I recently won an award. National-level coolness. This is a first for me.
It’s humbling to be honored for just being yourself and trying new things. I’ve been a chef for over 3 decades and in child nutrition for 12 of those years but this is my third year as a director. I’ve got an amazing network of other food service professionals, locally and nationally, that inspire me every day to do everything I can to support our students. We should all be proud of the work we do every day to try to bring beautiful and nutritious foods to our communities for only pennies. I’m blessed with a food service team that’s got so much heart and passion for this job, so we’re out here fighting this good fight together. As chefs, directors, and FSAs we may not always agree on the best methods but we know why we’re doing this work and we see we aren’t alone.
These are kids just being kids and we get to fuel them. We get to try EVERYDAY to be the best part of their day, and then tomorrow, and then the day after that.
The two worst enemies of school food service are “fish in a barrel” and “good enough”. Students may not be allowed off campus but they can go elsewhere, anytime they aren’t with us. They can bring their own foods and circumvent our systems altogether. Every day we have to earn their trust, respect, and hunger. Just because they’re hungry doesn’t automatically mean they’re going to take what we’re providing, and that’s our biggest challenge. I’ve seen students go all day just to hit the convenience store or QSR on the corner. I’ve seen schools getting third-party deliveries because the students dialed it up on their phones. They’ll find a way. We have a duty to impress everyone that comes through, including staff, faculty, adults. They’ll always have a choice and we need to earn that from them.
As a culinary trainer I used to always ask the new hires, “Who here is a professional cook?”. I’d look around and see fast food or retail, retirees, and returning-to-work parents. They were every variation under the sun and only with the extremely rare exception did anyone raise a hand. They had no faith or confidence in themselves, they didnt see themselves as cooks. But by simply being employed by FNS, wearing the department or school colors, they had become cooks in the crucible of simple training and culinary expectation.
Some do take longer than others to get there, of course. Sometimes, they just want an easy job. That’s okay. There’s plenty of other jobs for them to try, but for the ones who want to stick around and give it their all I think we owe it to the not only our customers but also our staff to give them every resource, every benefit, every mote of effort to bring the best food possible, given absolutely ludicrous hurdles like razor thin margins, mounting costs, and nutritional roadblocks. This is where Bob Ross comes in.
In my first life I was a traditional artist. I watched a lot of tv as a kid, especially PBS. I have purchased so many fan brushes in my lifetime but still never really mastered that majestic fir tree. Bob could do it, but mostly I loved that he made you feel like you could do it. He’d name the exotic colors with labels like alizarin crimson, prussian blue. He’d show you how he mixed it and put it on the brush or palette knife. Most importantly, he’d take away your fear of failing.
If you beat people with their mistakes, no matter how small, you just shut them down. They close off and it becomes really hard to win them back. Really hard. They’ll hate the way you made them feel every minute that they’re working beside you and that means you’ll never get their best. Everyone makes a mistake, some way more often than others. The important thing now is how do we fix it and prevent it from happening again. Do they blame others or do they own it and move forward?
Do they try to hide it or do they ask for help?
Are they a problem in your own program or is this a happy accident we can learn from and build better?
What are we doing next?
If someone refuses to learn, refuses to grow, they still need to be held responsible. Responsibility is different than fault. Responsibility is earned, and then re-earned as needed. Saying ‘your fault’ is a powerplay, and people know it. It’s cheap and self-aggrandizing. I try to be better than that, better than all the chefs and admins that only wanted to hold everyone back so they could be up front. That’s not responsible, and it doesn’t earn trust or create something new and wonderful.
Always be moving forward and embrace your mistakes. Own them. They’re teaching you something wonderful and important. If you aren’t moving forward, you are -at best- just standing still.
I picked a smaller district because a director I knew in San Diego said it’s the best way to learn the ropes by doing ALL THE THINGS. Larger districts are necessarily specialized. I’d never touched a free & reduced application in ten years and had no idea what verification meant. I also wanted to shorten development time to a few days or weeks so I can capitalize on them right away, and find what works for our industry. With even a mid-sized district of only 40 or so schools, getting an idea from whiteboard to production could take 18 months or more. Though it sometimes comes at the cost of my own sanity, it’s rewarding to see my ideas on management, game theory, culinary development, and even menu or serving methods in a time frame that allows for organic, responsive feedback and improvement. I won an innovative idea award in 2017 and 2019 from the FSNA, but it only heightened my hunger for improving what we do.
This award tells me I may be on the right track, after all. It was a big risk to move 1800 miles into a new market with a team I don’t know, leaving behind my brokers and distributors and buying group partners but it was clear to others before it was apparent to me that I was ready to try a role as a food & nutrition director. I’m thankful for the people that help, guide, and support me as a culinarian and an administrator. I’m glad you’ve got my back in trying to leave all of this a little better than I found it.
Thank you.
