Go organic | Philosophy
An introduction message from our founder Dr. Dan Cassidy
Dr. Dan Cassidy
Founder of Go Organic
To view an introduction message from our founder, you must have Quick time plug in installed. It can be downloaded from link below. The text version is also available from link below.
Video > | Get Quick Time Plug in >
Founder Dr. Dan Cassidy is a father of two children that are enrolled in public schools.
Each week, he'd dig into his children's backpacks and pull out the school lunch menu: meatloaf from who–knows–where covered in sodium–packed gravy, greasy pepperoni pizza, fried chicken and biscuits… Every meal was served with French fries and a choice of milk or soda.
Guess which his children always chose? And don't even ask about the vegetables. A few bits of broccoli covered in cheese or some corn drowned in butter isn't exactly the best way to get your veggies in. And without proper nutrients, he couldn't expect her kids' to perform well in school and sports.
Many parents simply opt out of school lunches and send kids to school with wonderful homemade meals. But Dan is a working dad—a pediatrician, in fact, with a very busy practice. How could he find the time to make healthy meals for his kids? Not to mention meals they'd actually want to eat… Dan's friend and Go Organic! advisor Gene Williams is a chef at a popular Philadelphia restaurant specializing in organic foods.
Dan chatted with Gene about getting some healthier items into his kids' lunches, and thought, "Why stop there? There are more kids out there in need of lunches like this, and more parents with no time to prepare them!" So in January of 2004, Go Organic! was born.
Dan enlisted Gene's help in creating a small menu of healthy, organic lunches. They leased a small restaurant kitchen, sourced the best local ingredients, and hired cooks to prepare the meals each day. Dan spread the word to other parents at his kids' school, and delivery men and women were hired to bring meals there each day. The idea took off, growing to include the entire school district. As the word got passed along about Go Organic!, more and more school districts, parents, and workers got involved, and more and more menu ideas were created. By 2006, Go Organic! lunches were available in hundreds of school districts around the country, each with a local kitchen, local chefs, and local farms, enabling all proceeds to go right back to the community.