
Packed thrives on providing a variety of options that are healhty and appealing to all types of young eaters. Photo furnished
For working parents, packing a school lunch can be a push-pull experience every morning.
You want your kid to be happy and have a healthy lunch, but finding the time during the morning hustle can be difficult. That need is what drove Becca Self and Liza Green to create a new local initiative called Packed. Focused on providing fresh, wholesome and tasty school lunch options, the company creates and delivers pre-packed lunches to schools across the city.
An offshoot of Hunsicker, a Lexington-based venture studio that funds “purpose-driven startups,” Packed emerged from looking at gaps in the current school lunch system, Self said. According to their research, nearly 52 million kids across the country — about 40% of school aged children — opt to bring lunch from home.
“In some cases, that’s because they attend a school where a lunch isn’t provided,” Self said. “In other cases, they are bypassing the cafeteria and going to all the extra trouble to bring a lunch from home… In some cases, they’re opting out of a free lunch. That’s an interesting data point in the school lunch market.”
Self is no stranger to packing lunches. Previously, she founded and ran FoodChain, a nutritional nonprofit, and Nourish Lexington, a program that prepared and distributed over 500,000 scratch-made meals. She’s also the mom of 10-year-old twins.
“Making school lunches is a lot of extra work,” she said. “You have to gather groceries, keep track of lunch boxes, and harp on your kids to bring it back. And 40 percent of the school lunch market is not trivial.”
Packed offers a variety of options, from saucy noodles to burrito bowls and superfood salads. Each entrée includes two sides, such as fresh veggies, fruit, pita chips or hummus.
“Kids love them,” she said. “And I have my own in-house tasters.

Pictured above: Hunsicker CEO and Packed founder Becca Self (left) and Packed operations manager and chef Li Sturgis. Packed is a new intiative designed to expand healthy school lunch options. Photo by Emily Giancarlo
The program debuted this past spring at Providence Montessori, where Self’s children are enrolled. The school only offers lunch on Fridays, leaving the rest of the week for parents to provide lunches. The eight-week pilot program proved so popular that more than half of the parents participated.
Hunsicker used the data collected during the trial to refine the concept. They interviewed kids, parents and school staff to transform the idea into a full-fledged business. The company then brought in Liza Green as Packed’s CEO. Green, an experienced small-business founder, previously launched and grew a popular café and marketing concept in Sun Valley, Idaho, and managed operations for early-stage businesses at Amazon.
For Green, the opportunity to impact children’s lives was a motivating force.
“When I first learned about Packed, I was immediately drawn to the compelling mission and opportunity to have a significant impact on kids and families everywhere,” Green said. “Serving students wholesome, tasty meals that are incredibly convenient for parents and easy for schools to manage feels like a win-win-win situation. The traction we have seen in our early days is really exciting, and I love that we are working towards delivering quality, fresh food to students at scale.”
The company operates out of a commercial kitchen at Greyline Station, preparing around 350 lunches a week. Meals are made onsite, packed, and delivered to schools before lunchtime. Lunches are priced at about $8 each.
The variety in entrées and sides ensures kids don’t get bored, said Kate Kopytek, a Hunsicker associate who works with Packed.
“When parents order their lunches, they have the opportunity to sit down with their kid, almost like they’re at a restaurant, and have their kid look through them and you pick an entree and then pick their two sides to build their own lunch,” she said. “If you are ordering Packed multiple days for multiple days a week for your student, your student can have different lunches on every single one of those days. You can really switch it up. And we have a lot of different combinations available.”

Above, kitchen team worker Kiera Jackson and chef Li Sturgis work to prepare lunches for clients of Packed in a shared kitchen in Greyline Station. Photo by Emily Giancarlo
These personalized options also accommodate vegetarian, gluten-free and other dietary restrictions, Kopytek added. Once the meals are prepared, they’re packed into a larger box for delivery to the school. Containers are collected the next day by delivery drivers, eliminating waste and the need for parents to track down missing Tupperware, water bottles or lunch boxes.
Currently, Packed offers delivery to three schools — Providence Montessori, Redwood Cooperative School and Lexington Christian Academy — but the business is expanding, Self said.
She anticipates that more schools will come online, and that the service will be available for delivery directly to homes later this year. While the logistics of home delivery are still being finalized, Self expects 2025 will bring the same variety of lunches to parents’ doorsteps
Beyond that, Green said, the response to the product seems to indicate it will continue to grow.
“Our early traction tells us that people are really excited about what we are doing,” Green said. “We are still testing how we can best serve customers and will continue to adjust as needed to accomplish this mission.
As we look to the new year, we will be piloting home delivery of lunches. We are really excited to provide this option to families. Not only will it allow us to serve more customers, but it will also be insightful as we look for clarity on how best to move forward and serve people in Lexington and beyond.”

Photo furnished