Food & Nutrition [Volume 13, Number 1]

              January 1983 Volume 13 Number 1
his issue is about sharing ideas, skills,
and resources in the child nutrition
programs. We begin with a look at
of the resources developed through the
Nutrition Education and Training
Program (NET). Many states are
sharing their materials with USDA's
Food and Nutrition Information Center
in Beltsville, Maryland.
•••••••••••
We also see how technical assistance
and teamwork are helping school
districts save financially troubled food
services. Experts in finance and
accounting offer tips for school lunch
managers who want to sharpen their
managerial skills.
•••••••••••
Merchandising is as important in school
food service as it is in the private sector.
We look at two award-winning food
service operations-one in a
corporation, one in a school-and see
what makes the customers keep
coming back.
States share "Out of the projects have come a
t • 1 f lot of good materials," says USDA rna ena S rOm nutritionist Martha Poolton, "and
the Nutrition we're eager to see them used." Pool­ton,
who is helping FNIC director
Education and Robyn Frank with the collection, has
been encouraging states to send in Training Program samples of their NET materials and
1-----------------1 she's pleased with the response.
Sharing resources can be as
enriching as it is economical. When
you're starting something new, it
makes sense to look around and see
what other people have done, what
resources are available. If you're
involved in training school food
service personnel or want to help
children learn about food and nutri­tion
, a good place to start is UDSA's
Food and Nutrition Information Cen­ter
(FNIC) in Beltsville, Maryland.
FNIC is a national repository and
lending library that contains print
and audiovisual materials on nutri­tion
education, food service man­agement,
human nutrition, and con­sumer
education. The center's
materials are available free of
charge to people who work with
food and nutrition programs. Among
those who can use the library's ser­vices
are school administrators,
teachers, food service managers,
day care center staff and state
government agencies.
Among the materials the center
has received are curriculum guides,
student workbooks, slide presenta­tions,
plans for community activities,
films, posters and public service
announcements. "All of the materi­als
provide activities and lessons
Art, cooking, songs, and
games are part of NET ac­tivities
for preschoolers in
Artesia, California.
This year FNIC is adding to the
collection sample copies of more
than 400 resource materials devel­oped
by state education agencies,
universities, and school districts par­ticipating
in the Nutrition Education
and Training Program (NET).
Through NET, USDA has provided
funds to states for a wide range of
activities designed to improve
school food services and increase
children's awareness of food and
health. Many communities have
used NET funds as seed money for
activities they are now continuing
that can be used as they ar~e.~o~:r _lllll .. •••••••••••••• .. llli
adapted to fit the needs of
on their own.
States decide how they will use
NET funds, and the approaches
vary. Some state education agencies
have given small grants to individual
school districts, while others have
taken a more centralized approach
and planned statewide projects.
Some states have contracted with
universities for special services, like
developing courses for school food
service people.
2
school districts," Poolton says.
The FNIC staff is now developing
an annotated listing of the materials.
Some of them are already part of the
library's collection and are available
for borrowing. Others will be added
within the next few months. In all,
close to 50 states have sent in one
or more of the materials they devel­oped
for NET. If you qualify for
FNIC's services, you may borrow
these materials.
You may also find you'd like to
have some of the materials for your
own collection. Many states have
materials available for sale, and the
annotated listing FNIC is putting
together will include information on
sales.
You can also find out how to pur­chase
materials by contacting a
state's NET coordinator. FNIC staff
can give you the names, addresses,
and phone numbers of state NET
coordinators.
On the following pages we take a
look at four NET projects and see
how state and local coordinators
developed materials for them. We
also briefly describe a variety of ma­terials
from several other states.
Food and Nutrition
I
1
I
(
A .Minnesota school
district develops a
special curriculum for
third and sixth grade
students
Schools in Rochester, Minnesota,
developed some unusual materials
in a project that integrated nutrition
into existing programs in science,
health, and language arts. Donna
Stanger, who directed the project,
drew on top nutritionists at the
nearby Mayo Clinic, a nationally
known medical facility, to get the
best information and advice. The
result was a 3- to 4-week nutrition
curriculum for third and sixth grad­ers.
The curriculum is still being
used in Rochester and other dis­tricts
in the state.
"We saw a need to teach nutrition,
but the curriculum was full," says
Stanger. 'Teachers would say, 'We'll
add nutrition, but what will you take
away?' Integrating nutrition into
existing subjects gave us more effi­cient
teaching time."
Here's how the curriculum works:
In the morning, students might do a
science experiment that involves
food . The experiment would be rein­forced
later in the day, in English
class. For their grammar exercise,
they would add punctuation to a
sentence about the science experi­ment.
"The unit really pulls together
all that the children are learning,"
says Stanger.
As part of the curriculum, Stanger
developed three simple computer
programs. Students throughout
Minnesota have access to micro­computers
to use as learning tools.
The first computer program
teaches kids to get the most for their
calories. Students type into the
computer their diet for a day. The
screen then "talks" with the stu­dents,
telling them about the foods
they've eaten and what they could
have substituted to add more variety
and nutritional value. The second
program combines diet and exercise
to show how the two relate. The
third teaches very young children
about food groups.
Another part of the curriculum
has third graders researching foods,
using a special encyclopedia devel-
January 1983
oped for the project. "We found that
the existing research materials were
all too advanced for third graders to
do research," says Stanger, "so we
developed a food encyclopedia with
59 volumes, each one on a separate
food." Students use the volumes to
learn about particular foods, then do
oral and written reports.
A college student did the artwork
for the encyclopedia. "We paid her
for her work," Stanger says, "but her
rates were much more reasonable
than a commercial artist's would
have been." Although the encyclo­pedia
is written at a third grade
level, secondary and high school
students can also use it if their read­ing
skills aren't high enough for
other materials.
The computer programs devel­oped
for the Rochester project have
been revised for wider use through­out
the state by the Minnesota Edu­cational
Computing Consortium
(MECC). MECC is funded by the
state legislature and provides both
computers and educational compu­ter
programs free to its members.
Members include school districts,
community colleges, and the Uni­versity
of Minnesota.
Those who do not belong to the
consortium can buy MECC's com­puter
programs for $10.00 within
Minnesota, $29.95 outside the state.
MECC also publishes a newsletter
and a catalog. Materials FNIC has
from the Rochester project include:
• A Cross-Discipline Approach to
Nutrition Education (Grade 3 and
Grade 6)
• Teacher's Handbook
• Food Encyclopedia
Computer programs are
available from:
Minnesota Educational
Computing Consortium
2520 Broadway Drive
St. Paul, Minnesota 55113
Telephone: (612) 376-1134
For more information on the
proj'ect, contact
Donna Stanger
903 West Center Street
Lincoln School
Rochester, Minnesota 55901
Telephone: (507) 281-6007
A Massachusetts
community agency
teaches children
about food and
dental health
The Community Art Center in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, used
their NET grant to help develop a
traveling nutrition and dental pro­gram
for kids. It's appropriately
called Big Mouth, and the focus of
the program is literally a big mouth.
Imagine an enormous foam
rubber mouth measuring 4 feet high
by 12 feet by 10 feet. Imagine a
toothbrush large enough to brush
those teeth. Imagine flossing the
teeth with a giant rope. Now imagine
the reaction of children when they
see Big Mouth up close.
The Community Art Center is a
nonprofit community agency that
offers, among other services, an
afterschool day care program for
Big Mouth-an enormous foam rubber mouth
big enough for kids to stand in-is helping
Massachusetts children learn about nutrition
and dental health.
