K-12 School Foodservice E&S: Saved by the ... Cafeteria?

Forget the bag lunch, kids these days feast on nutritious, high-quality meals as schools continue to perk up their cafeterias.

Foodservice Equipment & Supplies - January 2007

By Amelia Levin
Associate Editor

Think back to when you were in grade school. Now, remember the cafeteria. Let me guess, you probably see a lunch lady in a hair net standing behind a counter scooping up some sort of mystery meat out of a metal pan, perhaps a sloppy Joe mixture made two days before, and plopping the stuff on children’s trays as they make their way down the line. Decades ago, we all shared the same, usually uninspired cafeteria experience. But, oh how times have changed.

Nowadays, kids feast on better tasting, much more nutritious meals like baked, not fried, chicken nuggets with whole-grain breading, reduced-fat pizza, wrap sandwiches, fresh fruit and vegetables, and sometimes even stir-fry dishes and other ethnic-inspired foods, says Erik Peterson, spokesman for the School Nutrition Association. Purchasing top-of-the-line equipment that won’t break down and produces the highest quality food possible has become a priority despite constrained school budgets, Peterson says.

Nutrition is extremely important, and becoming more so each year, Peterson says. Schools that participate in the national school lunch program must prepare meals so that they meet the daily allowances of vitamins and minerals. They must also not have more than 30 percent of calories coming from fat, and less than 10 percent from saturated fat to help children maintain a healthy weight. As an incentive to participate in the program, the federal government offers reimbursements of about $0.23 for all meals, $2.40 for students receiving free meals, and $2 for reduced-priced meals, with the average price of a lunch being $1.75. Reimbursement for breakfast is generally priced at $1.31 for a free meal and $1.01 for a reduced-meal.

Most schools, being nonprofit institutions and having limited budgets, need these reimbursements desperately, and especially if they are trying to offer more nutritious meals, although Peterson says the reimbursements could be higher, as nutritious meals cost more due to their ingredients and the labor required to prepare them.

As a result of these nutritional guidelines, many schools have replaced full-fat dairy products with low-fat ones and begun offering more whole-grain food choices. Perhaps the biggest change, Peterson says, is the phasing out of fryers in the kitchen. More kitchens now use combi ovens to recreate chicken nuggets and potato wedges instead of fries. The benefit of this approach lies within the fact that the menu items retain their moisture on the inside and crispness on the outside without adding the fat of frying oil. Texas was one of the first states to phase out fryers, and since then, some 30 states now follow a similar approach, according to Peterson. Many schools have a five-year grace period to phase out the fryers due to the high cost of having to purchase more ovens.

Food safety is also an extremely important issue in schools, perhaps the most important. “Schools generally have a good record because it’s incredibly important for kids to stay healthy,” Peterson says. Since a few years ago, all schools now must undergo routine health inspections and have HACCP plans in place, although the challenge with that, Peterson says, is the lack of necessary funding to train employees in such standards. Whereas roughly 40 percent of the cost to prepare meals comes from the cost of the ingredients, 60 percent comes from labor, he says. As an alternative to training, many schools order the bulk of their foods pre-prepared and just rethermalize them on-site, instead of cooking from scratch.

Some schools even have satellite kitchens with elaborate cook-chill systems, according to Ruth Jonen, foodservice director for High School District 211 in Palatine, Ill. “That seems to be the growing trend,” she says, although her district operates differently.

Satellite kitchens such as these come with their own positive and negative aspects. For example, this approach has the potential to limit handling of individual ingredients across the district as a means of ensuring safe food. But in Jonen’s opinion, this reduces her control over the safety of the food she serves. “Sometimes, when you bring food in from another location you can have issues with whether the food is hot enough or cold enough, and who has the oversite for food safety.“

"Our district has only five schools so we have all on-site preparation and no satellite kitchens,” Jonen says. Each school’s foodservice operation is essentially, she says, “a stand-alone business, like a franchise.” Jonen relies on the managers from each school’s kitchen to keep things running smoothly and inform her of any needs for new equipment. “We’ve got such big operations, the different locations can customize their programs to what the students need,” she says.

Still, Jonen’s staff do not prepare nearly as much food from scratch as years ago. The quality of processed commodities such as beef patties and chicken nuggets has improved tremendously over the years to the point where they still retain their quality after rethermalization. However, District 211 kitchens do some baking using pre-made dough. Students go crazy over the warm chocolate chip cookies, Jonen says.

