CEDAR FALLS - The red, green and blue lunch trays look like they could belong in any school cafeteria.

The menu, at first glance, mirrors a lot of other school lunches, too. Friday at Malcolm Price Laboratory School is pizza day.

But, this pizza is nothing like the traditional cafeteria meal of yore. These generous servings, topped with either pepperoni or vegetables, all are handmade. The vegetables on the pizza, watermelon slices and pieces of corn on the cob served as side dishes, all were locally grown. Those who don't want pizza are offered a spinach leaf salad topped with red peppers, cucumbers and a hard-boiled egg, again, all bought from Northeast Iowa farmers.

The Price Lab Grassroots Cafe opened this year, but parents, University of Northern Iowa educators and locally grown food expert Rob Stanley have worked for more than a year behind the scenes to make the program viable.

"We had three big goals with this project: serve healthy food, support our local economy and reduce the waste we produced," said Stanley, the school's food service director and owner of Roots Market.

So far, Stanley said the program has been a success. Instead of a pre-packaged, frozen peanut butter sandwich or corn dog, served with apple juice, fruit roll-up and hashbrown triangle, students are now munching on barbecue pork or angus beef sandwiches, paired with fresh canteloupe or apples, and baked zucchini or squash sprinkled with Parmesan cheese and olive oil.

And they are loving it.

"I was really psyched when I found out about our new lunches," said junior Steph Bales. "I haven't eaten meat in four years and we really never had vegetarian options before."

Even the teachers are digging the new meals. Rick Knivsland, a PLS instructor, has worked in the school for eight years. He never ate in the cafeteria until this year. Bridgette Wagoner, the PLS director, said the same thing. Now, she's there almost everyday for breakfast or lunch.

The school also has revamped its breakfast menu to include pancakes, omelets, seven-grain cereals and - on Wednesdays - cinnamon rolls. Stanley said that early morning treat was especially important to him: He's using his grandmother's recipe.

Many parents are overjoyed by the new menus. Christopher Martin, one of the parents who helped bring the cafe to PLS, used to pack a lunch for his two children because he didn't want them consuming the "heat-and-eat institutional food" offered by the school. Now, he is excited to see the menus and said he's heard almost all rave reviews from his kids.

Stanley loves to hear the student feedback, even when it isn't positive. The self-proclaimed "Food Dude" - it seemed more appropriate than lunch lady - often heads out into the cafeteria to chat with students and teachers about their meal. When a Mexican bean dish was given a thumbs down during the first week of school he promptly removed it from his recipe reservoir.

After students are done eating, appropriate leftovers are thrown into a bin separate from the general trash. Those scraps are then hauled outside to a compost machine. Next spring, that compost will be spread on the new school garden. Last year the school kids drank milk from a cardboard carton. Now Hansen's Farm Fresh Dairy milk is poured directly from gallon containers into reusable cups. The school invested in lunch trays instead of using disposables. Farmers bring their stock to the school or Stanley picks it up in reusable containers. The only thing left for the garbage is napkins and wrappers from the a la carte line, which includes fruit leather snacks, organic energy bars, dried fruit and pita chips.

"This is probably the most exciting thing on my desk right now," said Kamyar Enshayan, director of the UNI Center for Energy and Environmental Education. "It all started because of some parents who were unhappy with the lunch selection. It was highly processed and high in sugar and fat. "

Enshayan secured about $60,000 in grant money to pilot the program. Most of that money is used to pay salaries for Stanley and Jacque Bilyeu-Holmes, the cafe's program manager.

Wagoner said the goal is for the lunch program - traditionally contracted out through a food service vendor - to break even each year. On a good year, Wagoner said the school previously lost about $20,000 providing school lunches. During the bad years, they lost between $50,000 and $60,000. She said they could pay for the meals they were serving, but they weren't providing enough lunches to also cover the cost of the management contract.

Stanley, who was hired to develop and implement the program but is not planning to stay on with the school, said his figures show the food service program can be self-sustaining. The person in charge just has to have a flexible menu, take advantage of in-season crops and connect with farmers who sometimes have an overabundance of product.

Wagoner said the food program is also perfect example of the school's new research and dissemination moniker. All of the work put into developing this program, including timelines, cost analysis, and recipes, will be available on the school's Web site later this year. If additional grant money comes in and administrators show interest, he is hoping to help implement similar programs in schools across Northeast Iowa.

"This is what we are supposed to be doing. This program is great for our kids, it's impacting the Iowa economy and we can share how we did it with other schools," Wagoner said.