3
low-income families. Michelle Sam­our,
a program research developer
at the center, designed and put
together the Big Mouth program
with help from other staff members
and the children. In addition to NET
funds, the center received money for
the project from private foundations,
local dentists, and dental suppliers.
As Samour explains, the idea
behind the program is that children
learn more when they feel involved
and are having fun. Children get to
climb inside Big Mouth and floss the
teeth. They play games, act out
plays, and use a multilingual color­ing
book to learn about food and
dental health. The coloring book
was created by children at the cen­ter
and is in English, French, and
Spanish.
Although Big Mouth started at the
Community Art Center, it travels a
lot. "It's designed to be as accessi­ble
to as many kids as possible,"
says Samour. During the past 2
years, Art Center children and staff
have taken Big Mouth to several
other afterschool centers, to a kid's
fair sponsored by a popular radio
station, to the annual meeting of the
Massachusetts Dental Society, and
to the Children's Museum in Boston
during the museum's food fair.
Everywhere Big Mouth goes,
children respond to the fun and
playful approach to learning. "Chil­dren
often have never seen a mouth
so close," says Samour. "They now
understand what it means to floss."
At one agency, kids received tooth
brushes and toothpaste during the
program. When it ended, the kids
raced to the bathroom to brush their
teeth.
In a game called the "Good Snack
4
Relay Race," kids choose snacks.
They play the game once, then get
an explanation of what makes var­ious
snacks more nutritious than
others. "When they play the game a
second time, the results are excit­ing,"
says Samour. "Kids show a
much better sense of what foods are
better snacks."
For a while, as funds allowed, the
Art Center staff worked with other
agencies free of cost. Now they ask
agencies to pay a small fee that cov­ers
their costs. "We've found that
when an agency has a financial
commitment they also have more of
a commitment to keeping Big
Mouth's experiences in their on­going
curriculum," she says.
When visiting other centers,
Samour likes to work with the staff
beforehand. She says that children
retain information and respond bet­ter
when teachers have the knowl­edge
to reinforce what children
learn. "We found it important to de­velop
a small package of materials
for teachers in other centers," says
Samour. "We designed the materials
to fit into their ongoing curriculum."
In addition to the materials for
center staffs and the coloring book
for children, the Art Center also de­veloped
curricula for preschoolers,
teenagers, and populations with
special needs. FNIC has in its
collection:
• Big Mouth {Boca Grande, La
Grande Bouche) Coloring Book.
For more information, contact:
Michelle Samour
Community Art Center
31 Newtowne Center
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Telephone: (617) 864-3840
for Oregon, developed the theme
more than 5 years ago, in hopes that
staff and students would all take an
active interest in nutrition and their
own health.
One school district that took the
"wellness" theme to heart is North
Clackamas, just outside Portland.
With seed money from NET, the
North Clackamas School District
involved teachers, secretaries,
cooks, principals, parents, and cen­tral
office administrators in a variety
of health awareness activities.
School officials felt that if the staff
became involved and interested,
nutrition and health would receive
the necessary attention in the cur­riculum
and classes.
"We also felt that if we were going
to teach nutrition in the classroom,
we needed to take a stand and be
models to students outside the class­room,"
says Megan Walth, who put
together the various activities.
More than 500 people took part in
the activities during the 2 years they
were held. Health professionals from
the community helped out by doing
a "needs assessment" of each partic­ipant
before the program began.
Participants then learned about
nutrition, physical fitness, and stress
management through 10 weeks of
workshops. Each participant chose
a nutrition or health-related goal
and worked toward that end.
From these workshops, the North
Clackamas school district developed
comprehensive lesson plans that
can be used with students or adults.
They are compiled in two books
called Health Education Activities
and Health Education Activities,
Supplement 1981. The lessons are
adaptable for any grade level and
provide enjoyable, hands-on activi-
1------------~-~ ties for children.
In addition to the workshops for 1---------------i school staff and parents, the district
Oregon schools work
to interest teachers,
parents and business
leaders
In Oregon, individual school dis­tricts
received NET funds, largely to
spread the theme of "well ness"
through schools and school cafete­rias.
Len Tritsch, NET coordinator
also sponsored a separate program
that brought together school admin­istrators
and local business execu­tives
for five luncheon sessions.
Walth arranged the sessions
through the Chamber of Commerce.
For this program, North Clackamas
produced a guide called Staff
Development Program in Nutrition
and Health for Administrators and
Business Persons. Like the lesson
plans, the guide can be adapted for
use in other communities.
Food and Nutrition
While North Clackamas no longer
receives funds through NET, health
awareness activities continue.
Because the 1980-82 activities were
so successful, Walth put together a
district-wide employee program for
this year and last, using only com­munity
resources. The workshops
cost $2.00 for each employee. This
covers the cost of materials. A local
hospital is donating materials and
the staff to teach the workshops, at
no cost. Topics include food and
nutrition, health, family fitness, and
safety in the workplace.
Teachers, administrators,
and food service staff remain
interested in the health and
nutrition awareness campaign.
"Naturally," says Walth , "this
extends to the classroom and
lunchroom."
Walth and others have developed
a district-wide policy on nutritional
practices. The policy outlines the
kinds of foods schools can sell or
serve outside the classroom. "We
felt policy was set by USDA for the
lunch program. We wanted to go
beyond that," Walth says. "The pol­icy
is based on a formula the
Oregon Public Health Association
came up with. It has to do with
equating calories to nutrients-the
nutrient density concept. What we're
aiming for is variety-to give kids a
choice."
The policy affects such activities
as classroom parties, food sales for
fund-raisers, and food sales at
games and carnivals. In practice, it
means when kids sell items to raise
money, they're now thinking about
what they sell. If a snack isn't nutri­tious,
they'll look for something else
to sell.
To help stress the policy at the
elementary level, schools have made
special efforts to get parents' sup­port.
They've invited them to work­shops
and given them recipes high
in nutrients to try at home. Now
when children bring in food for
school parties, parents send cheese
squares, fruits, and vegetables as
well as the traditional cookies and
cupcakes.
"It's rewarding to see people real­ize
we ought to have choices," says
Walth.
A teen-teacher in Connecticut uses paper cut­outs
to explain what foods are good sources of
vitamin A. (See page 6 )
January 1983
FNIC has the following materials
from the North Clackamas project:
• Health Education Activities and
Health Education Activities Supple­ment
1981
• A Staff Development Program in
Nutrition and Health for Administra­tors
and Business Persons
For additional information,
contact:
Megan Walth
North Clackamas
School District
4444 Southeast
Lake Road
Milwaukie,
Oregon 97222
Telephone:
') (503) 653-3067
Connecticut plans
materials and projects
for use throughout
the state
Unlike many other states, Con­necticut
took a centralized approach
in using NET funds. All materials,
curricula, and training programs
were developed at the state level.
Before deciding how to use NET
monies, state NET coordinator Lois
Selnau surveyed local communities
to find out what their needs were
and what they were already doing
with nutrition education and food
service training. The state education
agency then contract­ed
with the Depart­ment
of Nutritional
Science at the
University of Connecticut to de­velop
a wide range of materials.
The materials have been used
throughout the state in programs
that involve nutrition learning activi­ties
for students and in-service train­ing
for school food service workers.
The state also has made available a
3-credit graduate course to home
economics and other teachers.
Many teachers, Selnau reports, have
taken advantage of this.
