Food & Nutrition [Volume 16, Number 4]

              October 1986 Volume 16 Number 4
~ Celebrating ~
40 Years
of School lunch
~ Celebrating ~
~~~E40 Years~~~E
of School lunch
What's new in school lunch?
Compared to the early days, a great
deal.
There's more variety in foods
served, more attention to what stu­dents
like and don't like, and more
interest in teaching children about
food and nutrition. There's also
much more emphasis on "merchan-
2
dising" school meals and on im­proving
and streamlining school
lunch program management.
This year the National School
Lunch Program celebrates its forti­eth
anniversary. In honor of this an­niversary,
we are devoting this is­sue
of FOOD AND NUTRITION to
school lunch, with articles that high-light
the work of several school
lunch directors.
While these are just a few of the
many school food service directors
who have built successful lunch
programs, their efforts illustrate the
diversity, creativity, and profession­alism
that characterize school lunch
in the 1980's.
Food and Nutrition
..
Variety and
Choice Are
Keys to
Success In
Cobb County
If you spent your early years wash­ing
pots and pans, making things "spic
and span" might become a way of life.
And that's exactly what has happened
to Mary Nix, Cobb County, Georgia,
school food service director, whose
food service operation in metropolitan
Atlanta sparkles and shines.
"By washing pots and pans in high
school, I grew up dealing with school
food service," Nix says. "So I can say
that I've worked in literally every phase
of the school lunch program."
A former president ( 1980-81 ) of the
American School Food Service Associ­ation,
Nix became director of food
service in Cobb County in 1975. In
1980, she won the prestigious Silver
Plate Award from the International
Food Service Manufacturers Associa­tion
for elementary and secondary
schools in recognition of the quality of
her food service. She has run out of
wall space to hang all her awards.
"When I first started in Cobb County,
we had a solid base to build upon," Nix
says. "We focused on developing a
system of accountability that would al­low
the school food managers to main­tain
their own style of leadership. We
wanted them to have a simple system
that would free them to manage their
programs."
Serves a fast­growing
county
In Cobb, one of the nation's fastest
growing counties, Nix has faced tre­mendous
challenges. During her ten­ure,
the school system has grown from
35,000 to 55,000 children, and the
schools have moved from offering one
menu to many choices.
More than 42,000 lunches are
served at 68 schools each day. The
schools average higher than
75-percent participation in the school
October 1986
lunch program. Since less than 10 per­cent
of the students receive free or
reduced-price meals, creative Cobb
managers prove you can break even
with a limited amount of federal
reimbursement.
To deal with the demands of running
a large food service operation, Nix sets
guidelines for budget, meal patterns,
and productivity while delegating the
responsibility for individual operations
Mary Nix (left) has been
food service director in
Georgia's Cobb County
for 11 years. Her award­winning
program serves
more than 42,000
lunches in 68 schools
each day.
to the school food service managers.
She wants managers to develop pro­grams
specifically for their clients-the
students.
"The ell)phasis is on developing con­trols
at the point of delivery," she says.
"The decisions I make are not as im­portant
as those made where the food
is served. We provide technical assist­ance
to help the food service manag­ers
implement programs that are
3
effective for their communities."
For example, the Cobb system does
not have centralized menus. "We want
every school to plan its own meals,"
Nix says, "because there's a big differ­
·ence in preferences at each school."
Walton High is
a good example
A good example of Nix's decentral­ized
approach is Walton High School,
a 1984 Georgia School of Excellence,
located in an Atlanta suburb.
Walton offers a variety of food
choices. Imagine a menu with rib-eye
steaks, eggs benedict, grilled fish,
"Buffalo" chicken wings, and a 50-item
salad bar. These items, which sound
more at home in a trendy restaurant
than a school cafeteria, are only part of
the variety and quality served to 1 ,500
students at Walton.
There are five serving lines, includ­ing
a dinner line, where a traditional
school lunch menu with at least two
entrees is offered, and a specialty line
that contains two types of pizzas. A
short-order line offers hamburgers,
foot-long hot dogs, chicken filets, and
milkshakes. Another line has deli sand­wich
items, and students also have a
variety of choices from a soup-and­salad
line.
4
Special menus offer additional
choices. Once a week the lunchroom
has Mexican day featuring burritos
stuffed with fillings students choose
themselves. Crab salad is offered
twice a week, and ethnic foods are
served often.
Some of the other unusual foods
served at Walton include pasta salads,
kiwi fruit, fresh mushrooms, corn beef,
bagels, sweet and sour pork, grilled
liver, and french onion soup. Because
there are a significant number of Jew­ish
students and faculty, a number of
Jewish foods are served during reli­gious
holidays.
"With as much variety as we serve,
it's very difficult for finicky eaters not to
find something they like," says Pat
Trapanese, Walton food service
manager.
Staff emphasizes
nutrition education
Trapanese and her staff work with
the faculty to emphasize nutrition edu­cation
for the students. "In addition to
working with coaches and preparing
pre-game meals for athletes, we try to
talk to students individually about nutri­tion,"
Trapanese says. "The students
will remember the foods they enjoy,
but it is up to us to teach them about
the nutrients the foods contain."
Trapanese thinks serving kids ought
to be fun. "Because it's such hard
work, we might as well enjoy it," she
says.
"The staff is to be commended for ,.
the variety of foods they serve at
Walton," Nix says. "You work hard to
please high school students because
they are familiar with the latest food
trends. We've also worked to make
gradual changes in the way foods are
prepared by reducing the amount of fat
and salt."
Food service workers use the batch
cooking method to prepare food as it is
needed. Most food items are prepared
on site with very few leftovers. The
staff carefully observes where items
are picked up most frequently on the
serving line. "Part of merchandising is
knowing where to place certain food
items for maximum exposure," Nix
says.
Managers encouraged
to stress quality
Mary Nix marches to her own beat.
She has put into place ideas that were
.completely unorthodox because, as
she likes to say, ''we didn't know it
wasn't supposed to work." For exam­ple,
she encourages managers to use
the more expensive brand-name prod­uct
if it is of much better quality. She
has found that the increase in cost for
name brands will usually be covered
by added food sales.
Nix is very choosy when it comes to
using products and uses USDA com­modities
extensively. USDA-donated
tomato paste, beef, cheese, and flour
go into delicious homemade pizza. Do­nated
sweet potatoes are used for
sweet potato bars with toppings and
sweet potatoes baked in homemade
pie shells-both student favorites.
Nix has not followed the trend to­ward
self-service that is popular in
many areas of the Southeast. She pre­fers
traditional serving lines because
she feels they are faster, easier to
clean up, and more sanitary. She also
feels they make it easier to control
portion size.
A key to the success of the Cobb
County school food service is involving
local managers in decision-making. Nix
Food and Nutrition
has an eight-member "Magic Commit­tee"
comprised of food service manag­ers
who serve without extra pay on a
rotating, yearly basis.
They evaluate bids on products and
make suggestions on equipment pur­chases
and food service operations.
The group recommends to the Cobb
County school board what products to
buy and helps evaluate products
through taste tests.
"If we involve the managers, who are
responsible for participation and plate
waste, they become intent on improv­ing
the quality of their products," Nix
says.
Training is a
high priority
Training is also an integral part of
Mary Nix's management philosophy.
Each school food manager must com­plete
180 hours of training, some
equivalent to college coursework. Ev­ery
employee must complete annually
a minimum of 12 hours of training in
nutrition, sanitation, food preparation,
and public relations. There are also
manager meetings devoted to program
improvements.
Nix has gotten positive results from
her training efforts. She says she has
seen the pride level increase tremen­dously
and the skill level of the food
service managers improve. "The bot­tom
line is that a program succeeds
when the staff is excited about serving
young people and committed to finding
better ways to do it," she says.
"We've seen food service managers
with average programs improve the
quality of their systems when they and
their staff developed enthusiasm and
showed they cared about school food
and the people they serve. There are
many intangibles in the food service in­dustry.
But there's no substitute for
enthusiasm!"
For more information, contact:
Mary Nix, Director
Cobb County School Food Service
P.O. Box 1088
Marietta, Georgia 30061
Telephone: (404) 426-3380
article by Steve Watson
and Kent Taylor
photos by Kent Taylor
October 1986
.Modernizing
.Makes A
Difference in
.Meridian, Idaho
Noreen Larsen has been food serv­ice
director in Meridian, Idaho, for just
3 years. In that short time, she's man-·
aged to make changes that, as one
state official puts it, "have rapidly
moved Meridian into the 20th century."
Larsen was new to school food serv­ice
when she first came to Meridian, al­though
she had managed a hospital
program before. "I wasn't sure how to
start," she says, but she focused on in­creasing
participation and balancing
the books. District participation was
60 percent at best when she started.