As a result of these independent kitchen operations, Jonen’s staff cook throughout the day. “We serve breakfast and lunch so we start cooking at 6 a.m. and don’t stop until the end of the service day, which is 1 p.m. or 1:30 p.m.,” she says. District 211 includes a whopping 13,000 students spread out among five high schools: Palatine and William Fremd High School in Palatine, Ill.; James B. Conant and Hoffman Estates High School in Hoffman Estates, Ill.; and Schaumburg High School in Schaumburg, Ill. The schools serve as many as 800 breakfasts and 3,200 lunches a day. Aside from the tray meals, about 75 percent of business is an à la carte menu with items such as burgers, fries, pizza, sandwiches, desserts and snacks, plus low-fat options like a turkey breast sandwich on a bagel, fresh fruit and vegetables, and baked chips and snacks in 100-calorie portions. The cafeteria does not sell any carbonated drinks, instead selling a lot of juice, milk and water, its top-selling beverage.

“I think the trick is to offer a wide variety of products because the kids are going to expect that,” Jonen says. Convenience and keeping the kids moving through the food line is another concern. For example, at Conant High School two separate lines for à la carte items and full tray meals, plus a small snack stand set apart from the main cafeteria in the dining room help dissipate traffic.

As far as equipment, Jonen says purchasing durable items and preventative maintenance are key. “We try to buy the best we can afford,” she says. “Although we may pay a little more up front, those pieces last a long time. We’re able to probably get more years out of equipment than a commercial operation might get.”

Like in many schools, the District 211 school board considers higher-priced equipment a capital expenditure that requires a bidding process before deciding from which supplier to purchase the needed item(s). In order to stay on top of the budget, Jonen will ask her kitchen managers which pieces of equipment might need replacing soon or what needs to be purchased, and then informs the associate superintendent about how much money the district needs to allot for each school for purchasing equipment. The school board then takes a look at how many dollars it has to spend and gives Jonen a figure for capital expenditures. At that point, Jonen specifies what each individual school needs and works with the purchasing director to publish notices that encourage equipment dealers to bid. Usually the bidding process begins in May, and culminates with the installation during the summer before the children start school that fall.

To keep the equipment in good working shape, Jonen relies on a central maintenance staff to do everything from constantly checking the individual items as well as the building’s plumbing and electrical work. Preventative maintenance is key.

Perhaps one of the most important pieces of equipment in the schools’ kitchens, Jonen says, is the combi oven because its multiple-use feature helps get more out of the equipment and her dollar. “It offers a lot of flexibility. We can use it for steaming or baking,” she says.

Larry Huber, president of Foodservice Consultants Studio (FCS), a Virginia-based consulting firm, has worked on a number of school foodservice projects, and encourages foodservice directors to purchase combi ovens as a replacement for fryers. The reason more schools don’t purchase the equipment is because in the past, combi ovens were not made as well, and used to have a lot of water quality problems, Huber says. “Some of the supervisors were so badly jaded by the early combis that they won’t even consider buying them,” he says. “We think that’s a mistake, but we do understand their position.”

The other stigma against combis is the cost of maintenance. “When something goes bump in the night, it’s an unexpected, unbudgeted expense that the foodservice operators have to deal with,” Huber says. “That’s why most directors tend to be more conservative with technology.”

This is also why many foodservice directors avoid purchasing customized equipment, Huber says. If they purchased the equipment as is from the catalog, its easier to get replacement parts for the piece later.

One high-tech item many foodservice directors do prefer is an online payment system. Via the internet, parents can deposit money into their child’s cafeteria account using a credit card. Then, when the children go to pay for their meals, they swipe their ID card, which debits money from their account. Most schools using this technology mandate that all children passing through the cashier swipe a card so that the children don’t know who is receiving free or reduced-priced meals. This removes the stigma associated with receiving a reducedcost meal and makes all children equal. In addition, the online technology allows parents to track what their children have purchased in order to make sure they are making healthy food choices.

On the flipside, Doug Huber, vice president of FCS and son of Larry Huber, strongly recommends against purchasing one item: the salad bar. “One of the challenges we run into is that there’s a pressure to put in a salad bar because of the nutritional concern, but we recommend against that because of the safety concern.” Children won’t realize it, Huber says, but they can accidentally cross-contaminate the food when reaching for the ingredients. This is of great concern among young children who have yet to build up an immune system strong enough to ward off E. coli. Instead, Huber recommends operators offer pre-packaged salads to prevent cross-contamination.