Among the materials developed
for elementary schools is a kit called
Merchandising School Lunch: A
Nutrition Approach. The kit contains
materials for school lunch manag­ers,
teachers, parents, and students
in kindergarten through grade 4. It
includes a 4-week promotional pro­gram,
posters, nutrient game cards,
handouts, recipes, and nutrient
stickers promoting a sampling of
nutritious foods. Tests have shown
that nutrition awareness and lunch
participation have increased in
schools using the kit, while plate
waste has decreased.
The state also developed two sets
of six lessons each for grades 1
through 6. These are called the Nut­rient
Approach to Teaching Nutri­tion.
The units make use of creative
teaching methods to make nutrition
come alive in the classroom.
One approach that met with con­siderable
success in Connecticut
was "teen teaching." In several
communities, selected teenage stu­dents
were trained to teach nutrition
to lower grade students. The teen­agers
used puppets, games, hand­outs,
and food characters to make
learning about nutrition fun. While
most of the student teachers were
eighth through eleventh graders, in
Manchester some exceptional sixth
graders were trained to teach nutri­tion
to first graders.
The state developed two sets of
lessons for the teen-teaching proj­ect.
The packages have six lessons
each and are called Teaching Teens
to Teach Nutrition in Grades 1
through 6: A Cross-Age Approach to
Nutrition Education.
For secondary schools, Connecti­cut
developed a series of nutrition
modules, each teaching different
nutrition concepts. Each module
contains lessons that last 40 to 50
minutes and contain a variety of
6
learning experiences. They include
tests for evaluating students' knowl­edge
before and after the lessons,
hand-outs for classroom use, and
resource lists of printed and audio­visual
aids. The modules may be
used in various high school courses,
such as health, home economics,
social studies, family living, and
physical education.
• Snacking and Food Choices helps
teenagers grow more aware of the
importance of including healthful
foods in their diets.
• Supermarket Sleuth helps stu­dents
become smart shoppers.
• Food, Energy,·and Fitness teaches
the importance of physical fitness
and exercise and how these relate to
diet and weight control.
• Nutrition During Pregnancy and
Lactation makes students more
aware of the relationship between
diet, a healthy pregnancy, and
breastfeeding.
For school food service training,
the state developed a Food Man­agement
Training Manual. The
manual includes 16 lesson plans and
numerous handouts to help school
food service workers improve their
lunch programs.
Materials FNIC has from Connect­icut
include:
• Merchandising School Lunch: A
Nutrition Approach
• Nutrient Approach to Teaching
Nutrition (Grades 1-6)
• Teaching Teens to Teach Nutri­tion
in Grades 1 through 6
• Food Management Training
Manual
• A Nutrition Model for Secondary
Schools: Supermarket Sleuth;
Snacking and Food Choices; Food,
Energy, and Fitness; Nutrition Dur­ing
Pregnancy and Lactation
• Vegetable Magic: A Preschool and
Kindergarten Nutrition Education
Source Book
For more information, contact:
Lois B. Selnau
Nutrition Education and Training
Program
State Department of Education
Child Nutrition Programs
P.O. Box 2219
Hartford, Connecticut 06115
Telephone: (202) 566-7311
Highlights from other states
Most of the materials FNIC has
received are for nutrition education
and training programs in schools.
However, the center also has mate­rials
for teaching children and staff
in child care centers, day care
homes, and institutions for the handi­capped.
Here are highlights of a
variety of materials from eight
states:
Nutrition Super Stars (Arizona)
A self-contained curriculum kit for
teaching upper elementary school
students. The kit contains 20 class
plans and uses a team approach to
nutrition-fitness education. Team
members are the classroom teacher,
food service director, and school
nurse. The team members' curricu­lum
guide provides direction for
both student activities and training
plans for team members.
The nutrition activities in the kit
are designed to be integrated with
math, science, language arts, health,
and social studies. A workbook con­tains
44 well-illustrated duplicating
masters for student activities.
•••••••••••
Specialty Menus for School Lunch
(New Hampshire)
A set of several packets with spe­cialty
menus for school lunch in
elementary schools. The packets
include menus, recipes, decorating
suggestions, task cards, letters to
parents, and resource lists.
Food and Nutrition
Nutrition Education and Food Serv­ice
Management: A Guide for Day
Care Personnel (New Jersey)
A handbook for day care center
staff-teachers, teacher assistants,
food service personnel-and parents
of children. The book is divided into
four sections with information on:
basic nutrition, nutrition education
activities for children, food service
management, and ways to involve
parents. It provides seasonal menus
and recipes for many foods speci­fied
in the menus. The 214-page
book comes in two volumes. Volume
1 is in English. Volume 2 is in
Spanish.
•••••••••••
Teaching About Nutrition
(Colorado)
A resource kit for use by school
food service personnel, teachers,
and students. The kit provides mate­rials
that can be used in classrooms
as well as with PTA, clubs, and other
adult groups.
There are 12 packets in all, each
with a different theme. Titles in­clude:
"Getting Started," "Bulletin
Board Ideas and Exhibits," "Activi­ties
for Grades 4-12," "Meet the Nut­rients,"
"Discovering Foods," "Food
Tasting Experiences," and "Nutrition
in School Meals." The kit is attrac­tively
presented in a specially de­signed
cardboard file box. The box
includes transparencies and masters
for reproduction. ...........
Florida Nutrition Education: A Basic
Skills Approach (Florida)
A curriculum series with learning
activities for kindergarten through
grade 9 students. The learning activ­ities
are designed to reinforce basic
skills in math, the language arts,
science, and social studies, while
teaching students about food and
nutrition. There are eight booklets in
all, separated into different sections
for elementary, middle school, and
junior high school levels. The book­lets
are unbound, with hole-punched
pages that fit into a standard loose­leaf
binder.
January 1983
Sports Nutrition Kit (Arizona)
A kit for coaches, physical educa­tion
teachers, and health profes­sionals.
The 136-page kit includes
information on food, nutrition, and
diet, and their impact on exercise,
physical fitness, and sports perform­ance.
It comes with two posters. ...........
Nutrition Education and Training
Curriculum for the Profoundly,
Severely, and Moderately Retarded
(New Jersey)
A curriculum for teaching men­tally
handicapped children about
food and nutrition. Materials stress
developing basic skills in several
areas, such as food preparation,
mealtime social skills, kitchen
safety, and sanitation.
NUTRIT.ION
Breadfruit Bread and Papaya Pie
(Trust Territory of the Pacific Island)
A book of recipes from Micronesia
and the Outer Pacific. The introduc­tion
to this 340-page book describes
cultural food practices-collecting,
preparing, and serving food. Foods
that are generally unfamiliar to
mainland Americans are described
and pictured in photographs and
drawings. Recipes are grouped by
type of food: fish and seafood, fruit,
meat and eggs, vegetables, and
cereals and grains. The book comes
with 11 related posters. ...........
Nutrition Bingo (Trust Territory of
the Pacific Islands)
A bingo game that uses foods
instead of numbers. The game is
played on 8%-inch by 11-inch cards
that are beautifully illustrated with
pictures of foods. Many of the foods
are native to the Trust Territory. The
game includes instructions.
. .......... .
Sports Nutrition (Ohio)
A kit that teaches the importance
of nutrition in sports. It is directed at
secondary school athletes. The kit
includes a teacher's guide. Lessons
are in four parts with each part
using a section of the teacher's
guide, a film strip, and a cassette.