Larsen's first attempt to attract more
customers, she recalls, was to offer
chocolate milk once a week to elemen­tary
students and more often to older
children. She also switched from a mix
to a bottled catsup. "These may seem
like small changes," she says, "but
they brought more kids into the lunch
lines."
She next borrowed an idea from
neighboring Boise district and began
having student taste panels. Now stu­dents
choose which brands they like.
"This information is really valuable,"
says Larsen. "We really didn't know
what they wanted. The students' pref­erences
were usually different from the
choices of teachers and staff."
Students suggested Larsen add
more fresh fruits and vegetables,
tossed salads, and fast-food-type
items. She finds students accept these
better than the casserole dishes previ­ously
offered.
Participation has
grown steadily
"We've seen participation grow
steadily," Larsen says. She serves
nearly 5,000 reimbursable lunches a
day, up 1,000 since she started. She
feels the most significant reason for
improvement has been the addition of
self-service bars and the aggressive
nutrition education program she uses
to support them.
"Through nutrition education, we
show the children how to make good
choices," she says.
Larsen began adding self-serve bars
2 years ago, one school at a time, and
expects to have them running at all 19
schools by the end of this school year.
She first introduces salad bars, then
adds potato, pasta, taco, deli, and hot
dog bars.
Despite all these changes, she has
managed to keep lunch costs within
the students' reach. Lunches are an af­fordable
$.80 for elementary students
and $1.05 for high school students.
Putting in salad bars and teaching in
classrooms has taken a lot of Larsen's
time. She says computerizing many of
her operations has freed time for these
activities. In fact, Larsen made the
move to computers at the same time
she brought in the salad bars.
She had been interested in comput­ers
before she came to Meridian, she
says, but had "zero experienc~" using
them. She was prepared to spend
plenty of time researching what she
needed and how to set up the system.
She was confident that, once installed,
the computers could save time and
money.
...
Investment has
been worthwhile
On inventories alone, the improve­ment
is dramatic. When Larsen started
at Meridian, one person had worked
full time on the district's inventory.
Even with full-time attention, the inven-
5
tory report was completed only twice a
year, and the information was outdated
before Larsen saw it. "It was ineffi­cient,"
she says, "and it was difficult to
plan or do bid buying with that set up."
With the computer system now in
place, Larsen can do a lot more than
track inventory. She chose software
that was easily adapted to her needs,
with a little help from others in the dis­trict.
She has been able to expand one
program to keep track of vendor lists,
billing, ordering, and purchasing.
The program also produces a report
that calculates the cost of each item,
and it will also tell which foods are
most popular with students. It will even
compute the average monthly cost for
meals served.
Larsen uses a second computer pro­gram
for working with applications for
free and reduced-price meals. In addi­tion
to storing records and figuring eli­gibility,
the program can print out lists
of eligible students. Larsen sends
these lists to each manager weekly.
She uses a third software package
to prepare salary schedules and budg­ets,
forecast expenses, and prepare
spread sheets and graphs that help
her identify trends and analyze data.
The staff person whose time was pre­viously
devoted to tracking inventory
manually now enters data into the
computer and produces a variety of re­ports
with it.
Cost comparisons
help schools save
Much of the information in the re­ports
is broken out by school and
shared with the managers so they can
compare their costs to other schools'.
Larsen says managers can now see if
they need to bring certain costs down
and where they might cut expenses.
Larsen, too, cuts costs using infor­mation
from the computer reports. With
current inventory information available
at all times, she can better calculate
how much of any item she will need
over the course of the year. She can
use bid buying to cut her purchasing
costs.
"It takes more time," she says, "but
the savings are definitely worth it. I
save between $3.00 and $5.00 per
case."
6
Although the initial costs of acquiring
a computer may seem high, Larsen
feels the system pays for itself quickly.
In addition to the savings realized from
bid buying, other money is saved as a
result of improved accounting. 'We
had a billing error from our dairy sup­plier,
which we probably wouldn't have
caught without the computer. The
savings from finding that one error
paid for our software."
Larsen cautions that computerization
may not be for everyone. "You have
to be really interested," she says, "or
you could end up with a system you
won't use. I recommend that anyone
who is interested explore what other
districts are doing. See if their system
works and if they like it."
Larsen's future goal is to continue to
increase participation. Larsen says she
"won't be satisfied until it's 100 per­cent."
Because she can rely on the
computer, she expects to have the
time to continue working with the stu­dents
and her staff to get more stu­dents
to buy lunch.
Ideas from other
districts helpful
Larsen is looking for a way for a
computer or cash register to relay par­ticipation
and revenue data from each
school directly to her computer. This
would eliminate entering the data into
her system and would increase accu­racy.
She's still exploring how to do it
and hopes she'll find someone who
has some suggestions.
"I've borrowed lots of ideas from
other districts, and I'm always looking
for something I can use. I don't want to
re-invent the wheel. And if someone
else can benefit from what I'm doing,
that's just great."
For more information, contact:
Noreen Larsen
Food Service Director
Meridian Joint School District #2
911 Meridian Street
Meridian, Idaho 83642
Telephone: (208) 888-1761
article by Dee Amaden
Changes Save
Time And Win
Customers In
Phoenix
Schools
When Dave Caldwell took over as
food service director for the Washing­ton
School District in Phoenix 5 years
ago, he made sweeping changes in
the program. Applying principles he
had used in the private sector, he set
about building what is today a very
large, popular, and financially sound
food service operation.
"Coming here from a food service
background at Greyhound Food Man­agement
and a number of restaurants,
maybe my approach is not the same
as someone brought up in school
lunch," says Caldwell.
"We're always looking for ways to
upgrade our product and at the same
time make our program more cost ef­fective
in order to keep prices down."
Many of the changes Caldwell has
made do both. He feels the Washing­ton
District is fairly typical and that
most lunch programs could adopt his
ideas.
Changes simplify
meal preparation
There are 21,000 students in the dis­trict's
32 schools. Five schools are jun­ior
highs with seventh and eighth
grade only, and the rest are elemen­tary
schools with kindergarten through
sixth grade . There are no high schools
in the district.
When Caldwell became food service
director, half of the schools had fully
equipped kitchens where they pre­pared
food for their students and for
one other school.
Caldwell decided to have all schools
serve lunches assembled on site using
mostly heat-and-serve and conven­ience
foods. This has simplified prepa­ration,
cut down on the amount of
equipment needed, and dramatically
Food and Nutrition
,.
reduced labor costs.
While food costs are higher with the
convenience foods, savings from the
simplified preparation more than com­pensate
for the increase. The heat­and-
serve meals assure consistent
quality at all schools and offer greater
menu flexibility.
All of Caldwell's schools offer four
entrees each day. Two of the en­trees-
peanut butter and jelly sand­wiches
and hamburgers-are offered
daily. The other two entrees change
from day to day.
On Monday, the entrees might be
oven-baked chicken and Sloppy Joes;
Tuesday, cheese enchiladas and corn
dogs; Wednesday, bologna and
cheese sandwiches and breaded fish;
Thursday, chicken nuggets and spa­ghetti
with meat sauce; Friday, pizza
and tacos. The daily menu always in­cludes
a potato product, fruit juice,
milk, tossed salad, and either a vege­table
or fruit selection.
The added variety, Caldwell feels,
pays off in greater participation. More
than 65 percent of the students eat
school meals. Eighty-seven percent of
the meals served are sold at full price.
Giving students the freedom to serve
themselves wherever possible saves
labor costs and food. "We don't have a
person on the line, for example, giving
each child two pickle slices. Those
who want pickle slices help them­selves,"
says Caldwell.
Other improvements
also save money
In addition to changes on the food
line, a number of behind-the-scenes
improvements make the lunch program
more cost effective. For example,
using disposable plates, cups, and
utensils eliminates dishwashing equip­ment,
saves labor costs, and has cut
some kitchen utility bills in half. Limit­ing
lunch ticket sales from daily to
twice per week has cut clerical staff
hours.
Staff time required to prepare meals
has been reduced more than 50 per­cent,
from as high as 54 staff hours per
day in some schools to an average of
18 to 20 hours. The smaller staffs are
more easily supervised so each man­ager
oversees two or three schools in­October
1986
Every day is special for school lunch
customers in Phoenix's Washington Dis­trict,
but barbecue days have added ap­peal.
Students get to eat some of their
favorites-like charcoaled hamburgers­outside
on the lawn with their friends.
stead of one, resulting in a savings of
more than 50 percent.
As the program becomes more
streamlined and workers more experi­enced,
manpower requirements con­tinue
to drop, Caldwell says. "In one
school, we've got three employees
serving lunch to 250 children, and
they're only there a couple of hours."
