Nutritious Deliveries: LPS employees help thousands of students with food distribution

October 16, 2025

As soon as Steve Harper pulls up to schools on the north side of Lincoln every morning, he starts a process that leads to sunny smiles in local lunchrooms.
 
Harper is one of 16 Nutrition Services Distribution Center (NSDC) employees who deliver food, milk and supplies to 60 Lincoln Public Schools locations. They ensure that more than 40,000 LPS students eat nutritious meals in their elementary, middle and high school cafeterias every day. They process full semis of incoming food products, fill daily orders from each school and ferry the important merchandise to buildings across Lincoln.

 
Harper’s sunrise delivery schedule begins at Northeast High School’s central kitchen and continues at Huntington, Pershing, Norwood Park, Kahoa, Brownell and Riley elementary buildings. The 13-year LPS employee said it is a good feeling to visit each school with valuable cargo for children.
 
“When you get a truckload of food, sometimes it hits you, ‘You know, you’re delivering all this food for thousands of kids,’” Harper said. “When you’re delivering to the kitchens, it hits you once in a while that what you’re doing is rewarding.”
 
Roland Meirose has worked at LPS for 13 years and supervises the NSDC’s operations. He leads a team that delivers food for 4.3 million lunch meals, 1.5 million breakfast meals and 208,000 snacks during the academic year. The group uses eight cargo trucks with lift gates, three cargo trucks with ramps, six milk delivery trucks and one delivery van to accomplish the mission.
 
“It’s a great job, and we’ve got good people here,” Meirose said. “That’s the best part. We have really good people who work hard and want to help others.”
 
The NSDC buys bulk items such as potatoes, pizza, beef and chicken from a variety of food companies. They also purchase truckloads of food products such as mandarin oranges, pineapple tidbits, pears, peaches, green beans, spaghetti sauce, refried beans, brown rice, frozen strawberry cups, frozen vegetables and oven fries. One large row of shelves in the NSDC’s warehouse is dedicated solely to applesauce, and other sections feature multiple boxes of ketchup, barbecue sauce, frozen juice and mixed fruit.
 
NSDC employee Dan Kopf works in the warehouse’s freezer during the afternoon portion of his job. He pulls orders from each school off the three levels of shelves with a forklift, then places each container on pallets that are staged for the next day. The boxes are marked to confirm their destination before heading out the following morning.
 
Kopf also transports food to more than 20 schools throughout his week. His morning grocery routes begin at 6:15 a.m. and take approximately two hours to complete.
 
“Knowing you’re getting food out for the kids of the city of Lincoln feels good,” Kopf said. “Knowing the kitchens will be preparing it for them makes it pretty worthwhile.”

 
Fourteen-year veteran Will Juilfs brings milk to 17 schools across Lincoln each day. His morning schedule runs from 6:30-10:10 a.m. and the afternoon route lasts from 11:55 a.m.-1:10 p.m. He said the job’s variety and his NSDC co-workers are two reasons why he enjoys his position.
 
“I come from a small town, so it’s like our own little community here in the building,” Juilfs said. “Everybody gets along great. Everybody’s willing to pitch in and help get the job done at the end of the day. It’s really nice.”
 
That type of teamwork is evident when Harper and seven other drivers begin their days on central kitchen routes. They load trucks at the NSDC warehouse with dry and frozen goods and visit one of the eight LPS central kitchens. The central kitchens – which process and prepare many food products – are located at Southwest, Northwest, North Star, Northeast and Standing Bear high schools and Lux, Schoo and Moore middle schools.
 
Each driver then loads carts from the central kitchen onto their trucks for distribution. They drop off the grocery carts at schools that have smaller kitchens by 9 a.m. Kitchen workers can then prepare and cook the orders for hundreds of students at their local buildings.
 
“It’s a very task-driven day, because we have to be at every school at a certain time to get their meals there,” Meirose said. “Our guys are really good about it. They care about what they’re doing.”
 
Incoming deliveries to the warehouse change more often. The NSDC typically receives four full semis of food every Wednesday and one to three semis on other days. Meirose said Wednesdays are the busiest day for LPS because food companies deliver large orders to restaurants on Thursdays and Fridays for the upcoming weekend.
 
Meirose said the NSDC warehouse has paid many dividends since it was completed in June 2018. The expansive dock allows semis and large trucks to unload products at a central location rather than visiting schools that may be on narrower streets. There is also space for LPS crews to have trucks ready to go for their own daily deliveries.

 
During one morning at Huntington, Harper wheeled a cart off his truck and took it through a small side door into the kitchen. He placed it next to shelves of plastic trays, said good morning to a kitchen worker and smiled as he headed outside for his next stop.
 
“This really is a good job,” Harper said. “Being able to work for the schools and help kids is something that I really enjoy.”
 
Nutrition Services staff members create millions of healthy meals for LPS students every year. Learn more about the department on our website at home.lps.org/ns.
 
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