Whole Foods & Scratch Cooking Based
Training Programs
Select the type of training approach best suited to your specific needs.
All “lab-Setting” (laboratory/classroom setting) classes are hands-on, whole foods focused and customized to meet your team’s most urgent training needs. Emphasis is on foundational kitchen skills all cooks need, but is geared to the unique school kitchen environment.
Results you can expect:
Your team will learn:
- How to prepare and season vegetables so they taste great to kids.
- New recipes utilizing more whole, fresh foods that your kids will actually eat!
- How to make foods taste like those from your favorite restaurant.
- How to process fruits and vegetables with a knife and other pieces of equipment for maximum efficiency.
- How to season foods to achieve the “world flavors” kids love.
- To understand produce seasonality and the best practices to for purchasing, receiving and storage of fresh produce.
- To demystify sodium’s critical role in cooking and how to use it wisely in a school food environment to meet regulations and make foods taste great!
- How to maximize sodium’s benefit by incorporating other flavor builders such as acid, sweet, bitter and umami.
When: “Lab-Setting” classes are your best choice when planning your staff trainings for early release, half-days, or non-school days.
Why: You’d like a controlled environment training, focusing on specific skills that all staff member can participate in and benefit from.
Duration: 2-3 hours
Location: Depending on the content, these trainings can be performed in a kitchen or a non-kitchen location such as a meeting room.
More Details: Here are three specific examples of this style of class:
- The Thrill of a New Skill
- Five Salsas From One Master Recipe
- Sharpen your Knife Skills
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:
Your team will learn:
- To 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: “Live-Setting” classes are your best choice when planning your staff trainings for early release, half-days, or non-school 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 specific examples of this style of class:
- Overview of the “Live-Setting”
- Recap of an actual “Live-Setting” training
Event Pull the whole crew together for a fun and educational way to build the team! Awesome at start-up or a fun way to get in the team spirit anytime of year. The event starts with a discussion about salt’s use, its importance in cooking, and you’ll learn a practical way to know how many Managers. of sodium you’re contributing to a dish with every shake of the salt shaker. We will explore a bit of taste physiology, talk umami and learn some real-world ways to replicate your favorite “World-Flavors” in your own kitchens any time you want. Then its off to the kitchen for a fun team-based “Mystery Basket” cooking experience!
Results you can expect:
Your team will learn:
- How to prepare and season vegetables so they taste great to kids.
- New recipes utilizing more whole, fresh foods that your kids will actually eat!
- How to make foods taste like those from your favorite restaurant.
- How to process fruits and vegetables with a knife and other pieces of equipment for maximum efficiency.
- How to season foods to achieve the “world flavors” kids love.
- To understand produce seasonality and the best practices to for purchasing, receiving and storage of fresh produce.
- To demystify sodium’s critical role in cooking and how to use it wisely in a school food environment to meet regulations and make foods taste great!
- How to maximize sodium’s benefit by incorporating other flavor builders such as acid, sweet, bitter and umami.
When: “Lab-Setting” classes are your best choice when planning your staff trainings for early release, half-days, or non-school days.
Why: You’d like a controlled environment training, focusing on specific skills that all staff member can participate in and benefit from.
Duration: 2-3 hours
Location: Depending on the content, these trainings can be performed in a kitchen or a non-kitchen location such as a meeting room.
More Details: Here are three specific examples of this style of class:
- The Thrill of a New Skill
- Five Salsas From One Master Recipe
- Sharpen your Knife Skills
Kent is innovative, focused on excellence and has great interpersonal skills. Kent has demonstrated a commitment to improving nutrition for children in the K-12 education system. I am proud to know have collaborated with Kent in the Wenatchee School District.
I highly recommend Kent Getzin as a consultant. I worked with Kent for 15 years, supervising him for much of that time. Under Kent’s leadership, our food service department went from operating in the red, to operating in the black and being self-sufficient in covering all expenses, from labor to capital equipment. Even more importantly, the quality of food got better and better. Kent is an innovator and was energized by applying his creativity to making improvements to the department.
Thank you for being a part of our two-year USDA F2S Implementation grant project in the Concrete School District. Kent’s amazing food service workshops reached an estimated 123 staff from four Skagit school districts and Skagit/Islands Head Start, and three Whatcom school districts.
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