OAKLAND — Dishes like cold soba — or buckwheat — noodle salad, jerk chicken with “not-so-fried” rice, and chicken potstickers could be menu items at a hip restaurant, but for many schools in the Bay Area and around the country, they’re on the lunch line.

That’s thanks to Revolution Foods, an Oakland-based school meal supplier that aims to revolutionize school food by providing healthy, affordable, chef-created dishes to students.

“Kids deserve the best possible food they can get, particularly at school where many of them are eating every day,” said co-founder Kirsten Tobey. “So we decided to totally rethink how school food works by bringing chefs into the equation and by having chefs designing the food that kids eat every day instead of being the necessary evil of whatever is the cheapest thing you can get to put on the lunch line.”

The company prides itself in providing only “clean label” meals.

“Clean label means no artificial ingredients, no artificial colors and no artificial flavors,” Tobey said. “So if you read the label, it’s like food ingredients. There’s nothing artificial or chemically engineered.”

Revolution Foods contracts with about 2,000 schools throughout the country, including 250 in the East Bay. The company provides supper for after-school programs at nine Oakland Unified School District schools, including Piedmont Avenue Elementary, Burckhalter Elementary and Parker Elementary, district spokesman John Sasaki confirmed.

“We value Revolution Foods as they provide healthy, delicious meals for many students who face food insecurity,” Sasaki said via email. “Without this partnership, we might be unable to get this meal to some of our highest need schools.”

The company also provides food for some local private and charter schools.

Founders Tobey and Kristin Richmond launched the company in 2006, after working in schools and seeing a dire need for healthy school food, they said. The two met while attending business school at UC Berkeley, and both are parents.

A team of chefs, led by Executive Chef Clifton Lyles, develop specialized menus for each school. Revolution Foods has a menu bank of about 100 dishes; items are constantly being added.

The menus have three to five items a day depending on seasons, Tobey said. There’s always a vegetarian option as well as a dairy-free one.

“The menus are based on the age of the kids, based on the location and whether we’ve developed any specific dishes for the population they’re serving, in addition to seasonality,” Tobey said.

Revolution Foods also tries to cater to “food traditions” that vary from region to region, and school to school. Since the East Bay has large Latino, Asian and African-American communities, Lyles said, the company incorporates their cuisines in its menus.

“Everyone wants to feel like they’re represented with food that they’re familiar with, especially kids,” Lyles said. “For a lot of kids in Oakland and in the Bay Area, the first food that they try is what their parents make for them, and that’s where the bar starts.”

The chefs balance cultural inclusiveness, variety, taste and nutrition when creating the meals.

“It’s pretty incredible when you look at how our menus have evolved,” Richmond said. “Some of our newest items are the jerk chicken with not-so-fried rice, but also a breakfast gordita. We have a chicken tikka masala that’s coming, incredible potstickers; it’s a lot of variety from a cultural standpoint.”

Tobey said students have been surprisingly open to trying new dishes, and have even requested fresh vegetables, bone-in chicken and other natural foods.

“It’s fun to see what food trends are driving the students,” Tobey said. “I can guarantee you that if we introduced a cold soba noodle salad 12 years ago when we started, kids would have been like ‘cold noodles, what?’ ” Tobey said. “But now they’re asking for a cold soba noodle salad.”

Revolution Foods has a rigorous testing process to make sure students like the dishes. The company will give out samples of vegetables at the school sites to gauge students’ interests, as well as “meal design sessions” to create community-focused dishes, Richmond said. Account managers are sent to the schools to survey students on the meals.

The company’s hope is that students eat tasty, healthy food. The founders both say that will help students succeed in the long run.

“The goal is to start with good food. We’re trying to make it so there isn’t a different connotation between good and healthy,” Lyles said. “We’re trying to say that good food is healthy, it’s just a matter of how you prepare it.”