The four parts are: Part of the Win­ning
Combination, Losing and Gain­ing
Body Weight, Nutrition Con­cerns
of the Female Athlete, and
The Pre-game Meal.
The kit also contains four posters
that explain various points on
weight loss and gain, range of body
fat, and iron content of foods. The
kit includes a skinfold caliper.
7
Food Service Training Modules
(Arizona)
A set of curriculum modules for
use in training school food service
employees. Each module is pack­aged
separately and contains ten 2-
hour lessons. The lessons are ideal
for the inexperienced teacher. The
package includes: learning activi­ties;
prototypes for transparencies
and handouts; and evaluation stra­tegies
cued to content outlines. The
modules are arranged in five levels,
each level building on the knowl­edge
gained in the previous level.
There is information on manage­ment
as well as nutrition.
•••••••••••
Good Nutrition Commercials
(Arizona)
A series of lively audio announce­ments
schools can play on their
public address systems or use in
individual classrooms. The an­nouncements
are designed to teach
students the nutrition basics and
encourage them to eat lunch at
school.
There are two sets of announce­ments:
one for elementary schools,
and one for secondary schools.
Each consists of a cassette tape,
with sixty 1-minute announcements,
and a program booklet.
8
Nutrition Education Training Manual
for Family Day Care Providers (New
Jersey)
A resource for child care person­nel
working with day care providers.
The manual contains lessons on: the
functions and sources of nutrients;
nutritional needs of infants; meal
planning and food purchasing; and
nutrition education for children. The
manual is in a loose-leaf binder. ...........
Nutrition Activities (Puerto Rico)
Nutrition activities for students, in
both English and Spanish. There are
about eight pages of puzzles and
games that teach various simple
nutrition concepts. ...........
Nutrition in Social Studies
(Wisconsin)
A set of materials that inte­grates
nutrition education into
ki ndergarten-th rough-sixth-grade
social studies. Information is divided
into eight disciplines that have
potential or direct influences on
food choices. Disciplines include
anthropology, sociology, psycho­logy,
economics, political science,
geography, history, and nutrition.
Materials include a curriculum
guide, handouts, quizzes, and addi­tional
information. The curriculum
guide comes in a loose-leaf binder
with lesson plans divided according
to grade levels.
Nutrition and the Arts (Arizona)
A set of nutrition training pack­ages
for child care directors and
personnel. There are 12 packages in
all, designed to teach nutrition prin­ciples
through the fine arts-music,
dance, and the visual arts. The
packages include recipes, games,
and ideas for art projects and other
activities. ...........
To borrow materials or obtain
more information on FNIC, write:
Food and Nutrition Information
Center
National Agricultural Library
Building, Room 304
Beltsville, Maryland 20705
or call: (301) 344-3719
article by Linda Feldman
photos by Tino Serrano
Food and Nutrition
Teamwork makes
a difference for
South Carolina
school districts
When a school district's food serv­ice
department suddenly starts los­ing
money and can't really explain
why to the local school board, what
can the district do? In South Caro­lina,
the answer is just a telephone
call away.
For the past 4 years, the office of
school food services of the South
Carolina department of education
has responded to districts' requests
for help by providing indepth tech­nical
reviews. The reviews are con­ducted
by teams of local, state, and
federal food service specialists.
Teams look
for patterns
A typical South Carolina techni­cal
assistance review begins with a
school district's management staff
filling out a self-evaluation form and
submitting it to the state office of
school food services. Information
recorded on the form includes the
goals of the district food service
operation, the organizational struc­ture,
financial status data, and the
scope of the child nutrition pro­grams
administered in the district.
The information is studied by review
team members before actual site vis­its
are made.
A month after the self-evaluation,
a 3-day on-site review takes place. A
typical review team has 10 to 12
members with varying levels of ex­perience
in food production, finan­cial
management and program man­agement.
Local representatives on
the team are food service directors
from school districts that have
something in common with the dis­trict
being evaluated. For example,
the districts may be the same size or
have the same type of management
structure.
Reviewers visit the majority of a
district's schools, searching for dis­trictwide
patterns that affect the
Schools in Oconee County have found they can
save by using more USDA-donated foods, such
as flour for baking. This was one recommenda­tion
from a technical assistance review com­pleted
3 years ago.
January 1983
food service operation. Three team
members go to each school and
observe. They talk to principals,
students and food service person­nel,
asking a range of questions.
Although each school visit is usually
less than an hour, the three review­ers
are still able to get a compre­hensive
picture of food service from
the time food is purchased until it is
served.
Team members do not use a
standardized form to collect infor­mation.
According to Marci Clark,
chief supervisor of the office of
school food service's auditing and
special services section, the teams
get better results with somewhat
less structure. "Structure dictates
what you're going to come up with,"
she says. "You don't have the flexi­bility
of really looking at the total
picture."
In addition to not using a review
form, team members do not take
notes about their observations while
in a school.
"If reviewers feel they must take
notes, we tell them to either go to
the storeroom where no one will see
or write their notes in the car after
leaving the school," says Vivian
Pilant, state director of school food
services. The rationale for this
approach is twofold, she explains.
Note-taking inhibits responses or
actions of school personnel; and
when a reviewer is busy making
notes, he or she may miss observing
some aspects of the operation.
Despite the lack of a standardized
form, the South Carolina reviews do
have structure. Pilant assigns team
members seven areas, such as man­agement,
facilities and equipment,
and menus and food merchandising,
9
By switching to centralized purchasing and mak­ing
other management changes, Oconee
County schools have cut costs substantially.
to observe. The self-evaluation form
sent out prior to the review also pro­vides
a structured means of obtain­ing
background data on the district's
food service program.
After team members have visited
their assigned schools and the dis­trict
food service office, they meet to
discuss their general impressions of
strengths and weaknesses and to
develop recommendations.
"It's probably one of the most
involved groups of people you'll ever
see," Vivian Pilant states. "The dis­cussion
is filled with 'Oh, we didn't
find that. We found something else.'
And, 'We found the same thing you
found.' Soon the patterns begin to
emerge."
The final report reflects the
consensus of the team. Changes
recommended in the report have no
time limits and require no corrective
action. School districts can freely
choose which recommendations
they will adopt and can establish
their own system of priorities for
change. Pilant personally presents
10
the report to the district's school
board, explaining the previously
unexplainable food service deficits
or other review f indings.
Recommendations
for Oconee County
Among the staunch advocates of
technical assistance reviews are the
food service management staff in
Oconee County, South Carolina.
When they asked for help 3 years
ago, they were facing a $50,000
deficit from the 1978-79 school year,
and the school board was soliciting
bids from food service management
companies.
Today, district officials report a
dramatic difference: by implement­ing
only a few of the team's recom­mendations,
the food service
department has added $184,000 to
the operating funds balance in the
last 3 years. Jim Bridges, Oconee
County's business manager, views
the fiscal recovery as a real
achievement, considering that the
district also had to cope with rising
inflation during the same period.
According to Vivian Pilant, the
food service management structure
in Oconee County led to most of the
district's problems. All 22 schools
were operating independently with
principals and lunchroom managers
making all purchasing and operating
decisions. Although the school
board had hired a food service
director, they gave him no control
over the individual schools; he
served primarily as an advisor to
local managers. After Pilant pre­sented
the report findings, however,
the school board shifted food serv­ice
management responsibilities to
the district level.
