At Meade Middle School, students are lining up in the cafeteria for lunch. Grabbing trays and chatting with their friends, they enter the serving line and are met with a rainbow of fruits, vegetables, and creative entrées. A far cry from the “Mystery Meat” lunches served in pop culture, today’s menu offers Grilled Chicken Salad, Yogurt Parfait, Hamburgers, Popcorn Chicken, and Spicy Chicken Sandwich.
Inside the kitchen, Judy Sowers is slicing strawberries for a second batch of yogurt parfaits, a new menu item from last year and a particular favorite among her students. With the last of the strawberries cut, Judy looks over the service line, checking to see if any trays need to be refilled or wiped down. One of the 120 Café Managers (also known as Food Service or Lunch Managers) in Anne Arundel County, Judy is responsible for the day-to-day operation of her school’s cafeteria and for assisting with lunch operations at her Satellite Schools, the smaller schools within her community. From supervising food preparation and service, to managing her Food Service team of nine, Judy is driven by the mission to give all children access to food that is healthy and flavorful.
As with any food service industry, the success of her cafeteria depends on the satisfaction of the customer. “What goes out of here is a reflection on us,” says Judy, who will hold back a tray if the food is overcooked. From the quality of food to the friendliness of service, students need a good experience to want to come back and buy lunch each day. And to help create this good experience, developing a menu that is both healthy and enticing is key.
Not your parent’s school lunch
Across our cafeterias, the variety of entrée items offered during school lunch has grown exponentially over the past few years. Responding to the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 and revised nutritional standards from the Department of Agriculture (USDA), AACPS Food and Nutrition Services (FNS) has developed a range of new recipes, from Pepperoni Stromboli to Cherry Blossom Chicken, that are healthy and appealing. These recipes, which are compiled and shared with every Café Manager, take both nutritional guidelines and cost-effectiveness into consideration and detail everything from how each item should be made to how it should be served on the plate. Everything is prepared in measured quantities and many of the food products are made specifically by manufacturers to meet AACPS’s specifications. Recipes are then combined and heated at school, ensuring that the nutritional value and serving size of meals served at Brooklyn Park Elementary School are identical to those served at Lothian Elementary School.
Because the success of a cafeteria is driven by customer satisfaction, FNS is always on the lookout for items to spice up the lunch line. Café Managers are encouraged to share their own ideas and many recipes now available in all schools were first developed by AACPS Café Managers. When a new recipes is ready to be rolled out to schools, it undergoes a taste-test with AACPS students. If our kids do not like it, it will not make it onto the menu.
Increasing student choice in the lunchroom doesn’t just lead to good business—it also broadens student’s understanding of what a healthy meal should look like. Following USDA guidelines, all meals include 2 ounces of protein, 2 ounces of whole grain rich (at least 51% of whole grain) products, and a minimum of ½ cup of either fruits or vegetables. In addition, every meal must adhere to strict limits on calories, sodium levels, and fats. But while all of these guidelines have made school lunch healthier, it is the increased focus on fruits and vegetables that has allowed AACPS cafeterias to transform.
Encouraging students to taste the rainbow
In South Shore Elementary School, Café Manager Liz Sorensen sets up the fruit and vegetable display in her serving line. Next to the chilled containers of vegetables showcasing everything from celery to green peppers, Liz arranges her fruit bowl. Using the watermelon as a bowl, Liz fills the display with a mix of watermelon, kiwi, oranges, cantaloupe, and strawberries.
Under the revised guidelines, schools across the country are required to offer more fruits and vegetables with every lunch. Taking this message to heart, AACPS has gone above and beyond to give our students access to fruits and veggies. While all schools are required to offer at least two fresh fruits and three fresh vegetable options every day, Café Managers are encouraged to expand their selection when choosing from over 25 different fresh foods, based on what is in season, from nectarines to asparagus, grapefruit to summer squash. This wide selection of fruits and vegetables, coupled with support from FNS, has empowered all Café Managers to flourish creatively within their own kitchens. “Now we can do so much more and it makes it so much fun,” says Liz, pointing to the purple cauliflower she has out in celebration of the Ravens and the start of the football season.
With such a wide selection to choose from, students are encouraged to take more than their mandated ½ cup serving. Through the Unlimited Fruits and Vegetables initiative, students may take up to two cups of fruits and vegetables without any change to the cost of the meal. While it may sound obvious to encourage students to eat more fruits and vegetables, Anne Arundel County Public Schools is one of the only districts in the country to give students this level of access to fresh food.
