It can seem overwhelmingly complicated to figure out why your school food service program isn’t thriving. When you look closely at a struggling operation, you will quickly begin to see all kinds of things that need to be “fixed”. Many will become apparent with a cursory review of the financial reports, but it may not be quite so easy to identify what is at the “root” of the problems?
Start looking at everything that has to do with FOOD.
Anytime there are problems in a food service operation, it’s always a good idea to look at anything and everything to do with FOOD.
Because… it really is all about the FOOD.
We all understand that budget is a really big deal but it’s so easy to get distracted from what the real focus should be…and that is the FOOD! First, plan your food choices carefully in the form of Cycle Menus. Then procure and manage the food carefully, because the quality of the ingredients matter. Next skillfully prepare and present the food in fresh and tasty ways. And then serve beautiful, delicious foods to your students with pride and a smile! But don’t keep it to yourself, proclaim your food-focused efforts to your community! Soon you will have a steady stream of happy customers who will make so many frustrations a thing of the past!
Focus on FOOD and Success will Follow!
Having a laser focus on everything to do with FOOD is guaranteed to set your program on the path to SUCCESS!
These trainings are scheduled during the regular live production day, and are completely customized to work with your equipment, in your environment, to meet your team’s most urgent training needs, all during live production.
Keep earning valuable reimbursements while training your team during their normal work hours. No staff overtime or extra time required!
Results you can expect:
The kitchen teamwill learnto prepare an entire custom, scratch cooked, whole foods based, child nutrition compliant menu, that they will be equipped to reproduce the on their own in the future.
The menu can be designed to incorporate local foods to add the Farm to School element giving you something positive to promote in your learning community.
Learn to process, prepare and season whole foods so they look and taste great to kids.
Learn new ideas to utilize more whole, fresh foods in your menus that your kids will actually eat!
How to process fruits and vegetables with a knife and other pieces of equipment for maximum efficiency.
Demystify sodium’s critical role in cooking and how to use it wisely in a school food environment to meet regs and make whole foods taste great!
Learn to maximize sodium’s benefit by incorporating other flavor builders such as acid, sweet, bitter and umami.
When is the best time to schedule:
“LIVE-SETTING” event are designed so you can train your team on any regular work day while school is in session. No need to wait for half or off-days.
Why choose “Live-Setting”:
You want the freedom to schedule trainings anytime you want! No need to wait for half or off-days to train your people.
You want your team to learn foundational cooking skills that they will use everyday.
You want the satisfaction of seeing your team produce a beautiful, scratch cooked menu from start to finish then watch it served to real students.
You want to continue collecting your valuable meal reimbursements while training.
You don’t want to pay out any additional labor dollars to pay for extra time after regular work hours. Live-Setting trainings occur during the employees regular work day.
Because everything is customized to your operation to address your greatest training challenges.
Duration:
Some advanced pre-planning plus the duration of an entire workday on the day of the “Live-Setting” event.
Location:
Your school kitchen of choice. These training are intended to be inserted into an established kitchen team’s regular work environment.
More Details:
Here are some specific examples of this style of class:
Here is an Ideal State to Work Towards if You’re Not Already There.
Everyday we make and serve beautiful, delicious foods!
Program participation levels are high because kids LOVE the food!
Program operates within budget.
We are always ready for the next audit.
Staff pride, competence, and confidence is high and is always improving.
Our parents, community, and other stakeholders are proud supporters of the work we’re doing because it’s inspiring!
Where do you have gaps in achieving a vision like this?
Remember, It’s All About the FOOD!
Serve more WHOLE FOODS: Increase the use of whole foods and decrease the use of processed foods.
Do more SCRATCH COOKING: Cook from scratch whenever possible.
Start a FARM TO SCHOOL Program: Start procuring what you can locally, as much as you can.
Do a little MARKETING: Shout all your effort from the rooftops!
You might ask, but what about the budget?