"It's logical that management be
provided centrally by staff who are
trained in food service and all
aspects of the school lunch pro­gram,"
says Jim Bridges. "We were
trying to run the program before
with persons trained in educational
administration and with no training
at all in food service." He adds that
subsequent improvements would
not have been possible without the
change to centralized management.
He continues, ''The first year we
standardized menus as a preliminary
step toward controlling food costs.
We couldn't really make manage­ment
decisions without some basis
for comparison. Then the following
Food and Nutrition
J
\
1
I
summer we employed an assistant
food service director, wrote specifi­cations,
compiled a bid list and
began bidding all food purchases,
and wrote operating guidelines for
schools."
Decreasing
meal costs
Oconee County's food service
department is already realizing the
results of centralized purchasing by
bid. Food costs per meal were 47
cents in June 1982 as compared to
54 cents in December 1980. Costs
of individual food items have gone
down, and schools are using more
USDA-donated foods.
The technical assistance review
had revealed that managers were
purchasing commercially prepared
mixes for baked goods even though
unlimited USDA-donated flour was
available to them. Now the food
service director and assistant direc­tor
encourage managers to use
commodities. They've eliminated
purchases of convenience foods,
except those that are labor-efficient.
While the Oconee County food
service department has licked its
deficit problem, staff members are
not stopping there. They plan to
continue implementing the review­ers'
74 recommendations gradually,
improving areas such as cash con­trol,
the commodity delivery system,
and the processing of free and
reduced-price meal applications.
Says Jim Bridges, "The technical
assistance review was very helpful.
It provided us with an alternative to
contracting with a management com­pany
and it brought all our problems
to light at once."
Reviews detect
common problems
Meanwhile, as more technical as­sistance
reviews are conducted in
South Carolina school districts,
Vivian Pilant and her staff are detect­ing
trends in the review findings that
they haven't uncovered in their other
compliance reviews and audits. For
example, low productivity and poor
scheduling have surfaced as prob­lems
in all of the technical assist­ance
reviews. Poor communication
with school boards is still another
common problem.
"Food service directors have
identified finance and accounting as
one of their training needs,"
explains Pilant. "Many don't know
how to budget and how to present
their food service budgets to school
boards in an understandable
manner." As a result, this year the
office of school food services has
developed a training course for food
service directors on recordkeeping
and basic government and food
service accounting. (See article on
page 12.) A portion of the course
deals with preparing budgets and
making budget presentations to
school boards.
Blue-print
for future
While technical assistance reviews
are helping state staff to identify and
address training needs, the review
process is, at the same time, teach­ing
district food service staff how to
evaluate their own operations.
Compliance type reviews, con­ducted
through the years, have
primarily concentrated on whether
regulatory requirements were met­not
whether things could be done
more economically or better. Tech­nical
assistance reviews, on the
other hand, point out operational
aspects that management staff
should monitor. The review reports
describe the strengths and weak­nesses
of each aspect, giving clear
recommendations to a district for
improvements. In short, the reports
offer a blue-print for a district to fol­low
in future years.
One review team member sums up
the technical assistance approach
this way: "The reviews work because
they are positive. People want and
appreciate help. Technical assist­ance
reviews offer that help."
For more information, contact:
Vivian Pilant, Director
Office of School Food Services
State Department of Education
Rutledge Office Building
1429 Senate Street
Columbia, South Carolina 29201
article by Brenda Schuler
photos by Warren Uzzell
The 22 schools in the
district use standard­ized
menus. Switching
to standardized menus
was the first step in con­trolling
tooq costs.
Training helps
managers sharpen
their financial and
accounting skills
School food service directors have
dual roles, as food production and
service managers and as financial
managers. Yet, the role of financial
manager is one for which they often
have no specialized training.
Realizing the local directors' need
for training in financial manage­ment,
some state staffs are now
including in their training programs
more sessions on topics such as
tracking costs, identifying ways to
cut costs, and maintaining account­ability.
In many instances, state
agencies have contracted with local
colleges and universities to provide
this type of training.
For example, when food service
directors in South Carolina identi­fied
finance and accounting as areas
in which they needed training,
Vivian Pilant, director of the state's
office of school food services,
looked for instructors in the field of
finance. She found the special
expertise she sought on the staff of
Clemson University's Office of Pro­fessional
Development and con­tracted
with that office to have a
training program designed specifi­cally
to meet the needs of South
Carolina food service personnel.
Training given
in several parts
Three different training modules
were developed. For school food
service directors, there was a 6-day
seminar designed for presentation in
two 3-day segments. During the first
segment, held in the fall of 1981,
training covered problems and
procedures unique to school food
service. Procedures for internal con­trols,
methods for receiving cash,
accounting for sales, purchasing
and inventory, and acquiring and
depreciating equipment were some
of the issues discussed.
The second segment, held in the
spring, concentrated on needs iden­tified
after the first segment and on
general accounting and internal
control theories applicable to school
food service.
12
The other two training modules
were 1-day seminars. One, "Book­keeping
for the School Food Service
System," was designed to improve
the skills of school food service dis­trict
bookkeepers. The other sem­inar,
for school district business
managers, covered the school food
service accounting system and its
relation to the main school district
accounting system. If they wished,
school food service directors could
attend both of these seminars in
addition to their 6 days of other
training.
Tom Friedlob, David Acker, and
Lewis Bryan, assistant accounting
professors at Clemson University
and consultants with the University's
Office of Professional Development,
taught the courses. Friedlob and
Bryan are certified public accounts;
Acker is a certified internal auditor.
All three professors have experience
with governmental accounting sys­tems,
and Bryan has previous expe­rience
with institutional food
service.
Explained the
why's of accounting
Using the state's forms and
procedures, the instructors worked
to help participants understand the
underlying structure of what they
were already doing. "School food
service directors were performing
accounting functions," says Bryan,
"but they really didn't know why
they were doing some things. When
they left our course, they had a bet­ter
understanding of the 'why'
behind requirements."
One "why" the men stressed in all
three training modules was the ra­tionale
for internal controls. Internal
controls fix control of a particular
asset, like food or cash, to a particu­lar
individual. For example, only one
person should have access to a food
storage area. If every employee has
access to the storage area, then no
one can be held responsible when
the food supplies don't tally with the
inventory records.
A common weakness in internal
controls concerns cash handling.
The person who has custody of cash
should not also keep the records of
cash receipts. Although these two
functions should always be separ­ated,
often they are not in small
schools. In the seminars, the
instructors emphasized that internal
controls safeguard assets and
ensure the accuracy of accounting
information. This contributes to
good management and operational
efficiency.
Formal planning
is important
Another key concept was the im­portance
of planned management ac­tion.
"Everybody plans, whether it's
a formal or informal process," says
Bryan. "Nobody cooks a lunch with­out
having an idea of what it costs."
But, he continues, a formal planning
process is preferable to a "seat of
the pants" approach.
"If you plan for lunch to cost 86
cents, " he says, "then the meal
ideally should have an actual cost of
85.9 cents. Always try to lower the
difference between planned and
actual costs by good planning and
accounting."
Acker agrees and adds, "If there
are significant variances between
planned and actual costs, then the
reasons for those variances should
be identified and pursued to prevent
them from occurring again."
The three professors believe all
school food service directors must
know basic accounting terminology.
While they were making their train­ing
plans, an auditor told them he
had problems in achieving results
because of difficulty in communicat­ing
his recommendations to food
service personnel.
After the first finance and
accounting training sessions for
school food service directors,
communication barriers began to
disappear. Both auditors and the
food service people were enthusias­tically
reporting improved commun­ication
with each other.