Single vendor
supplies food
The Washington School District
awards an annual contract to a single
vendor to supply virtually all the food
The master chef for the
special barbecues is
food service director
Dave Caldwell (above),
who says he enjoys
them as much as
students do.
8
for the school year. Throughout the
year, individual school managers deal
directly with the vendor for deliveries to
their schools.
With this arrangement, · Caldwell
says he is able to purchase at lower
prices than with central purchasing
from several vendors. In addition to the
cost advantage, the ordering and bill­ing
is greatly simplified, and the food is
delivered to each school, when
needed.
The only foods now stored by the
district are USDA commodities. Limit­ing
stored items has enabled Caldwell
to turn back to the district central ware­house
space, reduce the district ware­house
staff, and significantly reduce
the district's delivery costs.
The school district buys the best
food it can. "The few pennies saved on
a lesser product are a false economy,"
says Caldwell. "I believe you have to
really merchandise your lunch, and it
doesn't make any sense to put
watered-down ketchup on a great
french fry."
In addition to cost-conserving ideas,
Caldwell has initiated several income­producing
activities. The food service
section caters school functions like
graduation, luncheons, and parent­teacher
association meetings.
There are many
signs of success
Caldwell points to a number of indi­cators
of the success of the Washing­ton
program:
• Two-thirds of the district's children
participate, even though only a small
percentage receive free or reduced­price
meals.
• The program covers its own food and
labor costs and has kept the price of a
full-cost lunch at 75 cents.
• Added choice and self-service have
cut plate waste dramatically. "Our gar­bage
cans are full of paper," says
Caldwell, "not food."
Caldwell expects to add to these ac­complishments
next year. "I don't think
any one thing we're doing is unique,"
he says. "You just have to keep track
of what other schools are doing and
take and use those ideas that work
for you."
For more information contact:
Dave Caldwell
Director, Food Service
Washington School District #6
8610 N. 19th Ave
Phoenix, Arizona 85021
Telephone: (602) 864-2665
article and photos
by Tino Serrano
(Note: The Washington School District
was one of the original school districts
that participated in the nutrient stand­ard
menu planning project described
on page 11 of this issue.)
Food and Nutrition
..
Test Kitchens
Insure Quality
School lunches
Over the years, school lunch direc­tors
have become increasingly sensi­tive
to the likes and dislikes of their
student customers. Just as food manu­facturers
and distributors put time and
effort into testing new items before put­ting
them on the market, many school
food service people are testing foods
before introducing them in their lunch
programs.
Two test kitchens in the South­east-
a county-operated kitchen in
Louisville, Kentucky, and a state-run
kitchen in Raleigh, North Carolina­are
good examples of innovative ap­proaches
to food testing and food serv­ice
training.
Louisville kitchen
is a recent addition
The test kitchen and learning center
in Louisville is part of the Jefferson
County school system. It was the idea
of food service director Jay Caton, who
saw a need for better quality control in
school meals.
"We needed a place to test and
compare food samples for consistency
and acceptability," he explains. "With
135 school locations, it's difficult to
have standard quality throughout our
system, especially since we have a rel­atively
small field staff of consultants
for the schools. We also needed a
place for hands-on experience and
training on food preparation, sanitation,
and safety."
Completed in 1985, the test kitchen
is part of a large classroom that can be
divided into three sections. Up to 100
people can attend classroom training
while 25 are in the test kitchen.
Before the test kitchen existed, food
service staff tested food samples at
each school. Now food samples are
picked up at a number of schools,
brought into the test kitchen, and ana­lyzed
for quality.
"Introducing new products is one of
the most important functions of our test
kitchen," says Cheryl Sturgeon,
October 1986
coordinator of food service operations
for the Jefferson County schools.
During what's called "happy food
service hour," a monthly event at the
test kitchen, food brokers and manu­facturers
show off their products to lo­cal
school food managers. "In the
past," says Sturgeon, "our managers
had no place to see or test new prod­ucts.
Now they can come to happy
food service hour and be updated on
the latest food trends."
Test equipment as
well as products
Product testing goes on throughout
the year. "In March," says Sturgeon,
"we may decide to test all french-fry
products that are approved for the
schools." Evaluation panels include
school and state food service person­nel,
parents, and of course, students.
"We have to be sure that the stu­dents
themselves have a part in deter­mining
food quality for their meals,"
Sturgeon says.
Private industry has been generous
in donating food service equipment
and in providing representatives for
equipment maintenance seminars. A
donated video camera is used to tape
sessions for employees unable to
come in for training.
"Not only do we stay up to date on
This poster from Louis­ville
reflects the goal of
the food service staff:
to serve meals that are
both good for and pop­ular
with the students.
the latest food trends, but we also test
the latest in kitchen equipment," says
Sturgeon. "For example, we have a tilt­ing
braising pan, which we have or­dered
for some of our larger kitchens,
that eliminates the need for large
ranges."
School food managers are required
to take training each year at the test
kitchen. Along with courses on food
and equipment, there is instruction on
stress reduction, time management,
and building a positive self-image. Lo­cal
chefs conduct sessions on
merchandising and using garnishes.
As an incentive to participate, manag­ers
can earn bonus pay for completing
optional training.
The kitchen is also used to test new
recipes or modify traditional ones. The
goal is to insure consistent meat qual­ity
and to minimize costs while making
meals more acceptable to students.
Adding variety
is also a goal
"We need to reach out to our cus­tomers
without jeopardizing nutrition,"
says Jay Caton. "One of the chal­lenges
today is to maintain high quality
with the best tasting product and pro­vide
it at a reasonable cost to the
paying child."
Caton feels the offer versus serve
9
Product testing and staff training
are easier with the test kitchens.
Here, a team works in the Raleigh
kitchen .
option, which allows students to
choose three or more of the five avail­able
food items, is one of the best
ideas to come into school food service.
"Another good idea," he says, "is the
use of USDA commodities for pre­paring
a Ia carte items. For example,
we process figs, honey, and flour into
individually wrapped fig bars that the
kids really like. We need to recognize
that not every child will want a full meal
every day, and we must insure that nu­tritious
choices are available .;'
Students benefit from the test
kitchen because of the variety of prod­ucts
that are put on the menu after the
testing process . "Managers have more
10
items for their own individual choice
menus as a result of what we show
them in the test kitchen," says Brenda
Richardson, coordinator of food
procurement.
''This is important since we have
found that students in one part of the
county may have completely different
tastes from the rest of the area."
While schools are competing with
fast food restaurants and have to fol­low
fast food trends, Richardson says,
many students are also placing more
emphasis on 'light' foods. "For in­stance,"
she says, "we have healthy a
Ia carte items such as all-natural yo­gurt
to go along with our salad bars.
"We also have less salt and fat in
our cooking, serve multi-grain prod­ucts,
and have cut back on desserts.
Using tilting braising pans reduces the
amount of deep-fat frying while keep­ing
in more nutrients."
Richardson has helped implement a
Fitness and Nutrition (F.A.N.) Club in
Jefferson County middle schools. Stu­dents
assess their physical fitness lev­els
and develop individual plans to
meet their nutritional needs.
The schools have incorporated nutri­tion
education activities into a number
of subject areas. In some activities, for
example, students keep diaries of what
they eat, count calories, and make
charts of physical fitness levels. They
also learn about the foods of other cul­tures,
make cookbooks and plan
menus, and learn about the nutrient
content of various foods.
Raleigh kitchen
is also thriving
North Carolina's state kitchen, like
Jefferson County's, helps local food
service directors meet the demands of
sophisticated consumer taste prefer­ences.
''The students are our custom­ers,
and they keep us in business,"
says North Carolina state child nutri­tion
director John Murphy. "We want to
meet their needs, and our test kitchen
helps us do that."
Murphy admits that commercial food
service is aggressive in vying for
school-aged customers. He depends
on the training lab to keep staff com­petitive
in serving quality meals in
North Carolina schools.
Located at the state child nutrition
office in Raleigh, the test kitchen was
set up in 1980 to test and develop
standardized recipes for school cafe­terias,
and to train school food service
staff in food preparation ancr equip­ment
use and care.
Workshops are held once a month
on topics such as merchandising, effi­cient
quantity food production, and
special service arrangements, such as
salad bars. The lab is designed to ac­commodate
8 to 11 persons at one
time. Usually 21 people attend the
workshops, and hands-on lab experi­ences
are rotated among two groups.
Training coordinator Paula Tillman
conducts the 2- to 3-day sessions. "We
Food and Nutrition
,.
..
operate under the train-the-trainer
concept-that is, participants go back
and teach others about what they
learned. We use the lab as a training
station to put innovations into practice.