Plan your cycle menus (food) well. Procure and handle and manage the food carefully. Skillfully prepare and serve the food in fresh and tasty ways. Proclaim all of your food-focused improvement efforts to your community. Soon you will have a steady stream of happy customers who will make budget frustrations a thing of the past!
Maybe it just sounds too good to be true. I hear that, but it’s something I have seen work over and over again.
Focus on FOOD and SUCCESS will follow! Take one more look at that vision statement… That vision can be your school district’s reality!
Want to explore this topic more? I’d love to talk to you about it. Contact me to start a conversation that may change everything! Call or email me to schedule a call.
Check out the short video clips at the bottom of this article to see the beautiful food!
During my tenure as the director of food services for Wenatchee School District, we made huge strides in the areas of Farm to School and scratch cooking. Our program won awards and received recognition around the state and nation for our practice of purchasing local products and scratch cooking in the school lunch program. For the past several years, the Wenatchee School District, in partnership with the Washington School Nutrition Association (WSNA) and the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA), participated in Taste Washington Day as a way to celebrate agriculture in our State and to help students understand where their food comes from.
Serving locally grown foods was a normal, daily occurrence at Wenatchee Schools for many years but Taste Washington Day provided us an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the strength of the district’s ‘Farm-to-School’ and scratch cooking programs. Wenatchee School District has been recognized as a leader in supporting local agriculture and because of that, First Lady of Washington State, Trudi Inslee, visited the district on our 2014 Taste Washington Day to eat a local lunch featuring many of our dozen+ local farm vendors!
Take a look at these videos I created of several of our past Taste WA Day celebrations and I think you will be amazed that what you’re seeing is actually school food!
Your district can do this too! Contact me and I can help you build an amazing Farm to School program also!
Available for all of your Food Service Training Needs!
I just wanted to share with you a few bullet points about some of the services I am offering to schools and other food service operations through my consulting business, Creative Culinary Solutions. With 37 years of experience in the food service industry as a chef and food service director, I am prepared to help you with all of your training and troubleshooting needs!
I am focused on helping school districts who want to improve their operations by:
Food Based Assistance:
Doing more scratch cooking and focusing on processing whole foods in simple and efficient ways:
“Live Setting” Cook Training: I will train school food service teams in their live work environment, during regular production! Your district can continue to earn valuable reimbursements while receiving the quality skills your teams can use everyday! No need to wait for early release days to train your teams. These trainings are completely customized to meet your team’s most urgent training needs.
How to best utilize commodity foods in a scratch and fast-scratch formats
Recipe development and Standardization
Menu Development and Design
Implementing Salad Bars in Schools
Farm to School:
Getting started with farm to school
How to market and grow an existing F2S program for maximum benefit
Program Admin Assistance:
Administrative Review Prep
Wellness Policy Revisions
New Director Training and Interim Director Services
Financial Management: Getting Back in the Black!
Transitioning from Contracted Foodservice to self-op
Central Kitchen Operations – Starting or Improving
And more!
All of my services and classes are completely customized to meet your district’s specific training needs and I travel!
Increasing Participation and Improving Public Perception in Your Operation
Take a look at this one-minute video showing food bars in use in Wenatchee Schools
One of the biggest changes I made in my first year as food service director at Wenatchee schools, seventeen years ago, was to add salad bars. We opened the very first day of school that year with salad bars at every single school and never looked back! It was an amazing improvement! People love the variety that salad bars offer and kids aren’t any different. Beautiful, fresh, colorful, and self-serve! Nothing wrong with that, right? Participation immediately began to increase and the public perception of our program was greatly improved with this one simple change!
Food bars, salad bars fruit and veggie bars, whatever you want to call them, are incredibly important in the school environment. Sure, it takes some time to train the kids. You may even need to enlist some teacher help for the kinders and first graders but they catch on quickly and they love to self select from all those fresh, colorful whole foods!
It isn’t that hard to get started either! Food bars are expensive but bowls, pans and table top sneeze shields are accessible and a great way to start if you can’t currently afford food bars.