For other food service directors
wanting to become more comforta­ble
with their role as financial man­agers,
accounting professors Tom
Friedlob, David Acker, and Lew~
Bryan offer the following tips:W'
Food and Nutrition
January 1983
(), b~clbn~ an
~~~~ncU;/
htt:z~~-·
Learn the language of accounting.
The ability to communicate financial
information is dependent on a good
basic vocabulary.
that do not. For example, overhead
costs such as utilities, Which vary lit­tle
With the number of meats sotd,
csohsotsu.t d be separated from food
a,~~Yrt~
Use Your accounting records and
reports for e"aluation. Keeping
records Without using them is waste-ful;
they can provide managers With
valuable information about the Qual­l;,
t~n:nat et>nt~u.·
Be sure You hatfe Proper internal
controls. Always assign a Particular
Person to be in charge of assets like
food or cash. Proper internat con­trots
Protect diligent employees
Plan ahead. When You Plan a menu,
automatically estimate the number
of servings and the ingredients
needed. After serving the meat, look
at What You actually used and how
much it cost You, then compare
these figures With What You Planned.
This Will improve Your Planning abil­ity
and help You locate Problem
ity and Quantity of operations.
When errors appear by Pointing a
finger at the Person responsible.
Separate the control of an asset
from the accounting records. For
exampte, do not have the same Per­son
handling cash and keeping the
records on it. This is an important
ccoonrntreorls. tone in internal accounting
areas. Deviations from Plans should
cboen tcheer nPsr.i mary focus of a manager's azptaN~~~a
htt:znayt2~nt actlon.· Make accounting records dynamic.
Managers should consult account­ing
records daily in order to spot
trends, identify troublesome areas,
and make needed changes. To make
this Possible, accounting records
should be Posted daily and on a
timely basis. It is much more valua­ble
to know that Yesterday's meat
cost 2 cents more than the price
charged than to know the same
about last Monday's meat. The
sooner a problem is spotted, the
sooner it can be corrected.
Make format plans. Everyone Plans,
Whether it is informal-with only a
notion of What one Will do and the
outcome one expects-or Whether
it is format, scientific, and docu-mented.
The route to cost control
lies in: first, making format Plans;
second, comparing the actuat costs
incurred to the Planned costs; and
third, seeking to understand any dif­ference
between the two.
Make financial plans as Well as food
and nutrition Plans. Know What Your
fund balance is and Plan What it Will
be at month's end, at Quarter's end,
and at Year's end. See how close
You can come to Your Plan.
Cost Plans or budgets should be
sensitilfe to letfe/ of actilfity. Costs
that vary With the number of meats
sold should be separated from those
When actual costs are less than the
costs Planned, that lfariance should
be examined. Managers should find
out how the savings were achieved
and Why the Planned or budgeted
sctoasrtts W mitha.y not have been accurate to
Remember, food is an asset almost
as desirable as cash to thietfes. It is
small, easy to conceal, satisfies a
universal need, and is impossible to
identify once it has been consumed.
aBse Y aosu Parroet eocft icvaes ho.f Your food assets
13
The following are definitions of a
few basic accounting terms. State
departments of education and
school districts may have modified
these definitions to fit their own par­ticular
accounting systems.
Accounting-characterized as "the
language of business." It is the proc­ess
of identifying, measuring and
communicating financial informa­tion
to permit informed judgments
and decisions. Accounting is not
only concerned with the recording
of transactions, but also the prepa­ration
of reports based on the re­corded
data and the interpretation
of the reports.
Accounting period (fiscal period)-a
period at the end of which, and for
which, financial statements are
prepared.
Accrual basis of accounting­recording
revenues in the account­ing
period in which they are earned
and expenses in the accounting
period in which they are incurred.
Cash basis of accounting­recording
revenues and expenses in
an accounting period only upon the
receipt or payment of cash.
Assets-properties owned by a busi­ness
or enterprise which have a
monetary value. Food, equipment,
cash and non-food supplies are
examples of assets.
14
Fixed assets~assets of a long-term
character which are intended to
continue to be held or used, such a~
land, buildings, office furniture and
food service equipment. (The term
does not indicate the immobility of
an asset, which is the distinctive
character of a "fixture.")
Equities-the rights of ownership to
properties (assets).
Owner's equity or capital-the por­tion
of an enterprise's assets owned
by the enterprise itself rather than its
creditors. It is the value left over after
the value of liabilities (see definition
below) is subtracted from the value
of the enterprise's assets. Owner's
equity is also known as net worth.
Liabilities-equities of creditors.
These are debts of the business or
enterprise. Liabilities are also called
accounts payable. (For example,
electricity used during the month of
November, but not paid for until
December, becomes a liability of the
enterprise on November 30. At this
time, a service has been received, but
payment for the service has not been
made.) Liabilities also include long­term
debts, such as notes and bonds.
Balance sheet-a list of the assets,
liabilities, and owner's equity of an
enterprise as of a specific date, usu­ally
at the close of the last day of the
month. Also known as statement of
net worth.
Depreciation-(1) expiration in the
service life of fixed assets attributable
to wear and tear, deterioration,
action of the physical elements,
inadequacy and obsolescence; (2) the
portion of the cost of a fixed asset
which is charged as an expense dur­ing
a particular period.
Expenses-charges incurred, for
operation, maintenance, interest and
other charges which are presumed
to benefit the current accounting
period.
Direct expenses-expenses incurred
for the sole benefit of a department
or unit.
Indirect expenses-expenses
incurred for the joint benefit of more
than one department or unit. The
portion of indirect expenses attribut­able
to each department or unit is
determined through a process of
allocation.
Variable expense-an expense which
fluctuates with the level of activity.
For example, the amount of food
used in a food service operation var­ies
directly with the number of meals
served. Therefore, food is a variable
expense. A food service manager has
some control over these types of
expenses.
Fixed expense-an expense which is
constant, regardless of the level of
activity. For example, depreciation
on a piece of equipment is a fixed ex­pense.
A food service manager has
little or no control over these types of
expenses.
Inventory-a detailed list showing
quantities, descriptions, and values of
property. Inventories frequently also
show units of measure and unit price.
Revenue-an increase of cash,
accounts receivable, or other assets
without a corresponding increase in
liabilities. For example, cash
received in exchange for goods or
services is revenue; cash received by
borrowing from a bank is not.
Income statement-a financial report
presenting the financial results of an
enterprise's operation during the
accounting period to which it per­tains.
The statement presents all
revenues realized by the enterprise,
all expenses incurred to generate
that revenue, and the difference
between the two. In private business,
this report is often called a profit­and-
loss statement. In government
accounting, it is known as a state­ment
of revenues and expenditures.
article by Brenda Schuler
Food and Nutrition
A food service
director from the
corporate world
talks about
merchandising
When David P. Reynolds brings
an important guest for lunch in his
executive dining room, he expects
instant smiling service and delicious
food. As chairman of the board and
chief executive officer of Reynolds
Metals Company, a $3 billion interna­tional
producer of aluminum prod­ucts,
he gets it.
Other Reynolds employees get ser­vice
too. Reynolds considers quality
food service an integral part of the
organization. Besides the executive
dining room, there is an employee
cafeteria in each of the company's
two modern office buildings set in
spacious, azalea-lined lawns in Rich­mond,
Virginia.
Zani Cassis runs food service opera­tions
at Reynold's world headquar­ters.