As far as the design of the school foodservice operation in general, the Hubers say security is a huge concern. Points of service need to be close in proximity to points of sale, Larry Huber says, because, unfortunately, inventory shrinkage can be a concern. If the cafeteria is set up with a scatter-design such as in a mall food court, “the students will literally go in and by the time they get to the cashier, they will have eaten half of their lunch.”

The Hubers took this into consideration when they designed the cafeteria for T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., the same high school that served as the focal point for the film “Remember the Titans.” For the past three years, the high school has undergone major renovations, which are expected to be completed by September 2007.

To reduce shrinkage of inventory, the cafeteria will feature several cameras with smoke bubbles over them. This will keep students from seeing the direction the cameras are facing. A security guard will sit in a separate office and man the cameras, almost like a Las Vegas casino manager.

The cafeteria will also feature six stations with more upscale offerings such as made-to-order sandwiches, pizza and special entrées. While offering menu items similar to those found in typical food courts, the facility will still take the design of a school cafeteria such that the students will walk through six lines with guard rails that direct them immediately to the cashier after they pick up their food.

The cafeteria will back up to a major production kitchen that will produce food for the high school as well as 16 elementary and middle schools. One end of the narrow kitchen will house bulk cooking equipment, including 60-gallon mixers, steam kettles and a tilting skillet. The other end of the kitchen will house an entire cook-chill system. In addition, the facility will feature a separate kitchen that will serve as a teaching facility for the school’s culinary arts program. There will even be classrooms in that area for further instruction.

The list doesn’t end there. A massive, refrigerated warehouse will store prepared foods, and even require a forklift for use in retrieving items. Inside the dining area, one corner will feature a quiet area for studying and eating with a small convenience store where students can purchase grab ’n go snack items and prepared, cold sandwiches and salads.

Essentially, the school foodservice department, Huber says, “is a stand-alone entity, and they have to break even and hopefully make a profit. The foodservice director’s job depends on that.”

Melanie Konarik, director of child nutrition for Spring ISD, an independent school district in Houston, operates her department in this way, and budget issues are always at the forefront of her mind. By raising a little extra money, she has been able to upgrade the equipment package in her schools from reach-in coolers to blast chillers as part of moving to a cook-chill system that saves cooking time and labor costs. With 30 schools with 32,500 students, Konarik must run her foodservice operations like a separate business. “We’re a nonprofit group, but we always want to have enough money to invest and cover all our expenses.”

To accomplish this, Konarik must set up her cafeterias to sell as much food as they can. “The biggest issue is we have to have really high participation of our students because we charge a low amount for students.” Even though the school receives a federal reimbursement, it is not always enough.

Konarik can entertain bids for equipment purchases less than $5,000 on a department level. When purchasing items that cost more than $5,000, though, she must list them as capital expenditures and seek approval for the expenses. Like Jonen, Konarik says her key pieces of equipment are for rethermalizing such as steamers, convection ovens and regular ovens. She also recently added microwaves to heat up food at the last minute to eliminate food waste. “We batchcook, but we have to cook a fair amount for the last lunch not knowing what their choices will be, and I don’t want a student not to get what they want,” Konarik says.

The recently remodeled Dueitt Middle School in Spring, Texas, and Twin Creeks Middle School, also in Spring, Texas, feature more contemporary designs such as open countertops and tilted displays where staff easily pull out basket meals and replace them, similar to fast-food restaurants. “We’re moving away from the old-style snack bar to more of a grill,” Konarik says.

In addition, the cafeterias feature bright tile designs that have replaced painted cinderblock walls and plain, stainless-steel counters. Drop-down metal lights serve as heat lamps but also add a decorative touch. The cafeteria also features a more self-serve design, although the stations are still manned. And, similar to T.C. Williams, cameras are set up to help minimize shrinkage.

Although fryers are not used in elementary schools, they are used in the high schools. Still, the Houston schools offer a large number of healthy items like baked chicken, vegetables and potatoes, spaghetti, wrap sandwiches and fish tacos. “Eventually within another year or two, we won’t have fryers in our schools,” Konarik says.

Konarik and Jonen both say that for them, energy efficiency is of great concern. For Jonen, it’s a bit more of a concern. Rising energy costs amidst an already constrained school budget have prompted her district to have a maintenance worker or another staff member make sure that at the end of the day, all the lights, equipment, computers and all other forms of electricity are turned off. Buying energyefficient equipment is also important. Although the equipment costs more initially, Jonen believes it will save the district significant energy costs over time. With K-12 school foodservice programs becoming this detail-oriented, it’s no wonder the average school cafeteria has morphed from dismal and drab to efficient, high-tech and high-quality.