Summer is more than halfway over, and school districts around the country are starting to open back up for the new school year. My children are already back in school because we go to a year-round school, where every nine weeks, they get three weeks off plus a few extra weeks around Christmas/New Years and 4th of July. We love it. Our kids really benefit from getting a “brain break” every nine weeks. It’s also great that they’re not out of school long enough to forget what they’ve already learned. Another huge benefit is that we don’t really ever lose that school routine where we have to all do a stressful readjustment.
Jessica Biel has two (possibly unvaccinated) sons with Justin Timberlake. Her older son, Silas, is eight and her younger one, Phineas, is three. School is starting back up soon for Silas, and Jessica gets how stressful back-to-school time can be for parents. She’s been out there doing the “relatable mom” thing while hustling new bento-inspired pre-packed lunches that she teamed up with DoorDash to create in order to help parents during those hectic first few weeks back at school.
Back-to-school season presents plenty of challenges that families just don’t have to think about during the summer. And that’s something Jessica Biel says she’s absolutely experiencing in the ramp-up to her oldest son Silas’s return to class. And one of the most stressful conundrums is figuring out what to pack the 8-year-old for lunch.
“I was just griping to my friends and family and even on my social media, like, ‘What am I going to do about lunches? How am I going to handle this?’” admits Biel. “It’s so chaotic, the first couple of weeks of school, and it’s stressful. Your kids are feeling the stress, and you’re feeling the stress, and all you want to do is be on your game and be like one step ahead.”
It’s for that reason that she was inspired to partner with DoorDash to create Grab & Go Bento, bento-inspired lunches for stressed parents. The lunches were such a success that they sold out quickly, but the app is also touting their convenient grocery delivery, which makes it easy to stock up on groceries for the week or refresh what’s running out.
The way the app can simplify meal prep is particularly useful to Biel as she strives to find balanced breakfasts and lunches for her boys. “If I don’t ask [my son what he wants to eat, he] comes back and says, ‘You didn’t tell me what I was gonna have in my lunch,’” she shares. “So, he feels surprised by what I’ve put in there. Even though I think, ‘Oh, these are his favorite things. He’ll love this.’ It’s so funny. I feel like I can never win. I’m really all about trying to make my life a little bit simpler and trying to help other parents do the same just because I deeply know how hard it is.”
Biel adds that anything that takes the thinking out of creating balanced meals is “such an incredible help when you’re trying to get back in your rhythm to get back into school.”
I understand what Jessica is saying here. Like I said above, we’re lucky that we never quite get to a place where we completely fall out of routine, but starting a new school year can still be stressful and chaotic. Honestly, when I first heard about Jessica’s Grab & Go DoorDash boxes, I assumed that it would be some overpriced Goop-adjacent thing. I looked it up on DoorDash’s website and turns out it’s five meals for $25, which seems fairly reasonable to me? The lunches also seem pretty standard: a bagel, sunflower seed butter and jelly, salami, fruit snacks, white cheddar puffs, etc.
However, I have to admit that I sort of snort-chuckled at, “What am I going to do about lunches? How am I going to handle this?” I know she’s shilling her product but she sounds soooo melodramatic. Bish, you aren’t worried about how you’re going to afford to feed your kid. You’re worried about figuring out how to throw some fancy PB&J, gluten-free goldfish, and organic apple slices together. FWIW, DoorDash does say that they’ll donate five meals per purchase to the All Peoples Community Center to “aid in the organization’s commitment to help children succeed at each stage of development.” It would be great if Jessica and Justin could at the very least match that donation since nothing says, “I want to help relieve parents who are stressing over lunches during the chaotic first few weeks of school” quite like donating to an organization that will help parents stressing over providing lunches to their kids during (and beyond) those first few weeks of school.
Photos credit Faye’s Vision/Cover Images, JB Autissier/Panoramic/Avalon
My kid hated everything I packed him even though they were his favorites. I’d get his lunchbox back and he’d barely have touched anything. We both were relieved when he started buying hot lunch. I can’t say these bento lunches sound very good, he probably wouldn’t have touched something like that either.
They always look like they’re going to two different events.
Of all the things I stressed about with 3 kids, lunches just was not one of them. You find a few things that work and rotate. But cooking is my thing so maybe there are people who want this service.
My son has been to elementary school in two different states and both of them offered sunbutter and jelly sandwiches, fruit, veg and milk as an option regularly…for $2-3, not $5. If you can’t figure out lunch and you’re able to pay for these doordash things, just set your kid up for school lunch! School lunches actually have to confirm to pretty strict nutrition guidelines and some days I would say they are healthier than anything I can pack *that my kid will also be willing to eat four hours later*. Greater participation in school lunch also helps the school/district be able to buy and make better food.
Now is a good time to note that at least 4 states have free breakfast and lunch for every student through 12th grade. Colorado, Minnesota, Maine and California, all blue states. Thank you, Democrats, for helping to take care of our kids.
I will never understand the people who vote against free meals for school children.
Massachusetts also has free breakfast and lunch for the students. I am so grateful that my students and their families have this option.
We are in Southern Indiana and most of the schools over here has free breakfast and lunch as well. Plus during summer vacation certain schools keep their cafeteria open for breakfast and lunch for anyone.
@Feather…..same, from southern Indiana too. I live right next to an elementary school and a food truck would bring lunches all summer for anyone to pick up. Big lunches too. No questions asked.
I actually did worry about my son’s (6) packed school lunch. In PreK he ate the free lunch. He goes to a charter school, so all meals are free, but randomly the first week in Kinder he tells me he wants to carry his lunch box to school. For someone like me, that threw a monkey wrench in my plans and even schedule. At the time I was a classroom teacher, I was in planning mode at work. Anyway, it was a stressor. I wanted a balanced lunch meal but something that wouldn’t take too much prep time. I wanted diverse options but didn’t have the time to look it up. By the end of the year, I just threw some lunchables in his bag and called it a day.