We will test an idea here before it is
tried in a school ," Tillman says.
The North Carolina test kitchen was
used to test recipes for the innovative
"School Recipe Portfolio," developed
by eight Southeastern states. This full­color
merchandising manual of stand­ardized
school recipes shows how
food should look and be displayed on
the serving line . All recipes chosen for
the book were tested in the lab and ad­justed
for proper yield, quality, and
taste.
Training builds
skills and morale
Both Murphy and Caton stress that
managing and caring about people are
very important factors in having an ef­fective
child nutrition program. They
believe there has to be a sense of par­ticipation
for those who work in food
service. Workers must feel that they
are professionals with specific skills
who are performing a major service in
education .
"We must manage our resources so
that people are rewarded for their
work," says Caton . "We want our test
kitchen to supplement an expanded
professional growth program for em­ployees
because the opportunity to im­prove
one's skills is basic.
"Workers' ideas and commitment
mean more in the long run than any
leadership I could give . If it doesn 't
happen in the schools, it's not going to
happen at all."
For more information, contact:
Jay Caton , Director
Jefferson County School Food Service
3001 Crittenden Drive
Louisville, Kentucky 40209
Telephone: (502) 456-3190
John Murphy, Director
Division of Child Nutrition
State Department of Public Instruction
Education Building
Raleigh, North Carolina 27611
Telephone: (919) 733-7162
article and photos
by Kent Taylor
October 1986
Special Project
Tests New Way
To Plan Meals
Everything 's up to date in Kansas
City (Missouri)-not only in the lyrics of
the Broadway musical but at Hickman
Mills Consolidated School District 1,
where food service staff are pleased
with their alternative lunch program .
Hickman Mills- is one of seven dis­tricts
nationwide still involved in the
third year of a pilot project that began
in school year 1983-84 with 18
participating school districts across the
country. That project-Nutrient Stand­ard
Menu Planning--offered selected
districts an opportunity to test an alter­native
to the time-honored school
lunch meal pattern.
Meals are planned
in different way
Meal pattern planning is currently
used by all schools participating in the
National School Lunch Program with
the exception of those testing the nutri­ent
standard.
With the meal pattern approach,
USDA requires school lunch managers
to include in each lunch a specified
amount of food from each of four food
components-meat/meat alternate,
vegetable/fruit, bread/bread alternate,
and milk. Each lunch includes two
servings from the vegetable/fruit com­ponent
so a complete meal contains
five food items.
The nutrient standard system does
not use meal patterns. Instead, meals
are evaluated for nutrient content. The
goal is to meet one-third of the child's
Recommended Dietary Allowance
(ADA) for eight key nutrients, averaged
over the 5-day school week.
If a computer analysis reveals a
shortage of one of the nutrients during
a particular week, district school lunch
directors adjust the menus, recipes,
and/or portion sizes to meet the nutri­ent
standard. Standardized menus and
recipes are essential to the plan.
As Alberta Frost, director of FNS'
Nutrition and Technical Services Divi­sion
, explains, all of the eight analyzed
nutrients are essential for growth and
development. They include protein,
calcium, iron, vitamin C, vitamin A, thi­amin,
and riboflavin. Foods containing
these nutrients typically contain other
nutrients as well. Food energy is ana­lyzed
but not monitored.
Introduced in nine
Hickman Mills schools
Hickman Mills school food service
director Betty Culley sees both advan­tages
and disadvantages to using the
nutrient standard system. On balance,
however, she 's enthusiastic about the
system and feels it offers a viable alter­native
for schools suited to using it.
Nine of the 11 Hickman Mills
schools-seven elementary and two
junior high schools-are participating
in the pilot project. When the nutrient
standard system was introduced, the
district used brochures and school
newsletters to inform teachers, stu­dents,
parents, and the community that
the new alternative was being tested .
According to representatives from
FNS ' Mountain Plains regional office
who have monitored the project, cafe­teria
staff were resistant at first but are
now supportive, and student accept­ance
has been good.
11
NUTRIENT STANDARD MENU PLANNING NUTRIENT STAN DAR
...
FNS staff have noticed a number
of changes in the district's program
as a result of the new approach.
The district uses increased quantities
of commodities such as peanut
butter and raisins (to help meet the
iron requirement) and increased
quantities of fruits and vegetables. On
the other hand, use of meat and
meat alternates has decreased, as
has the number of bread servings.
Initially, FNS staff helped train local
staff. At that time, the Missouri Depart­ment
of Elementary and Secondary
Education closely monitored the new
program on a weekly basis. They now
make a monitoring visit and audit the
program once a year, forwarding their
reports to the FNS regional office.
Actual testing ended last year, but
Hickman Mills is still refining the pro­gram
to suit its needs.
Computer analysis
is key to system
One of the benefits of the project for
Hickman Mills and other partici­pating
districts was an opportunity
to work with computers in a new way.
While a few districts did not use
computers in the project, most used ei­ther
mainframe or microcomputers to­gether
with software developed by
USDA. Schools using computers had
the most success with nutrient stand­ard
planning; districts testing the man­ual
method found it was not practical
because it was tedious and error
prone.
Along with software, USDA provided
a data base that included information
on the nutrient content of more than
1 , 1 00 frequently used foods. District
supervisors added to the data base in­formation
on other foods their schools
use, including commercially processed
foods.
If necessary, districts modified the
USDA software for use with their
equipment. Modifications were needed
primarily in districts with mainframe
computers. Betty Culley adapted the
software for use with a Radio Shack
Model 16 computer. She says the
computer has not only helped her with
meal planning but also with the docu­mentation
needed for the nutrient
standard project.
While the nutrient standard system
12
has worked well in districts like
Hickman Mills, it's not likely to be of­fered
indiscriminately as an option to
all schools because of its unique
requirements.
As Stella Nash of Mountain Plains
explains, the nutrient standard requires
standardized recipes, good computer
support, and specialized software. It
also requires time and money for train­ing
and implementation. It doesn't, for
example, lend itself readily to one-cook
schools. It also doesn't work very well
in schools that offer students a wide
variety of menu choices, such as
schools offering salad bars or bag
lunches.
Advantages include added flexibility
in using recipes and ingredients and
an opportunity to serve a greater vari­ety
of locally popular foods. Because
schools use weekly averaging with the
nutrient standard approach, they can
also make changes that may save on
food costs.
Serving smaller portions of meat or
meat alternates and fewer bread
servings per week has made a differ­ence
at Hickman Mills. District schools
have saved as much as 7 cents per
serving for chili (27 cents per serving
under the traditional meal pattern, 20
cents per serving now) and 12 cents
per serving for spaghetti sauce (26
cents formerly, 14 cents now).
Considerable time
required at first
Culley echoes the need for spending
time preparing materials and training
staff. "You may think your recipes are
already standardized," she says. "How­ever,
you'll find that a lot of the basic
foods you serve--such as combination
salad or cole slaw-are prepared with­out
an actual recipe. And homemade
bread recipes vary widely. As their in­gredients
differ, so do the nutrient .
contents."
Culley had to narrow down her rec­ipe
file initially, deciding which of sev­eral
similar recipes she wanted to en­ter
into the system. Portion control was
suddenly vital. A recipe yield-in actual
preparation-was sometimes not cor­rect
for the portion control method, and
adjustments had to be made.
Menu planning, she has found, is
more time consuming for nutrient
standard meals than for lunches based
on meal pattern requirements. "But,"
says Culley, "the nutrient standard plan
has given our program added nutri­tional
integrity in the community. Also,
our menus are now more acceptable to
students than those sometimes al­lowed
under meal pattern planning .
"It is my opinion," she says,
"that even if nutrient standard
doesn't become a general
alternative, its devel-opment
through this
study should give
valuable insight
into possible future
changes in the
traditional lunch
pattern."
f
-•'
Food and Nutrition
RD MENU PLANNING NUTRIENT STANDARD MENU PLANNING
By participating in the study, Culley
and her staff will help USDA assess
the effectiveness of the nutrient stand­ard
system. Among other things, the
test at Hickman Mills has shown that:
• Kansas City schools could more than
adequately meet protein needs at a
significantly reduced cost;
• although the number of bread
servings per week was
reduced, weekly
October 1986
nutrient needs
were still met;
• there was an increased concentra­tion
on meeting the iron requirement­probably
not always met adequately by
school lunch pattern meals;
• in winter, when frozen vegetables
were used more frequently than fresh,
adjustments for vitamin A content were
sometimes required.
Added flexibility had both pros and
cons for Culley. The "good news" was
the ease of menu planning with stand­ardized
recipes and computer assist­ance.
The "bad news" was the need to
plan further ahead and to be more spe­cific
about foods on hand. Leftovers
were not as easy to use.
