Soon after a school district in Rhode Island announced students with lunch debts would be served cold sunbutter and jelly sandwiches, they came under fire for penalizing poor families. A local restaurant owner even offered to donate $4,000 to relieve the lunch debts, but the school denied it.
Eventually, the Warwick Public School district reversed the policy after receiving intense public scrutiny. Since then, Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya has offered to pay off the debt. He said the news of the Warwick Public School lunch money policy had broken his heart.
Ulukaya tweeted that “every child should have access to natural, nutritious & delicious food, so @Chobani is doing our small part to help pay this debt.” The Greek yogurt company has also stood by hiring refugees to assist underprivileged people living nearby its headquarters in New Berlin, New York.