Grant funding is available for salad bars, too. I applied for a salad bar grant during my last year at Wenatchee schools and over the course of the calendar year, I received twelve brand new food bars…for free! At an approximate value of $3,500 each, that is $42,000 worth of equipment all for filling out a grant app that took me fifteen minutes!
Salad bars are in reach for your district. If you have questions about how to get started, please let me know! Remember, we are talking about nourishing our nation’s children and that, is serious business!
The “LIVE-SETTING” Approach to School Food Service Culinary Training
I had the pleasure of teaching a cooking class to a group of school food pros using a “Live Setting” approach. In a “Live Setting” approach, school food service teams train in their live working environment during regular production. In this format, your program can continue to earn valuable reimbursements and simultaneously receive the quality skills your teams need and can use everyday! There is no need to wait for early release days to train your teams. These trainings are completely customized to work with your equipment, your environment, and your situation, to meet your team’s most urgent training needs, all in live production.
Here is how a “live-setting” Class comes together. This example is from Concrete School district.
Concrete has been hard at work growing their farm to school program, so we will be utilizing as much local product as possible. This will give us a platform to not only support local farms and serve kids fresh, delicious, REAL FOOD but it also provides an excellent marketing opportunity. For marketing purposes at Concrete we are making this an entire school event and calling it a Mid-Winter Taste of Washington Day. The F2S Coordinator for Concrete is preparing a press release to go out to local newspapers. Pictures, videos, and descriptions of the events will be prepared for their social media outlets. As program directors, we should take every opportunity to “shout it from the rooftops” when we are going to the extra effort to feed kids better!
A week or two in advance, I’ll work behind the scenes with the director to create a customized training plan that will work well in their environment. The last thing I want to do is come in and teach something that won’t be applicable tomorrow. The goal is to always teach something that the team can duplicated later, on their own, without having to drastically change how they do business.
I’ll send the director a detailed list of all of the ingredients required to pull off the menu we decide upon. We will also work in as many commodities foods as possible to save a few bucks. The director makes sure all of the ingredients are in stock on the day of the training.
On the day of the training, at the team’s normally scheduled work time, we will convene in the kitchen and go to work! Through the course of the day, I direct the team in the execution of the meal and focus on knife skills and other foundational culinary principals such as braising and the use of salt in scratch cooking, in this case.
We discuss staging, timing for freshness, and how best to utilize their cooking equipment (steamers, ovens, griddles, hot/cold holding, etc).
We explore some best practices for service to students. In this case, I will teach them what I call, the “deconstructed casserole method”. It is basically what it sounds like. We keep all of the components in separate steam table pans. This will allow for improved student choice and provide customization options. This approach also allows for an instant vegetarian option. With the meat kept separate from all of the other components, you can meet child nutrition regs by “offering” the protein which the student, choosing to eat vegetarian, can decline, as long as they have the three required components. Works great! Another nice thing about the “deconstructed casserole method” is that you can greatly minimize food waste. Leftover foods are all separate instead of mixed together which facilitates proper cooling and allows for re-fabrication of the leftovers into a new dish tomorrow, maximizing yield. Most reheated casseroles are not appealing to customers. Seriously…eww…
We also discuss and prepare for options, such as “finishing bars”. I have found that kids love to customize their meals with little self-serve add-ons. In this case, we may provide some sort of bottled hot sauce for those who like it spicy or maybe some fresh chopped herbs or gremolata for a great blast of sodium-free freshness.
Then the funnest part! We set it up and serve it to the kids! Instant gratification for everyone! The kids get a fantastic, scratch-made, whole foods-based lunch and the food service team gets the immediate satisfaction of having prepared this new menu they never new they could produce at school!