Café Managers and their staff also regularly encourage students to try new foods as well. Through the monthly Tasting of the Rainbow program, students can try free samples of different, locally grown fruits and vegetables like corn on the cob, pumpkin, and yellow tomatoes. For many, this program offers students their first opportunity to see these types of foods, let alone try them. But once they taste it and like it, it expands their horizons of what they can ask for in the grocery store.
By going the extra mile in school, AACPS is helping students learn to expect fruits and vegetables as a part of every meal, changing not only the culture of school lunch, but of meal time in general. Especially at the elementary school level, almost every Café Manager can share a story of a student who went home telling their parents about Brussel sprouts and kiwi; and just like that, families are able to have different conversations about the types of foods they can put on the dinner table.
The business of school lunch
Across the county at Chesapeake High School, Café Manager Sandy Shore is looking back and forth between her inventory list and the menu for the weeks ahead. Going through the list, she makes a note of ingredients she will need to prepare the 1,700-2,200 meals she expects to serve next week. With her list set for her food order, Sandy checks in with her staff who are well into setting up for the day’s first lunch. As she walks through the kitchen, each member of her nine café staff has a specific job from roasting asparagus to filling condiments to arranging the fruit. Because these jobs rotate weekly, each member of the team knows how to do every job. This ensures that there is always a back-up in the kitchen and allows each café worker to gain a wide range of experience in case they choose to move up the career ladder, something that Sandy always encourages.
Sandy also stops to check in at the kitchen’s logbook to make sure that all of the foods’ temperature is noted and that the quantity of each item on the serving line has been recorded. At the end of the lunch period, the team will count the number of each item left over to log the total amount of each entrée and side item sold. Sandy will reconcile these records against the computer management system that records meals as students walk through the line and the balance of each register to calculate sales at the end of the day.
Sandy operates her kitchen like a business because that is precisely what it is. Food and Nutrition Services receives 0 dollars from the AAACPS budget. Instead, along with funding from the federal and state government, 39% of the AACPS Food and Nutrition Services budget is generated by sales.
But despite the technical components of the role, Café Managers know that their job is, and always will be, about the kids. This is why they are so willing to go above and beyond to help the students in their care. From arriving at school early to serve school-wide continental breakfast, to getting to know students as they pass through the line, to holding one-on-one consultations with parents when a child has a food allergy, Café Managers and their staff are there to make lunch a positive experience for the children in their school. At Chesapeake High School, where some students choose a serving line because of the specific employees who work there, this commitment is obvious.
More than a smile, this team also gives students one of a child’s most basic needs—access to healthy and affordable food. With 33% of students in AACPS qualifying for Free and Reduced Meals (FARMs), helping students meet this need is becoming even more important. So, in response to this challenge, Food Service teams throughout the county go above and beyond to bring food to our children even beyond the last lunch bell rings and summer begins .
Serving our students 12 months of the year
On Wednesday morning in the middle of July, students line up next to a school bus parked along the curb in a community near Fort Meade. As a boy walks up holding the hand of the girl next to him, Tommy Boehm says, “Why Hello Bradon*, would you and your sister like crispy chicken or pizza for lunch today?” Handing out two foil-wrapped packages of chicken, Tommy sees a group of three students walking towards the bus and pulls out three cheese pizzas. Regulars on the route, Tommy knows that these students are Muslim and do not eat meat. He always makes sure to set aside the vegetarian option for them when they come by.
Part of the AACPS Summer Meals Program that (through the support of the USDA’s Summer Food Service Program) provides free breakfast and lunch during the summer, this is Mobile Meals. Mobile Meals consists of two buses in the county serving hot lunch to any child aged 2-18 in communities with high economic need. Meals are served Monday through Thursday all summer long. While for some students this program offers an easy way to get a healthy meal, for others, Tommy and his team provide the only meal that a child may eat all day. In 2015, the Summer Meals program served over 87,000 meals including approximately 11,500 meals through the Mobile Meals program alone.
For Tommy, who works as the Café Manager at Nantucket Elementary School during the school year, managing the Mobile Meals bus is the best part of his job. From the way students run to line up as the bus arrives to the hugs that they give Tommy and his two colleagues when they get their food, it is clear how important this program is to the community.
No matter where they are, the dedication of Café Managers and their team is unmistakable. Whether in the cafeteria or the community, students walking through the line are met with smiling faces and employees who know their name, ask how their day is going, and encourage them to try a new item on the menu. The interaction may only last two minutes, but in those two minutes, these students know there is someone else in the building that cares about their health and well-being and who will always go the extra mile to serve.