I worked at an outdoor ed place which catered to rich private schools and some wealthy public districts. They could seat 400 people for lunch service and had two separate kitchens for upstairs and downstairs dining rooms). I looked forward to meals there 3x a day.

Things that stand out:

1. Buffet style, all you can eat. Staff serving you the food from a serving line. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
2. Always had fresh food, prepared that day from scratch. Nice restaurant quality, but not like Michelin Star fine dining. Stuff kids like, bit also aduts would too. Usually some comfort foods and some things more interesting / unusual.
3. Menu on an 8 day rotation with some special changes thrown in, for example “chicken waffles” day about once a month. Great variety.
4. The head baker (separate from the head chef) would always be testing new recipes and handing out fruit bars, cookies, pastries, etc. to staff. These were typically only available to the teachers as a lowkey incentive to take their schools to our place for field trips. The teachers also had all kinds of booze in their rooms and had vacation while we took care of everything.

The kids tended to be super spoiled, but there were some nice ones. We bribed them all to drink water by getting them a pitcher of “Special Drink” for the table after they finished a first pitcher of water as a group. This was a pitcher of ice and soft drinks/ powerade made and layered in such a way that they made cool patterns. We had sunrise, “hulk drink”, various rainbows, etc. Staff would have their specialties and trade techniques.

I met some other educators who worked at a less fancy place nearby and they said their cafeteria was all fried foods and gross.

I used to work at a summer academic program. I don’t know how expensive it was, but some of the students were quite wealthy.

One 13 year old international student was homesick, and to try to get them to agree to stick it out, their parents promised to buy them a new car if they stayed.

The food was generally good enough to pass for restaurant food or a corporate cafeteria. It was on a college campus, so I think it may have been the same staff and repertoire as the school year. Sometimes there would be something more interesting like fried plantains. The staff would flock to it and the kids would ignore it.

Kids by and large didn’t care. Some still stuck to their beige diets aggressively; only eating hot dogs, plain chicken, white bread, vanilla ice cream, etc.

One year before the kids showed up there was a chilled strawberry and mint soup that I’ll still occasionally try to find a recipe for. I don’t even care for mint.

the school’s owner siphons off all the resources, leaving very little for the teachers, staff, and students to utilize.

2 guys cook cafeteria fare for the whole school - they don’t have time to get fancy. they want to make good food, even though they don’t get paid very well, but the ingredients they’re given are mid shelf cans of things purchased from bulk warehouse stores like Costco or Sam’s Club or whatever the local equivalent is. it tastes decent and checks all the nutritional boxes, but is less exciting than food you can make at home or buy from a restaurant.

My kids took tae kwon do with some kids who went to a nice private school - not billionaire money, but known to be very nice. The thing that was really impressive to me was that they had a fruit cart that sat out all day and kids could go get a piece of fruit anytime they wanted. It seems so simple but that idea of stopping to grab a pear between classes blew my mind.

I went to a private school that fits those criteria for a couple of years. It was a scholarship, my family isn’t overly wealthy. Smaller classes, lots of extracurricular activities like diving, golf or skiing and two teachers per lesson. Still it was surprisingly shit. First of all unsurprisingly about 90% of students were insufferable brats that would literally pull the “father will hear about this” card on teachers which unfortunately tended to be effective. Also everything had this elitist vibe about it despite really being not that special. This also goes for the food. It was expensive, prepared by an actual chef and yet it wasn’t anything to write home about. Looked like restaurant food, tasted like cafeteria food. I switched to a public school eventually and the cafeteria food there was on par regarding quality and much more reasonably priced.

I went to a fancy boarding school growing up. The food was average. It was made by a staff for almost 200 kids, so they didn’t really seem to go out of their way to make it special except for around the holidays.

Most kids kept snacks back in the room because they didn’t like the food.

Private schools in the UK serve awful food. Stews, custard with a skin, spotted dick, that kind of stuff.

Don’t know but if it helps, they usually send their kids to boarding school in the UK or Switzerland afaik. My guess is they probably do have cafeterias and it’s likely not high dining. Probably good quality food and decent cooks, but nothing extravagant.

We send my son to private school. It’s not for multimillionaires, but it’s basically the cost of a second mortgage. We make his lunch every morning. Today it was a bean taco with cantaloupe, olives, cherry tomatoes, and cheese crackers.

I went to a lot of different schools growing up. Some of them were not-very-well-funded public schools, but others were international schools for expats and private US schools – some of which might qualify. Most of the schools I went to had a cafeteria with a typical “go through the line with a tray and get whatever they cooked that day in bulk” kind of system. Some of them also had a store where you could buy snacks, prepackaged sandwiches, and such. I remember bringing lunch from home a lot – either sandwiches or leftovers from dinner the previous night, usually. One of the schools was so small it didn’t even have a real cafeteria for us and all the students (6th~8th grade in the US system) brought lunch from home and ate on fold up chairs in the multi-purpose room every day. I also went to a boarding school for a couple years. That one had a cafeteria system too – but the students were pressed into working on a rotation schedule (wiping down tables, cleaning dishes, and such – I don’t remember preparing any of the food). I don’t recall anything particularly outstanding one way or the other about the regular lunches there, but that one had periodic formal dinners (once a month or so, IIRC) where I had to get dressed up (e.g. put on a tie) and they broke us up into small groups of students and teachers. I remember those being stressful, but also having better than average food.

Chicken nuggies on fancy plates

Wha I find crazy is that my best food I ever had in school was in junior high in Oklahoma we had a salad line, a main line, Taco Bell express, slushies, candies and pastries and on thursdays we had delivered pizzas, and I think the nachoes were every day as well. Never seen a school have so much choice ever since.

Foie gras, veal and beluga caviar.