Nancy Lovely of the Missouri staff
agrees with Culley's assessment that
the pilot project has been worthwhile.
"It's a good alternative," she says. "We
should have it available for our
schools. We like the idea of having an
option in school meal planning."
For Lovely as well as Culley, the
project initially involved extra work.
"Monitoring was more intense," she
says. "It was a bit more complex, since
we had more to look at. A year into the
project, we were still finding things we
needed to check. Even minor errors in
food coding could affect the nutrient
analysis. Sour pickles, for example,
had more iron than dill pickles. So we'd
sometimes go back and take another
look at the actual recipes.
"On balance, though, our reaction is
positive. Nutrient standard is an option
we'd like to see offered more widely."
Missouri authorities and Hickman
Mills staff are grateful for the opportu­nity
to participate in the pilot project.
From the perspective of their 3-year
experience, the study has been
profitable.
For more information, contact:
Betty Culley, Food Service Director
Consolidated School District # 1
9000 Old Santa Fe Road
Kansas City, Missouri 64138
Telephone: (816) 761-6661
Nancy Lovely, Supervisor
School Food Service
Missouri Department of Elementary
and Secondary Education
P.O. Box 480
Jefferson City, Missouri 65102
Telephone: (314) 751-6466
article by Joanne Widner
Making the Switch
To Nutrient Standard
Menu Planning ...
Adapting to nutrient standard menu
planning was a process that varied in
each of the schools participating in the
pilot project. Clara Mciver, food service
director for the Huntington, Long Is­land,
schools, came to the project well
prepared by her professional back­ground
as a nutritionist. She worked
closely with state and federal staff who
reviewed the project in the Huntington
schools.
During an interview with Wini
Scheffler of the Food and Nutrition
Service's public information staff,
Mciver offered personal insights into
why she chose to participate, how she
managed the technical challenge, and
what she thinks of the results.
Mciver's district includes a high
school, junior high school, and five ele­mentary
schools serving a total of
4,500 children. In addition, under a
shared service concept, she manages
school lunch programs in the neighbor­ing
community of Harborfield. Har­borfield
schools did not take part in the
pilot project.
Q When you were advised of the
pilot study by the New York
State Department of Education, you
chose to participate, even though it
would mean changing a comfortable
routine. What motivated you to take
on the challenge?
A As a nutritionist, I was interested
in measuring more precisely
whett"!er our lunches were meeting
one-third of the Recommended Dietary
Allowance (RDA) of nutrients. Espe­cially
at the elementary level where the
menus were simple, I was concerned
that children often did not eat vegeta­bles,
except those served raw or in
soup. I thought the nutrient standard
would give us greater flexibility to offer
foods they like that also supplied the
needed nutrients. I also had an ulte­rior
motive. I saw the need to automate
more of our management functions,
and participating in the study meant
acquiring my own computer.
13
Q What were the pr:oblems in
adopting a complex new sys­tem
of meal planning?
A We had to switch to completely
computerized planning and that
involved a horrendous amount of work
as well as .intensive staff training.
The biggest challenge was to enter
all our recipes into the software pro­vided
by USDA. When I began re­viewing
the recipes and their yield, I
was surprised to find that the taste and
yield varied among kitchens. It turned
out that institutional cooks share the
tendency most of us hav~after we've
made a dish repeatedly, we are less
likely to follow the recipe exactly.
Just as we abandon teaspoon meas­ures
for a pinch or sprinkle, they might
substitute a handful for half a cup.
We had to instruct all the cooks in the
district to use the precise ingredients
and amounts listed in the recipes.
We also had to get information from
all our vendors as to the nutrients in
the processed foods we purchase, an
even harder task. Fortunately, the data
base from USDA contains the nutrient
content of most of the foods we com­monly
use.
Q Some schools dropped out of
the pilot study, finding it too
time-consuming or otherwise un­suitable-
for their districts. What
would you say are the requirements
for successfully adopting the nutri­ent
standard approach?
A One thing that helped us was to
introduce nutrient standard
planning gradually . I started at the high
school level because my office is there
and I could provide close supervision. I
found three factors to be essential.
First, you have to have the computer
equipment and expertise within your
district. The food service people who
review our programs know what they
need as output, but they can't help a
lot on what must be put in.
The first thing I did was ask our dis­trict
computer coordinator to recom­mend
one of the brightest kids in the
computer class to help me. The boy,
Bill Deegan, did a super job. Bill even
14
modified the program to suit our
needs. For instance, he adjusted it
to automatically enter items offered
every day. The job was a good oppor­tunity
for Bill, as well. The work be­came
so interesting to him that he de­cided
to specialize in computer
engineering when he enters college
this September. I have hired another
student to replace him.
The second factor is a willingness
to spend a lot of time checking to en­sure
menu and recipe files are uniform
and correctly coded.
Finally, you have to devote time,
effort, and money to thorough in­service
training. This includes not only
working with the managers, cooks,
and bakers, but ensuring that cashiers
know which selections may
be counted as a meal.
Q Did you find it necessary to
make any adjustments in the
lunch program?
A Yes, we made changes in the
way we offer lunches to students.
For some time, we've used the offer
versus serve option, which allows stu­dents
to refuse part of the meal, al­though
they still pay full price.
In schools using meal patterns, offer
versus serve allows students to take
as few as three of the five food items
that make up the meal. For example,
on a day hamburgers are served, a
student could take a hamburger on a
bun, a half-pint of milk, and have three
of the five required food items-meat,
bread, and milk.
With nutrient standard, however, stu­dents
must take a certain number of
menu items . During the first 2 years we
participated in the nutrient standard
project, children had to take at least
three menu items under offer versus
serve.
This meant that in a nutrient stand­ard
school, a child selecting a ham­burger
on a bun would have to take
two other items-milk, for instance,
and dessert-because the hamburger
and bun together were one menu item.
This forced some children to take more
food than they would with the meal
pattern, and the result was increased
waste and expense.
A year ago last spring, a team of
federal and state monitors visited the
district to survey on site what children
took and ate. Instead of a straight av­erage
of the choices the children could
take, we did a weighted average based
on how many of each item children
were actually taking.
As a result of this survey and reports
from other schools, USDA began al­lowing
nutrient standard districts to let
children take as few as two menu
items, as long as one was the entree.
This makes sense because with nutri-
Food and Nutrition
ent standard the entree contains the
major portion of the nutrient content of
the lunch. And the entree plus one
other item, such as milk, provides an
adequate lunch.
Of course, we encourage children
to take more than two items because
the more items taken, the higher the
nutritional content.
Recently, we asked parents from the
school's nutrition committee to repeat
the survey of what children were eat­ing.
We found selections were much
the same as a year earlier.
Q Has your overall experience
been positive, then?
A Definitely. Once I had the system
in the high school functioning, I
asked to extend it the second year to
the other six schools in the district. I
see several advantages.
For one thing, it has improved meal
planning. We know we are serving
one-third of the RDA. If the computer
analysis shows that the menus fail to
meet the standard for any nutrient, I
adjust them so they will.
However, because I am a nutrition­ist,
there's not a lot of trial and error in
menu planning. For instance, I'm con­scious
of the need to make a special
effort to include enough vitamin C and
Clara Mciver (lett) and food service man­ager
Eleanor Bratton talk about using
nutrient standard menu planning.
October 1986
iron. We analyze and adjust the menus
for the month in a single morning.
We can also introduce more variety
into meals because foods are selected
for their nutritional contribution rather
than to meet a mandatory meal pat­tern.
All menu items are evaluated re­gardless
of their role in the meal or the
portion size.
Being more flexible also makes it
easier to involve students in the lunch
program. For instance, the youth advi­sory
council recently planned an "Es­kimo
Day" featuring a complete cold
menu of salads-chicken, tuna, fruits,
and vegetables-followed by an ice
cream cone dessert.
Other promotions sponsored by the
council were Florida Citrus Day and
Deli Day. Student council members
worked with their faculty advisor, art
teacher Linda Lutkenhaus, on publicity
and decorations. They helped prepare
and serve the meals and clean up
afterwards.
These activities strengthen our pro­gram.
More students participate when
they see that their ideas count, and
higher participation means more in­come.
When we shifted to the nutrient
standard, this increase was most no­ticeable
in the elementary schools.
Participation went from 50 percent to
between 60 and 78 percent. That is
I
high for a school district in which only
13 percent of the lunches are served
free or at reduced price.
My goal since I came here has
been to teach not only the children,
but also their parents, about nutrition.
The nutrient standard has given a
boost to nutrition education. My staff
generated a lot of interest by enlarging
and posting a printout of the nutrient
content of common menu items.