Here is Concrete’s Menu:
Braised “Local Beef” Stew (beef chuck)
Scratch-Made, Pan Gravy (a delicious by-product of the beef braising process)
Roasted Local Winter Root Veggies (Carrots, Parsnips, Turnips, Rutabagas)
“Smashed” Potatoes (local German Butterballs)
Whole Grain Focaccia (made from “Shepards Grain” whole wheat Flour, which is grown in WA state)
Doesn’t that sound fantastic?!
The last thing I would like to mention about the “live setting” approach to training is that it is such an effective method for really connecting with, and retaining, the material being taught. Instead of just a theoretical classroom training or even a demo approach, staff get to touch, taste, serve, and see everything they make come to fruition in the form a meal served to their regular, daily customers. Hands-on skill elements combine with the live-action production of a meal. It’s a fantastic training approach! And, as mentioned before, your team gets trained, kids are served a fantastic lunch and you get to collect your reimbursement all the while! It’s a win-win for everyone!
If you’re intrigued by the “live-setting” concept, give me a call and we can discuss some options for a training in your district!
How to Succeed and Create Positive, Sustainable, Change in Today’s Child Nutrition Environment
I’m here to create some dissatisfaction…
It’s not a secret that, in recent years, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding the changes in child nutrition regulations due to the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. Kids are frustrated, parents are frustrated, and many program directors have been struggling to adapt their operations to meet the new regulations and keep the kids lining up.
I don’t think too many people would argue that the changes required by the HHFKA were needed. Public opinion shows that most Americans support stronger nutrition standards for school meals and all foods sold in schools. Rightfully so, they are concerned about childhood obesity, diabetes and other avoidable food-related diseases and believe that the availability of healthy food in schools is key to student learning and their overall well-being.
A recent survey of child nutrition directors by The Pew Charitable Trusts group reveals that success is possible in the HHFKA current environment. The report shows that by innovating in a few key areas, you can create a successful, local child nutrition program. You can do it all within budget, serve a great variety of tasty, nutritious foods, and improve the perception of your program.
Aren’t you sick and tired of hearing all the negative press about school food? The words “school food” trigger the same involuntary, negative reactions from people as does the word “dentist” (no offense to dentists intended). An example of how people are “eating up” the negative media about school meals is found in a Buzzfeed video I came across recently. You don’t even need to watch the video to get my point. This video has received over 14 million views at the time of this writing! Negative media about school food service, permeates the internets and people love clicking this stuff! To exaggerate my point, do a google search for positive media about school meals (try “farm to school”) and see the disparity in numbers of views. Certainly, there are many examples of school food service being done well but as a general rule, our industry’s approval ratings are low. Frozen convenience foods are the norm. Whole, fresh foods are scarce and major improvements are needed.
In the child nutrition program I ran for over 17 years, I found these four things to be foundational to our success:
1. Increase the use of whole foods and decrease the use of processed foods
2. Cook from scratch whenever possible
3. Start a Farm to School program and procure locally as much as possible
4. Marketing: Shout your effort from the rooftops!
Perhaps you too are dissatisfied with the current state of school food service but just don’t know what to do about it or where to begin. Innovative directors are making positive changes with success! My hope is that we can join forces, leverage our corporate dissatisfaction and create a community of people who will take action to make real, sustainable change in the child nutrition arena. We can support each other in the effort and the place to start is right there in your program in your own community.
I will be expanding on each of these four key areas, and explain why they are critical to success in child nutrition programs. Emphasizing these four things will be better for kids, improve food quality, improve public perception of your program and increase participation.
Whole Foods – Harness the Power of Dissatisfaction!
I am back to continue my quest to create a sense of dissatisfaction with the current state of child nutrition programs. In my previous article, I talked about the state of school food service and the four pillars, essential to creating a CN program that will appeal to kids, serve quality, nutritious food and be financially self-supporting. There are great examples of district’s making the extra effort to improve both the appeal and nutrition of school meals, so it can be done! The changes brought by the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act has forced more fruits, veggies and whole grains onto the tray but unfortunately, in many cases, this has resulted in bland, less than satisfying meals. Getting more fresh fruits and veggies in front of kids is great, but continuing to serve them next to the same old processed crap (corn dogs, chicken nuggets, pizza, etc) that has been reformulated to include whole grains is not the answer! What is needed is a wholistic approach to the problem.