With a total staff of 36, she serves
lunch to about 70 percent of the
people at the complex-about 800
mostly executive workers. She also
sends out coffee carts for mid­morning
and afternoon refreshments.
Zani Cassis (above) emphasizes team spirit and
training in food service operations at Reynolds.
Rotating jobs adds variety and helps workers
develop new skills.
January 1983
And she is called on to provide spe­cial
services, from breakfast meetings
to aircraft box lunches, to dinner par­ties
and evening receptions.
This article looks at the award­winning
industrial food service oper­ation
at Reynolds and why it is suc­cessful.
While Cassis' operation meets
a number of company demands,
many of her techniques can work just
as effectively in school cafeterias.
Good management is the key to sus­taining
employee morale, boosting
sales, and increasing customer partic­ipation,
both in the corporate world
and in nonprofit school food service.
Team spirit
is important
The food service workers at Rey­nolds
have a winning attitude. They
like working together. They talk in a
friendly way with people coming
through the cafeteria lines. They
move quietly from one work station
to the next, going where they are
needed, moving on when the work is
completed. They know what they're
doing, and a small number of people
cover a lot of ground.
"Our employees train in at least
three different positions, so we
always have coverage during sick
leave, vacation, and emergencies. It
keeps the quality of service consist­ently
good. So, if the cook is on
vacation-you've heard the
expression-we don't get complaints
about the soup," Cassis says.
"Our objective is for the employ­ees
to maintain the same quality per­formance
in our absence as when
we're here. We don't want our staff to
be dependent on us for day-to-day
work-just for long-term opera­tions,"
she says.
Careful planning, along with track­ing
the work flow, allows staff to
work during daytime slow periods on
preparation for evening special
events. No time is lost. To facilitate
this, supervisors plan every special
event to the last garnish and picture
perfect table design. "Proper plan­ning
prevents poor performance" is
the motto.
To get the staff to mesh this
smoothly takes training. Every new
employee gets 6 weeks of orientation
including an introduction to Rey­nolds
and the dining service, as well
as on-the-job training. The staff gets
regular in-service training as well.
This year Cassis has shown films once
a month from the Society of Food
Management Library. The films are
scheduled into a slow part of the
afternoon so they do not disturb the
regular work flow.
Cassis also uses buddy system train­ing.
"If we want to train someone to
bake, we send him over and have
15
him work with the baker-we let the
professional teach him," she says.
Everyone gets
chance to learn
Cassis regularly rotates jobs
between workers and transfers
employees between the two cafete­rias.
Job rotation helps to spread
aro.und the less popular duties, and
often gives employees the chance to
learn something new.
"The ~mployees like the stimulation
of job variety," Cassis says. "As in any
operation, the employees like to
grow. They like to learn something
today that's going to make their job
more interesting. We look at our
operation from the standpoint of per­sonal
growth and self-esteem of the
employees."
This philosophy is evident in the
employees' friendliness to customers
coming through the lunch line, .and
their alert willingness to move on to
the next duty station during a rushed
lunch period. Reynolds' supervisors
reinforce the workers' attitudes by
providing direct encouragement.
"We give them the love they
need," Cassis says with a smile. "We
provide guidance, pats on the back,
and recognition. They need apprecia­tion.
You set the stage as a supervisor
by the way you say good morning
and everything else you do." ·
The managerial philosophy is
backed by a policy of informing
employees of company expectations
right away, and maintaining a formal
appraisal system. Semi-annual ap­praisals
on specific standards of
performance, as well as career ac­tion
plans, provide regular one-on­one
communication with each
employee. As part of the process,
each worker does a self-evaluation.
"The evaluation makes the
employees think about themselves,
how they perform. Many times what
the employee says matches what the
supervisor has said, and that shows
good communication between the
two," Cassis says.
Cassis works with problem
employees to help them gradually
overcome their fears. She uses job
rotation, for example, to place
employees who don't like to be
around people into positions with
less public contact (for example, dish­washing
instead of serving food).
However she stresses that workers
must know from the start what is
expected of them.
"You have to tell your employees
when they're hired and whenever
you can bring it up: 'Our main pur­pose
for being here is customer ser­vice.
If it weren't for the customer,
you wouldn't be here.'
"That's what the friendly attitude
is about," she adds. "We want our
customers to come back tomorrow."
Two serving
styles used
A comfortable physical environ­ment
and high quality food are also
essential to keeping the customers
satisfied. The dining areas in both
Reynolds cafeterias are restful, with
attractive color schemes and large
windows overlooking patios and
gently sloping lawns. Rows of plant­ers
break up table groupings
to provide variety in the
seating area.
The bustling serving areas are
separated from the dining areas by
partial walls. One cafeteria has a lin­ear
type serving area, where the cus­tomer
walks straight down the line
and views all the food. The other has
a scatter system, with mobile serv­ing
units which can be set in various
designs. Customers go to a particu­lar
unit for the kind of food they
want. With both styles of serving
lines in her operation, Cassis has
had a chance to compare.
"The scatter system is more mod­ern,
and facilitates serving more
people, making better use of the
space," she says. "It also merchan­dises
your food better, in more var­ied
ways. It's easier to use the color
scheme of the serving area to com­plement
your foods.
"The disadvantage of the scatter
system is that it requires more staff­ing.
It's difficult for one staff person
to cover two sections," she says.
Cassis explains that while the line
system is older and doesn't display
the food as well, it is easier to staff.
During slow periods, one person
can cover the whole line.
Merchandising
wins customers
In the overall operation, Cassis
pays careful attention to customer
preferences, menu planning, and
timing of food preparation. Rey-
11olds uses a seasonal menu cycle,
with a week between seasons during
which they run special promotions
and test new recipes.
Cassis forecasts approximate
quantities of food to be prepared a
week or two in advance, then re­views
the plan on a daily basis. To
do this she uses records of how
many customers come through the
I i ne at 1 0- or 15-m in ute intervals, as
well as a menu spread sheet which
tells exactly what is sold each day.
In gauging production, Cassis also
considers the popularity of various
foods, and factors which can affect
participation, such as the weather
and payday.
"Our objective is to offer the same
variety and the same quality to the
last customer coming through the
line as to the first customer,
which is quite a challenge,"
she says.
Many of Cassis' techniques
can work in school lunch­rooms,
too. In this high
school cafeteria, students
have a variety of lunch
choices. Attractive food
displays and flower ar­rangements
add color and
interest to the serving line.
Workers practice "relay" cooking
to keep the food as fresh and attrac­tive
as possible throughout the serv­ing
period. Under this system, cooks
do not fry items such as f ish in
batches, but cook almost to order,
never letting the supply on the line
run out. They judge how much to
make from a combination of experi­ence
and studying the clientele's
eating habits.
Cooks relay desserts as well. For
example, they don't cut up a whole
pie, but cut a few pieces at a time to
put out on the line. The pie will keep
better uncut, and if not used can be
sold whole. "Slow movers," or foods
that don't sell quickly on the serving
line, are kept refrigerated.
Cooks at Reynolds also make sal­ads
only as they are needed. Work­ers
can then store leftover ingre­dients
raw, so a salad made from
yesterday's ingredients still looks
fresh and green.
To complement relay cooking,
Reynolds uses pass-through Ther­motainers
to keep hot foods warm
and attractive on the serving line.
The cook places food into the
heated storage compartment on one
side, and the serving person takes it
out as needed on the other side.
Since the compartment is much
warmer than the serving pans, it
keeps the foods better.