The school community, parents, and
administrators now realize child nutri­tion
is more than pushing food over the
counter. After we started with the nutri­ent
standard, the board of education
agreed to make nutrition part of the
kindergarten through sixth grade
curriculum.
Another advantage of the nutrient
standard is that program management
has benefited from the introduction of
automation. We began with USDA
software and an Apple computer on
loan from the high school computer
lab. Last year, I acquired an IBM com­puter
and use it for nutrient analysis
and meal planning.
I use it for other administrative pur­poses
also. Every month, using a pro­gram
Bill developed, I key in our bills,
payroll costs, nonfood costs, and in­come,
by category. The computer
gives me year-to-date expenses and
income, and calculates meals per labor
hour, average meal cost, average meal
income ... almost anything I need.
Q In the 3 years you have partici­pated
in the study have you
been satisfied with the level of tech­nical
assistance provided?
A Yes, I found both state and fed­eral
personnel to be very
supportive. I feel comfortable knowing
people really want us to succeed.
For more information, contact:
Clara Mciver
Food Service Director
Huntington Union Free School District
P.O. Box 1500
Huntington, New York 11743
Telephone: (516) 673-2107
interview and photos
by Wini Scheffler
15
Students
Celebrate
S<;hoollunch
in Style
This past spring, third and fourth
graders at Marston Elementary School
in Hampton, New Hampshire, found an
unusual way to celebrate the fortieth
anniversary of the National School
Lunch Program.
They took a simulated spin in a time
machine with special menus and activi­ties
arranged by schoolmates to cap­ture
the flavor of three decades in
school lunch history-the 1940's, the
'60s, and the '80s. Each of three shifts
of students to pass through the lunch
line was served a distinct menu char­acteristic
of one. of those decades.
First group got
a taste of the '40s
The first children in line for the spe­cial
anniversary lunch had a typical
1946 menu. While the Andrews Sis­ters,
Artie Shaw, and Glenn Miller
crooned in the background, the fourth
grade hosts explained a collage they
had assembled of fashion, sayings,
and celebrities from the postwar years.
They also briefed their schoolmates on
the early years of the school lunch
program.
Each table was supplied with a bowl
of peanut butter to spread on home­made
whole wheat bread and a bottle
of chocolate syrup for their milk and ice
cream dessert. The main course was a
macaroni-and-beef casserole and
green beans.
Ruth Osgood, a guest of honor, felt
right at home. From 1945 to 1949, she
was part of the staff that prepared
meals for the town's three schools.
"We started with a S-cent cup of co­coa,"
she recalls. "Later, we added
soup and bread and butter. When the
federal government began providing
support in 1946, we adopted the nutri­tion
standards used nationwide. A
complete meal cost only 15 cents, and
any children who couldn't pay the price
could earn their lunches by helping out
in the kitchen."
16
Students are no longer allowed to
work for the cost of their meals, but
free and reduced-price lunches have
long been available to children from
low-income families.
Menus from 1966
and 1986 were next
The next group of children ate a
35-cent 1960's menu to the tunes of
the Monkees, the Beatles, and the
Beach boys. Their trays were filled with
whipped potatoes, Sloppy Joes, green
beans, homemade rolls, peaches,
and milk.
They heard their schoolmates com­ment
on the 'neat' and 'groovy' world
of the '60s portrayed in the poster col­lage
of Nehru jackets, bell bottoms,
and flower children. What was history --;www.:m::.:::.::~0':':~=~.,_...J
to a 1 0-year-old was only yesterday to
several of the teachers, who came be­decked
with bandannas and pendants
salvaged from their 'hippie' days.
The last shift of children had an up­to-
date menu of French bread pizzas
or steak subs, which they munched to
the strains of pop rock. They served
themselves a tossed salad and corn,
strawberries and mandarin oranges;
selected chocolate, whole, or lowfat
milk; and topped it off with a fudgesicle
or brownie. It was still a bargain at
85 cents.
'The key word is choice in today's
menus," recited Andre, one of the
student hosts. "Fast foods have
changed our eating habits," he added,
introducing the collage of pictures, say­ings,
and menus his classmates had
gathered to create the '80s image.
''This last group probably enjoyed
their meal most," says school food di­rector
Nancy Stiles. "The food is more
familiar to them. But even with the less
popular 1946 and 1966 menus, we
matched our usual 75-percent partici­pation.
This means the children value
the lunchroom for activities as well as
for the food."
Activities part
of ongoing program
Nutrition education is a focus of
many lunchroom activities, and it is
here that Stiles has put her personal
stamp on the last decade of the lunch
program in Hampton's three schools.
Because in many families both par­ents
work, today's youngsters make
Costumes, decorations, and presenta­tions
added to the festivities at Marston
Elementary's school lunch anniversary
celebration. Several teachers, who grew
up in the 1960's, dressed as " hippies."
more of their own food choices, she
says. "More than ever, they need to
know about good nutrition and how
food and exercise affect their health."
To meet this need, Stiles developed
a series of week-long mini-courses in
nutrition. The children who hosted the
special cafeteria program were the last
of six classes of fourth graders to com­plete
the course.
As hosts for the day, they dished out
the entrees and tidied up the tables.
With considerable poise, they used ex­hibits
to share with their schoolmates
the lessons they had learned during
the week.
Brian used Billie, a cutaway plastic
model of the human torso, to trace the
path of food through the digestive
system.
Pointer in hand, Rebecca explained
the six major groups of nutrients
printed on another display.
"The mini-course proves that the
food service program doesn't have to
stand alone but can be linked to the
rest of the curriculum," Stiles says.
"When teachers and food service staff
cooperate, the cafeteria becomes a
place to learn and a fun place to be."
Food and Nutrition
Many teachers use
nutrition materials
Although the nutrition lessons fit
most readily into the science curricu­lum,
teachers can expand and adapt
the material to other subject areas. For
instance, a language teacher might as­sign
a composition on a nutrition topic,
and an art teacher might choose food
themes.
Rosemary Buia, the teacher whose
fourth graders helped plan and prepare
the anniversary program, says she
coordinates studies of the human body
with the nutrition lessons.
"The children learn about food
groups and the digestive system along
with the other body functions, such as
respiration. They learn about nutrients
and minerals-what they do and where
they come from.
"The last 2 days, we focus on what
October 1986
makes a good meal in terms of nutri­tion,
color, and texture. When we talk
about snacks, Nancy Stiles brings
something like raw turnip with dip and
asks the children to guess what it is .
It's a way of exposing them to different
types of food," Buia explains.
Each class applies what it has
learned by planning a meal for their
schoolmates. Stiles gives them a
choice of food to vote on. "Our class
was the only one to offer three different
menus because we combined the end
of the nutrition education series with
our anniversary celebration," says
Buia.
Celebration ended
with special cake
No birthday celebration is complete
without a cake, and the festivities at
Marston Elementary were no excep-tion.
To finish off the day's events,
Stiles had two kinds of cake-an artifi­cial
tiered birthday cake rimmed with
lights and crowned with a little red
schoolhouse, and real cakes she had
baked for the occasion.
Iced with the words "40 Years of
School Lunch," the real cakes disap­peared
without a trace as the last of
the children carried their empty trays to
the kitchen. "Wicked good," they said,
echoing the words of the 1986 collage.
For more information, contact:
Nancy Stiles
Food Service Director
Hampton School District
Marston Way
Hampton, New Hampshire 03842
Telephone: (603) 926-8708
article and photos
by Wini Scheffler
17
..
Michigan Districts Get More for
Less Buying Cooperatively
What is the biggest problem for
school food service directors?
"Determining quality," says Vera
Jehnsen, former food service director
from Oakland County, Michigan. For
nearly 25 years, Jehnsen has been in­volved
with a food service cooperative
that serves 20 to 25 school districts in
Oakland County. "Selecting the best
product for the best price is the goal of
the cooperative," she says.
An interesting aspect of Oakland
County's cooperative is that par­ticipating
districts bid for food as a
group but purchase individually. The
arrangement not only gives individual
school districts more purchasing
power, it also gives school lunch man­agers
valuable experience in
evaluating products and purchasing.
Four cooperatives
now work together
Oakland County was the first food
cooperative of its kind in southeastern
Michigan. Since 1965, three neighbor­ing
counties-Macomb, Genesee, and
Wayne-have followed Oakland's lead
and set up similar cooperatives. While
each of the cooperatives operates in-
18
dependently, they work together on de­veloping
specifications and evaluating
food products through what is called
the Quad County Purchasing
Committee.
The committee, as Genesee County
food service consultant Gloria Bourdon
explains, is a logical extension of the
cooperative buying concept. "Prior to
1981, each cooperative was going
through the same product evaluation
process, asking the same companies
to provide the same samples. We de­cided
we could have one product eval­uation
and simplify the process."