Just as the use of only one pillar in a construction project will not support the weight of an entire roof, neither will sustainable changes be made by focusing only on one of the four pillars of success in child nutrition. All four pillars work together to create and support a program that will improve quality and nutrition and get the kids to line up!
Whole foods must be emphasized in school meals. For the sake of quality and nutrition, we must move to a whole foods approach in our menus. REAL FOOD made from WHOLE FOOD ingredients that is skillfully cooked from scratch is the direction in which we need to move!
Is it as easy as that? Hell no! Did we get here overnight? Hell no, again! But it is the right way to go and it can be done! Can you do it alone? Maybe you can, but its a big job. Fortunately, there is a lot of potential energy to be found in corporate dissatisfaction! Harness it and use it for good! There are champions in your district, in your community and in your networks that you can join forces with.
Harness the power of dissatisfaction! Join forces! Start Anywhere! Take Action!
How to Create Sustainable, Positive Change in Child Nutrition Programs in These Days of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act
Perhaps you, too, have been feeling dissatisfied with the current state of child nutrition programming in the United States.
This is the third article in a series, highlighting each of the four foundational pillars that must be in place to grow a healthy, sustainable, high quality, child nutrition program. These pillars are Whole Foods, Scratch Cooking (which we will talk about today), Farm to School (local purchasing), and Marketing. Applying these four approaches will not only feed kids well and grow a vigorous program, but will also contribute to helping our industry pull out of the reputation nose dive that it has been in for years. It will also legitimatize the important work we do as food service directors. These are all good and desirable things!
Pillar #2 – Scratch Cooking:
As the commercial food industry continues working hard to make every kind of food product you can imagine easy and accessible for us to eat, we are losing the desire and ability to feed ourselves. “Slow food” is having a renaissance of late, so there is no doubt that we must get back in the kitchen with some whole foods and start cooking for ourselves again. More importantly, we have to cook real food for our children in our nation’s school meals programs.
I recognize that this is a bigger task for some schools than for others. Many schools moved so far away from the scratch cook model that they don’t have kitchens equipped to do any type of cooking or even reheating. If this is your situation, you certainly have more obstacles to overcome, but this is work important enough to begin advocating for updating your district’s facilities to accommodate the preparation of real food in the future. So take action!
If your schools already have the ability to do some scratch cooking, then it is so important to begin moving in that direction. Set a course and get started!
If you are already doing some scratch cooking, then plan to expand your scratch offerings. Plan it into your continuous improvement plans. Seek assistance from someone who is “a little further down the road” than you. The stakes are too high to let our egos get in the way, so ask for help!
If you have been part of the “real food in schools” movement for a while now, and are getting good at it, you should be offering others a hand. Offer to give neighboring district directors, and their key players, a tour of your operation. Get them excited about serving real food in their schools, too! Answer their questions and share your resources and while you’re doing all that, shout your efforts and accomplishments from the roof-tops (marketing)! The more we band together, the more sustainable the change will be and the faster change will occur. There is no reason any of us should have to rebuild the wheel. There are plenty of resources and many districts who are already doing this fantastic work that you can “go to school” on. Most of these directors are more than happy to share their experiences with you.
It’s time to begin the transition from the fast food/processed food model to the REAL FOOD model. We cannot afford to wait for more funding or a better situation. This work is too important to not take immediate action. The sooner you start the sooner you will see progress. The health of this and future generations depends on our commitment to this vision!
If you don’t know where to start, give me a call and we can talk about some ideas that will get you rolling in the right direction. I love to problem-solve and brainstorm and it will cost you nothing but a few moments of your time to have the conversation!
Here is Concrete’s Menu:
1. Increase the use of whole foods and decrease the use of processed foods