Out on the line, servers know cus­tomers
prefer a full pan to a half-full
one. So when a pan is partially
empty, they transfer the remaining
food to a smaller pan to make it
more appealing to customers.
Color, lighting
add interest
Reynolds merchandises their food
in other ways, too. Every part of the
serving line shows imaginative and
careful use of color and light. For
January 1983
example, a dessert unit alternates
yellow fruit gelatin and red cherry
cheesecakes. When possible, areas
with food are spotlighted. A variety
of garnishes are used.
"Garnishing really isn't more
expensive," Cassis says. "But we
don't garnish everything with a
cherry. We use small touches like
parsley, radish flowers, apple
wedges, olives, and carrot pieces.
We merchandise lemonade with a
lemon wedge."
To keep in touch with what cus­tomers
like, Cassis does periodic
market surveys by passing out ques­tionnaires
to the clientele. The salad
bar currently operating in one caf­eteria
was requested by customers
in a survey.
In response to customer concern
for health and nutrition, Reynolds
posts calories next to prices on the
menu boards. Management runs a
popular noontime health program
that includes dietetic consulting for
those referred.
Cassis also works to build partici­pation
through theme promotions.
These help stimulate interest in the
program with posters, banners, and
occasional give-aways, done with
the cooperation of travel agents,
food suppliers, or special interest
groups such as the Florida Citrus
Commission.
Planning, merchandising, and
working with employees in a team
effort are all a part of what Cassis
calls "management by objectives," a
formula which keeps her operation
running smoothly in a variety of
functions.
"We do manage by objectives,"
she says. "We set objectives annu­ally
and we meet them. Our objec­tives
this year have to do with
budget, customer satisfaction, and
customer participation."
Schools can
use same ideas
Cassis' objectives are similar to
the goals of most school food direc­tors.
Many of her management
methods would work well in school
cafeterias. As a start, schools can
involve their lunchroom workers in
solving problems and identifying
areas that need improvement.
According to Aaron Donatello, a
trainer for the National Restaurant
Association, school supervisors can
try techniques such as job rotation
18
to give employees an appreciation
for each other's jobs and to help
them work together better.
Field trips to view food service
operations in other schools or res­taurants
can make employees more
aware of how their environment can
be improved. Managers can use
merchandising techniques to pre­sent
their food more attractively,
and relay cooking to keep the food
fresh and appetizing.
They can use wall murals, student
art, plants, and unusual lighting to
make schoolrooms places where
kids would want to be. Making
cafeterias pleasant and inviting does
not necessarily have to cost a lot of
money, and it can boost staff morale
as well as student interest.
Just as Reynolds cultivates an
atmosphere of cooperation, school
food managers can influence the
attitudes of their employees by the
example they set.
"Managers really can affect the
climate of those who work for them
by modeling various kinds of
behavior-trust, for example," says
William Crockett, an Arizona man­agement
consultant who has worked
with food service companies and
government offices, and has pub­lished
more than 50 articles on
management and motivation.
"A manager can show he trusts
his subordinates by not looking over
their shoulders, by caring enough to
be honest about errors and expecta­tions,
and by giving support," he
says.
Getting people to think about their
behavior and how others react to it
is important. But getting people to
talk about their perceptions and feel­ings
instead of mere surface issues
is the key to real communication,
according to Crockett.
"And that real communication­human
talk-is especially important
in food service because it affects
those eating," he says. "It's impor­tant
on the auto assembly line, but
it's really important in food service."
Most of all, says Aaron Donatello,
school food service directors need
to look at the competition. "Do
market research," he says. "Give out
comment cards to the kids. Under­stand
kids as customers, not as a
captive audience."
article by Jane Mattern
photos by Larry Rana
Students respond
to a winning idea
in Connecticut
One school food service manager
who's put marketing techniques to
work is Eleanor Trainor, food ser­vice
director of the D.A. Kramer
Middle School in Willimantic,
Connecticut.
Three years ago, Trainor took a
hard look at the school's lunch pro­gram
and decided to try some new
ways to attract student customers.
Together with Eunice Potter, district
school lunch director, Trainor came
up with a new bag lunch service that
has boosted lunch sales at Kramer
and brought the school state and
national recognition for its innova­tive
lunch program.
New service
is convenient
Each day the 800 sixth, seventh,
and eighth graders have a choice of
three different lunches. They can
select one of two regular lunches, or
they can have a bag lunch from a
special quick serving line. The bag
lunches include fresh fruits and
vegetables as well as hot or cold
sandwiches and milk.
In choosing the paper bag route,
you might say Eleanor Trainor
learned from the competition. "We
were noticing that children were
starting to brown bag it," she says.
"I thought we could give them better
meals in our own paper bags."
Trainor added the bag lunch at
the end of the 1978-79 school year.
To get students interested, she
planned a special promotion, using
a cartoon of the Kramer School
mascot, a cougar, as a publicity
theme. The Bag-a-Cougar lunch
promotion was a success. Instead of
the traditional June drop in the
school's lunch participation, sales
went up. This year, Kramer is selling
about 100 bag lunches a day.
Before bag lunches were intro­duced,
students had to spend a
good portion of their 20-minute
lunch period waiting on line. Trainor
feels this discouraged many poten­tial
customers. "The lines were so
long sometimes there wasn't ade­quate
time to eat," she says. With
the addition of the faster line, the
Food and Nutrition
waits became shorter for everyone,
making lunchtime more relaxed.
Requires no
extra space
An advantage to the bag lunch is
that it doesn't require any added
equipment or space. The lunches
are prepared and put together in the
morning, then served from an oth­erwise
hard-to-use space near the
other serving lines.
The school did have to hire two
more workers to prepare the bag
lunches, but the increased participa­tion,
plus a Ia carte sales of mostly
yogurt and fruit juices, has brought
in enough income to cover the extra
wages.
Bag lunches have made
a big hit with students.
To draw attention to the
special lunches,
Eleanor Trainor (above
left) has a cartoon of the
school mascot, a
cougar, printed on each
bag.
January 1983
Full-price lunches, whether served
on trays or bag-style, are 95 cents.
Reduced-price lunches are 40 cents.
On some days, Bag-a-Cougar
lunches include special treats, like
toasted grinders or tacos, instead of
sandwiches. Raw vegetables such as
broccoli, radishes, turnips, and
peppers often come with a small cup
of chilled vegetable dip.
Trainor has used the bag lunches
to creatively package nutrition edu­cation
as well as school lunches. For
a Nutrition Awareness Week at the
school, she arranged with the Uni­versity
of Connecticut to get a com­puter
print-out listing nutrition
information on featured foods. Each
day during the week, students got
small copies of the print-out in their
lunch bags. Many shared the infor­mation
with their parents, who
praised Trainor for the effort.
Award for
excellence
Such imaginative work has also
brought Eleanor Trainor praise from
her fellow food service profession­als.
Last year she secured nomina­tions
at several competitive levels
for the American School Food Ser­vice
Association's Louise Sublette
Award of Excellence. This annual
award is made to a manager or
employee of a single unit school
food service operation. Having won
the Connecticut and northeast area
nominations, Trainor received the
national award at the ASFSA July
1982 convention in Denver.
For more information on the Kra­mer
school lunch program, write:
Eleanor Trainor
D.A. Kramer Middle School
Willimantic, Connecticut 06226
article by Chris Morton
photos by George Robinson
I
, ..
19
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~Nutrition
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