The committee includes the school
food service consultants from each of
the four counties, two local food serv­ice
directors from each county, and in­dustry
representatives. Although indus­try
representatives are not required to
attend all committee meetings, they do
actively participate in writing specifica­tions,
setting up evaluation sessions,
and putting together workshops.
Committee members make up a list
of the most often used food products,
evaluate the products against specifi­cations,
tally the amounts needed by
participating schools, and then three
times a year put out bid proposals to
the suppliers. Suppliers have access to
product ratings and are given 2 to 4
weeks to send back their bids. The co­operatives
award the bids, but the
schools order individually.
Foods evaluated
in careful process
"To make the bidding process effec­tive,"
says Bourdon, "the purchasing
committee writes specifications that
spell out exactly what the buyer wants.
The buyer must determine if the prod­uct
meets specifications through a
product analysis, referred to as cutting,
sampling, evaluating, or testing, de­pending
on the type of product
involved."
During product analysis, foods avail­able
from different food vendors are
compared for flavor, color, uniformity,
absence of defects, sugar content,
consistency, and yield weight. "Without
good specifications and product analy­sis,
it is difficult for a school to pur­chase
food that meets program
needs," explains Bourdon.
Before the purchasing committee
was set up, each county had its own
2-day product analysis with represent­atives
from participating schools
testing the samples.
This spring at a Wayne County high
school, the cooperatives tested 36 types
of french fries. Students, school lunch
workers, and industry representatives
took part in the test.
Food and Nutrition
"The way we work now is not all that
different," says Chacella Russell,
Macomb County food service
consultant. "The evaluation is done in
a day, but the committee spends a
great deal of time setting up and later
tabulating results. There are more peo­ple
involved now. In addition to repre­sentatives
from the schools, we work
extensively with industry.
"We operate one product evaluation
and each county shares the results.
We are not duplicating efforts asking
the same vendors for test products.
And vendors are willing to give us
more information and more samples
because they know there are poten­tially
large sales involved."
After the evaluation, bid proposals
are sent to the suppliers. Suppliers
have the opportunity to know how their
product rated with others being consid­ered
by the cooperatives. Each coop­erative
has its own bids and awards
contracts to the two or three best
companies that will agree to deliver
minimum amounts needed by schools.
When schools want to order food,
they place their orders directly with one
of these suppliers. Because of the
evaluations and the carefully worded
specifications developed by the com­mittee,
school lunch managers know
they will be getting a good quality prod­uct
at a reasonable cost.
October 1986
Cooperatives offer
many advantages
"There are lots of advantages to co­operative
purchasing," says Russell.
"Small districts can get the latest infor­mation
on food products, and they can
get better quality for better prices. Of­ten
food service directors in the
smaller districts do not have training in
purchasing, nor do they have the time
to do extensive evaluations on their
own."
As Russell explains, it's not cost ef­fective
for small districts to do exten­sive
evaluations, and it can also be
difficult for them to get vendors to par­ticipate.
"Companies do not devote the
time to small orders that they do
to large ones," she says.
"We like the way our cooperatives
are set up because while the bidding
process is centralized, schools still
have flexibility in ordering and
arranging for deliveries," she adds.
Originally, most of the foods the co­operatives
bid on were canned goods,
such as canned fruits and vegetables,
and prepared sauces. Today, there is
greater variety, reflecting changing stu­dent
tastes and new food technology.
For example, because french fries
and chicken nuggets are popular items
on school lunch menus, the purchasing
committee decided to work on specifi­cations
and evaluation procedures for
these two frozen products.
In a special project this past spring,
36 different types of french fries were
evaluated for flavor, texture, appear­ance,
and color. Twenty-four home
economics students, 36 school lunch
workers, and 12 industry representa­tives
participated in the test, which was
held at Wayne County's Northville High
School.
The process was similar to other
evaluations. First, the french fries were
counted and checked for length and
broken pieces, then prepared accord­ing
to manufacturer's directions. They
were weighed for yield, evaluated for
acceptability, and rated as good, very
good, or excellent in each of several
categories.
Students' reactions
were important
Getting students' reactions was an
important part of the test. "Kids don't
always use the same criteria as adults
in judging food," says Barbara Wilson,
Wayne County food service consultant.
'They come up with some surprising
reasons for choosing a particular prod­uct,
and they tend to like what is
closest to what they get in the fast food
restaurants.
"For example, they will tell you that
even though thicker fries taste more
'potatoey,' they like the smaller pieces
because when their friends walk by
and take some, they will have more
19
...
left. Kids are kids. We have to consider
the reality of the way they live."
Students and adults tasted the
french fries together in an initial test,
then the adults were called back to
evaluate how the products held up af­ter
several minutes on the serving line.
This is important because french fries
served in schools are not always eaten
immediately.
Following the test, summaries of stu­dent
and adult evaluations were
shared with food service directors and
industry representatives. This is done
routinely after evaluations.
Committee's work
includes training
Participating in evaluations is one
way school food service managers can
learn more about products and
sharpen their buying skills. The coop­eratives
offer more formal training op­portunities
as well, both on their own
and together.
For example, the purchasing com­mittee
has an annual workshop for
multi-unit directors. The workshop pro­vides
new information on purchasing
procedures, rules, and specifications.
This is accomplished through keynote
speakers, small work groups, product
comparisons, industry exhibits, and
presentations.
"Helping schools get the best prod­uct
for the best price has always been
the goal of our cooperative," says Bar­bara
Wilson. "Working together, we're
doing that by sharing the knowledge,
expertise, and experience of the four
consultants, school food service repre­sentatives,
and representatives from
industry .
"We have developed specifications
we can live with. We share common
problems and draw upon each other
for solutions. Each group involved has
a commitment and a reward."
For more information, contact:
Barbara Wilson
Food Service Consultant
Wayne County Intermediate
School District
33500 Van Born Road
Wayne, Michigan 48184
Telephone: (313) 467-1300
article by Mary Jane Gettinger
photos by Vera Jehnsen
20
Minnesota Computer Student
Solves A Lunch Dilemna
"There has to be a better way to
count kids in a lunch line!" Those were
the words of Ortonville, Minnesota, su­perintendent
Burton Nypen when he
filled in for his secretary so she could
be treated to lunch downtown on Sec­retary's
Day 8 years ago.
Nypen had to punch more than 350
cardboard tickets for hungry, squirming
youngsters at Knoll Elementary
School. He also had to take care of
students who had forgotten their cards,
keep the line moving smoothly, and
keep a tally of how many children paid
full price, reduced price, or got their
lunches free.
"It was impossible," says Nypen. "I
did a horrible job!"
At about the same time, the
Minnesota Department of Education
reviewed Ortonville's food service op­eration
and recommended that more
accurate recordkeeping be done.
That was when Curt Johnson, an
outstanding Ortonville computer stu­dent,
came to the rescue. In the fall of
1978, Nypen asked Johnson if he
could design a computer program to
make school lunch recordkeeping sim­pler
and more accurate.
Things worked together. The
Minnesota Council on Quality Educa­tion
awarded the Ortonville Schools a
grant to fund innovative projects, and
they used part of it to develop a food
service accountability system.
Used a portable
computer first
Johnson began by designing a pro­gram
for the Apple II computer. As a
first step, each student was issued an
identification card with his or her name
and number. Then, a portable com­puter
terminal was set up in the
lunchroom.
As the students moved through the
line, the secretary typed in their identi­fication
numbers and listed the types of
lunch they received. The computer
kept track of the lunch fee while
preserving the anonymity of students
receiving free and reduced-price
meals. This system worked fairly well,
but it was easy to make an error in en­tering
students' identification numbers.
When Curt Johnson graduated from
Ortonville High School in 1979, the
school district hired him to continue
working with computer systems. A year
later, he became Ortonville's technol­ogy
coordinator and decided to make
some changes.
"When bar code scanners became
available for use with microcomputers,"
he says, "we decided to modify our
program. We modified a Hewlett
Packard bar code scanner for the Ap­ple
II."
A bar code scanner is a device that
uses light to read the thickness of verti­cal
bars and then translates what it has
read into letters and numbers. Bar
code scanners come in a number of
different forms and are commonly seen
at grocery stores that have computer­ized
their inventory and check-out
systems.
The scanner proved to be easy,
quick, and more accurate but it still re­quired
that a computer be available in
the lunchroom each day. Not only was
moving the computer into the lunch­room
a difficult task, it was also hard to
keep the computer from being banged,
jarred, and jostled, and there were
problems keeping it functioning
properly.
