SPRINGFIELD – The City of Firsts has another first: the first culinary and nutrition program of its kind in the nation.

The Springfield Culinary and Nutrition Center at 75 Cadwell Drive officially opened its doors on April 12. It is collaboration between Sodexco, the company that prepares the meals for the city’s schools and the school district.

It will prepare meals for more than 30,000 city students every day and created 40 new jobs. While that may be an impressive statistic, what may be more impressive is that many of the food items will be prepared from scratch and many will use locally sourced ingredients.

The food produced there even has a brand: “Home Grown Springfield,” with a logo designed by Putnam Academy Visual Arts student TaMya Romero.

Mayor Domenic Sarno said the concept is the “first in the nation.”

Robert Leshkin, director of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Office for Food and Nutrition Programs, told an audience of more than 100 people, the center “shows the absolute dedication and support the city has shown in the health and wellness of its students.”

Sodexco District Manager Mark Jeffrey said the planning for the $21 million center started 10 years ago. “It is a benchmark for others to follow,” he said.

Jeffrey added the center’s food “will change lives for generations to come.”

That was a theme for remarks from Elizabeth Willis-O’Gilvie, the chair of the Springfield Food Policy Council.

“We’re talking in terms of food, but really this is about literacy,” she said.

Since Springfield has been offering free breakfast and lunches, Willis-O’Gilvie said, hunger visits made by students to school nurses has dropped 90 percent.

Students simply perform better when they are not hungry, she explained.

“This center is a challenge, a love letter to our students and to ourselves,” she said.  

After the ribbon cutting, tours of the center were conducted. Executive Chef Michael Wolcott led one group around the 62,000 square foot center. Bringing his group into the bakery, he showed how muffins for the school breakfast are made from designing the recipe to the device that fills the muffin pans automatically, to the ovens.

Todd Royea, one of the production chefs in the bakery, explained how zucchini and other vegetables are added to muffins to enhance their nutrition.

“If the kids won’t eat vegetables, we’ll put them in the muffins,” he said with a smile.

In the refrigerated processing room, Wolcott explained sandwiches and salads are made here and then wrapped for distribution to the schools. One wrapping machine can wrap 50 to 100 pieces in one minute. The meat-slicing machine, he noted, can produce 200 meat slices for sandwiches in a minute.

The center will be more than just a facility to produce quality meals for the city’s students. It will be used by Putnam Vocational Technical Academy students interested in the culinary industry as a place for hands-on training.

School Superintendent Daniel Warwick called the center part of “the rebirth of the city’s public schools and part of the renaissance of Springfield.”