In line with equal opportunities for all, free school meals are served to all pupils in Swedish compulsory schools, prepared and served by assigned school meal staff. This paper explores how school meal staff describe and approach their roles and responsibilities in relation to the school meal, and what influences their conditions to contribute to an inclusive school meal community. Based on approximately 100 hours of participant observations over five months in four schools, and interviews with five school meal staff, the analysis illustrates how school meal staff enacted inclusive practices, which included creating a safe and home-like environment in the school restaurant, aiming to provide a nutritious meal for all pupils, thereby reducing inequalities. However, participants reported a lack of collaboration with headteachers, upon whom they were highly dependent on to implement improvements. Moreover, feedback from pupils was often negative. Accordingly, the school meal staff balanced their mission by employing different approaches: some focusing on tasks related to food service, while others prioritized interactions with pupils. The findings suggest a need to acknowledge the contributions of school meal staff as important actors in building a school meal community, into which they themselves are not inherently integrated at present.