Between May and June 2026, Mandala Foods Pvt. Ltd. a Nepal-based circular food solutions company that turns surplus and cosmetically imperfect fruit into ready-to-use ingredients piloted a new approach to school nutrition in Banke District. Working with iDE Nepal, the Bheri Environmental Excellence Group (BEE-Group), and two rural municipalities, the team set out to answer a simple but important question: could fruit-based products be woven into Nepal's existing School Mid-Day Meal (MDM) system without new equipment, extra training, or a bigger budget?
The pilot ran at two contrasting schools — Bhagwati Secondary School, with a single-cook kitchen and no refrigeration, and Siddheshwor Secondary School, with a dedicated three-person canteen team. Four fruit-enriched menus were developed, each built around a simple rule: use a Mandala Foods product to upgrade an existing dish, stay within Nepal's NPR 20 per-student MDM allocation, and require no new kitchen equipment.
Over seven weeks, the two schools delivered 20 feeding sessions and 8,767 total servings. Both kitchens adapted quickly — prep times stayed within normal MDM cooking windows, and by the later weeks, cooks at both schools were running sessions independently. Plate waste stayed close to zero throughout, a strong sign that students weren't just accepting the new menus but genuinely enjoying them.
The nutritional results were the pilot's headline finding. Conventional MDM meals typically cover just 1–2 food groups. The flagship fruit-enriched menu reached 4 — spanning grains, pulses, nuts and seeds, and fruit — without exceeding the existing budget. A cost-effectiveness analysis went a step further, showing that on a cost-per-dietary-diversity-unit basis, the fruit-based haluwa (NPR 4.35 per unit) actually outperformed both a common low-cost snack and an existing MDM item, meaning it delivered more nutritional value per rupee than what schools already serve.
Looking ahead, Mandala Foods is prioritizing continued integration at Siddheshwor, exploring basic kitchen upgrades (like refrigeration) at Bhagwati, and investigating local sourcing of fruit through municipal agriculture programs. The next step is three to four additional pilots across more varied school contexts, building the evidence base needed for district- and eventually national-level scale-up.