nights. “As foster parents, we learned from day one that the hardest thing was dinners — the first couple of weeks for us, adjusting from no children to multiple children,
especially,” Jennifer says. We want foster parents to know that they’re not alone, she says. “They can come and share their stories, too, if they want to, or just grab a quick dinner on us.”
In August, Chef Glenn plans on launching a life-skills cooking class for the kids who age out of foster system. “I want to teach them how to make a budget, and to go and shop, and be able to utilize those things in multiple capacities, so they can go and spend $30 to make three, four meals out of that.”
With COVID restrictions beginning to lift, the Hugginses anticipate being back in the schools, providing hands-on learning. “Part of child nutrition is getting the children and the parents onboard, and that's 2 years old all the way through high school,” Jennifer says. “The more we're on campus and encouraging that and having fun with them and educating them — and it's not a mom and dad saying it! — the better chances you have of really expanding their palates and getting them to have a solid foundation of well-balanced nutrition.”
LittlesLunches.com