My baby’s first day back was yesterday (whoohoo to 1st grade) and I’m already prepared. I already have his lunch menu mapped out for 2 months. It’s a relief.
I loved the free lunches and breakfasts during the pandemic at school. It was just so easy to not have to load money onto the account every few months (and I can afford to load that money, a lot of people can’t.) Our school lunches are 2.50 and breakfast is 1.50, so significantly cheaper than these lunches. I miss the free lunches though!
My kids get pretty much the same thing every day, my 11 year old’s lunch has not really ever varied besides what type of sandwich he gets – usually PBJ but sometimes tuna. But sandwich, frozen yogurt pouch that defrosts by lunch, fruit snacks, some type of fruit or vegetable, and dessert.
My younger one……he likes salads. So we grow lettuce in our Aerogarden and he gets that with some carrots and sliced ham and turkey and a hardboiled egg and a dessert. Kids, lol.
Anyway I have been having anxiety over the past week or so – can’t sleep, even now I have a knot in my stomach – and I figured out yesterday its from school starting back up, and we dont go back until after Labor Day! but with back to school activities, school supplies, PTA stuff……its a lot and I’m feeling it.
Mine go back TOMORROW and I think we’re ready!! (I think…) We have a fall break week in October, winter break week in February, a week at Thanksgiving and a two week holiday break in addition to other single days off under our current calendar, so my kids go back sooner than our surrounding districts.
My 10 year-old has been obsessed for weeks with getting everything set; she has a new bento-box style insert for her lunchbox and I saw that she put a little note in each compartment to show “what goes where.” So cute!! She also has her first-day outfit all laid out and has since Saturday. My 15 year-old is entirely winging it, lol. Anyway, I’m ready for them to get back in the swing of things and the next couple of days will be hectic, but good.
My niece and nephew go to year round school in NC and their parents also have said it is really the best thing ever, from not losing as much during breaks to not having to plan vacations when every other family on a traditional school calendar is traveling too. They were also lucky though in that their work schedules were such that did not have to rely on daycare or camps for breaks, which can be a challenge.
But for this story, I rolled my eyes at the thought of Jessica Biel is actually making the school lunches herself. I mean, maybe she is but I always assumed that’s one of the things parents with lots of in house support would delegate.
She married such a douche canoe. When I was married I did everything that had to do with parenting. Everything fell on me. And I get the feeling despite her my guy is such a hands on dad photo ops it’s the same with her. I also get the feeling she does a lot of this herself. I bet back to school is stressful with two kids one of them 3 years old.
I don’t expect much from her, so I’m pleasantly surprised to see the prices of her lunches $5 a day is not what I expected. When my son went to public school, lunches were the last thing on my mind. I constantly worried about school shootings. I considered home schooling him before we found a small private school. I used to cry in my car dropping him off. I was terrified. I grew up in Canada – we’ve had a few shootings (Polytechnique comes to mind and that one was just awful my psyche never really recovered) but as a general rule kids storming their schools to take everyone out wasn’t part of my reality.
I saw that due to teacher shortages a lot of school districts are doing 4 days a week this year, but the sad thing is they charge $30 a day if you need daycare on the one day off. So that’s an extra $120 a month in childcare which is going to hurt a lot of working parents. Pay teachers better and make their jobs less dangerous, support teachers, ban assault riffles and then maybe you won’t see so many people fleeing the profession.
Amen!
It really is so shameful how poorly teachers are paid. It used to be that people could afford to buy a home on a teacher’s salary. I remember baby-sitting for one of my middle school teacher’s kids and they had a modest but cute little three bedroom home in my home town. I doubt it would be within reach now, unless the spouse also worked full time in a field that paid well. Real estate prices are out of control there now as they are in so much of the country.
And yes, there were fights and even the occasional knife found, but not guns.
It says something that my daughter, someone who loves little kids as much as anyone I’ve ever known, had no interest in becoming a teacher. She says people she knew from college who went into teaching are miserable and looking to leave the job.
ITA with everything you just said AnneL! My sister is a teacher. It’s appalling how poorly she is paid for what she does. They are leaving the profession in droves – it’s not worth their lives and I don’t blame them. The GOP solution is teachers should pack guns are you kidding me? It’s infuriating what teachers are supposed to endure and most of it is avoidable.
Idk why anyone in the marketing department thought it would be a good idea to present things this way: she didn’t have enough time/ability to figure out lunches for one 8 year old, but she had enough time to start an entire company making bento lunches for kids across the country?
True lol!
And we all know there’s likely a nanny or housekeeper actually putting together the lunches.
I’m a school librarian at a charter school, I go back Aug 15 😖, my own young kids don’t go back until Sept 6 and 11. My jaw is getting tight just thinking about it! My kids love school and I love my job… but 5:20am wakeups and the accelerated pace of the days… blerg. I am not looking forward to it.
OK, I so wish my kids could have gone to a school like the one yours attend! I think the long summer break is really detrimental in so many ways. It disrupts learning and social interaction. I remember returning to school in September (we went back after Labor Day where I grew up, in the NYC suburbs) and having a hard time re-entering the atmosphere, so to speak. It would take me a few weeks to get back in the swing of things, and that’s a long time when you’re a kid.
We really need to switch things up in this country when it comes to school schedules. At least have more public schools offer a year-round option. I just think it’s healthier and more productive for a lot of people, kids and parents included. And maybe (hopefully) teachers as well?