Looked for a
better approach
Johnson saw ways to improve his
system and set off in search of a bar
scanner that would be separate from
the computer and small enough to eas­ily
carry to the lunchroom to collect
data that would later be transferred to
a stationary terminal. Johnson found a
commercial model, but the $1600 price
tag was prohibitive since grant money
had by then run out.
In May 1985, Johnson put his talents
into action again and decided to build
his own bar code scanner. "I ordered
parts, put them together, redesigned
them a few times, and came up with a
Food and Nutrition
4- by 7-inch box that weighs about 2
pounds, " he says. The new equipment
cost under $700 and was ready for the
1985-86 school year.
The equipment is compatible with
IBM computer systems. In addition to a
wand, the bar code scanner has a
small keyboard so if students forget
their ident ification cards, the numbers
can be looked up on a printout and en­tered
manually . To discourage fre­quent
forgetfulness, however, students
must go to the back of the lunch line to
be processed manually.
If a student tries to use his or her
card a second time during a meal pe­riod
, a warning light goes on. The box
also has a small screen which shows
the students' balance. If an account
is not paid up , another warning light
goes on .
"It is a simpler way to keep accurate
records, " says secretary Elnor
Benkowski, who records daily lunch
data . "We know exactly who ate what
kind of meal. "
Ortonville technology coordina­tor
Curt Johnson is pictured
here using the bar code scanner
he designed to simplify school
lunch accounting. When stu­dents
present their cards, he
scans the proper meal code with
a special wand.
=======-- : ---!~ENTIFICATION:c:::::::: - - ---: ----- -ARD
-----=============::
--- ..:;;.:;;-.;;;;._
-- -- 000186
October 1986
The system keeps the daily food
service count, which shows how many
meals were served at full price, re­duced
price, or free to participating
children and how many meals were
served to adults. The system also
keeps track of daily cash receipts. It
can record up to 1 , 1 00 student records
per building, and building totals can be
combined to give complete food serv­ice
reports.
Also helpful
in other ways
Billing is also simpler with the new
system. Ortonville students can pay for
their lunches on a weekly basis or their
parents can be billed at the end of the
month. The computer keeps track of
students' lunch accounts and gener­ates
statements that are mailed to par­ents
for billing.
A big benefit of the system is that it's
easy to use, something that has not
gone unnoticed by Superintendent
Nypen, who was recently called on
again to help out during lunch hour. "It
was no problem like it had been a few
years ago when I tried to punch
tickets, " he says.
Thanks to the ingenuity of one of its
former students, Ortonville has not
only found an easy and accurate way
to count kids in a lunch line, but has
streamlined recordkeeping and billing
as well. A number of Minnesota
schools have expressed interest in the
system, and the district hopes to inter­est
other schools across the country.
For further information, contact:
Curt Johnson
Ortonville Schools
Box 247
Ortonville, Minnesota 56278
Telephone: (612) 839-6181
article by Mary Jane Getlinger
photos by Ortonville Schools
Pasta Bar Is A Student Favorite
At Cathedral High
When Frances Ziter, food service di­rector
of Cathedral High School in
Springfield, Massachusetts, set up a
pasta bar in the school dining room,
many of her colleagues warned her
that the cost would be phenomenal.
"Thanks to donated government
commodities, the opposite is true," she
says. "The pasta bar actually helps us
stay within our budget and offer a
wider variety of foods."
Cathedral High School is a private
school that draws its 2,029 students
from 31 towns and cities in Mas­sachusetts
and Connecticut. The Ca­thedral
school food service also han­dles
menu planning, finances, and
some food preparation for Our Lady of
Hope, an elementary school with an
Pasta, salad, and health food
bars add variety to Cathe­dral's
food service, which of­fers
students a variety of hot
and cold foods for lunch.
22
enrollment of 403.
The popular pasta bar is one of the
changes that have enabled Ziter and
her staff of 23 to achieve a fully self­supporting
food service that is popular
with students.
"We cater to the tastes of our stu­dents
just as any restaurant seeks to
please its customers," she says. Ziter
pleases her customers by offering
foods they like, keeping prices low,
and practicing good public relations.
Students offered
variety of choices
"If it's meatloaf, it must be Tuesday,"
could have been true under the once­traditional
cycle menu which Ziter be­lieves
is unnecessary and monoto­nous.
Instead of using a fixed and
recurring menu, she plans a month's
meals with an eye on seasonal pur­chases,
available commodities, and
special events.
To satisfy as many tastes as possi­ble,
the Cathedral School dining room
has four different serving lines. In addi­tion
to a standard hot meal, there is a
fast food line that features such en­trees
as hamburgers, hot dogs, cold
cut grinders (the New England term for
subs), and roast beef and grilled
cheese sandwiches. Other options are
the salad bar and, on alternating
weeks, the pasta or health food bar.
On a typical day recently, students
could choose from nine different meals
that met the USDA meal pattern, or
they could buy items a Ia carte. The
lines moved swiftly, giving diners more
time to enjoy their meals in the light
and surprisingly quiet dining room.
Sixty-three percent of the students
buying lunch chose the USDA meal.
Counting those who purchased a Ia
carte items, the kitchen served around
90 percent of the student body.
Menus for the month are posted in
each home room. "We want students
to be aware of the variety of choices
they have," says Ziter. "We encourage
their ideas, too. Recently, we offered
parmesan chicken at the suggestion of
a student. When we introduce a new
item, the cooks always go out and ask
students how they like it.
"Very few people choose the same
line every day. Some of the girls who
want to lose weight choose salads fre­quently,
and sometimes the coach rec­ommends
a light meal for boys who
have athletic practice right after lunch.
These extra options keep our participa­tion
high."
The pasta bar, introduced 2 years
ago, is a favorite choice of many stu­dents.
Typical entrees served from the
hot food cart include macaroni or spa­ghetti,
which students can top with
meat or spicy tomato sauce.
The pasta bar is offered only every
other week because of the work in­volved
in cooking fresh pasta. Because
the timing is precise and the pasta is
not overcooked, any leftovers can be
used the following day in the salad bar.
Commodities help
hold costs down
Federal cash and commodity assist­ance
allow Ziter to offer lunches to stu­dents
at a low cost of 75 cents.
"Commodities help us hold costs
down," Ziter says, offering an example
from a lunch recently served from the
pasta bar. "The pasta, ground beef­and-
tomato sauce, cheese sticks,
salad dressing, and dinner rolls were
all or in part donated."
A number of foods used for the
pasta bar are processed under con­tract,
using donated ingredients such
as cheese, oil, and flour. Some of the
processed items occasionally used to
add variety to the pasta bar are
tortellini, manicotti, lasagna, ravioli,
and macaroni or shells with cheese.
Commodities help with other menus
as well. Recent salad bar selections in­cluded
pork salad from donated
canned meat, macaroni salad, com­modity
cheese and peanuts, and salad
dressing made with donated oil.
"We plan our menus to take advan­tage
of the commodities available,"
Ziter says. "The government helps us
October 1986
use less familiar items by supplying
recipes and information on the number
of servings in a package or carton. We
ordered donated figs for the first time
recently, and the accompanying recipe
for a fig bar cookie was well accepted.
"By saving in one area, we can ab­sorb
higher costs in another. For in­stance,
we can buy more expensive
items such as fruits and vegetables in
season and even occasionally include
a luxury item, such as strawberry
shortcake, which the senior class
asked for recently."
Students encouraged
to become involved
Ziter enjoys involving the students in
decisions about food. "It's good public
relations," she says.
"Each year, senior class officers plan
a week's menu. Usually, they choose
favorite items from those we have
been serving, although they also sug­gest
new things. If we know ahead of
time, we can budget for a few more ex­pensive
items.
"We also work with the home eco­nomics
classes in bachelor living, and
those students have to budget as well
as plan the meals. When they visited
our kitchen, many were surprised to
find that most foods are prepared
here."
In addition to noonday meals, the
food service staff offers Cathedral stu­dents
a breakfast bar. They also cater
such school events as dances, parent
orientation days in the fall, and an an­nual
father-daughter banquet.
During Frances liter's 9 years as di­rector,
the school food program at Ca­thedral
has changed greatly.
"Years ago," she says, "the serving
area was set up so that workers faced
the wall as they ladled lunch onto each
tray. Students picked up the filled trays
from the end of a conveyor belt.
"Now, under the offer versus serve
policy, students make their own
choices and may omit one or two of
the five items offered. They get to
know by name the food service work­ers
who are assigned to the same duty
stations each day. It's friendlier and
more personal. Daily contact also
helps us respond to student tastes."
Always looking
for new ideas
Keeping in contact with other food
service directors is also important to
Ziter. "I always keep my eyes open for
new ideas," she says.
"A few years ago, several of the
other local food service directors and I
formed a group we called 'kitchens in
training,' which met each month to
share ideas. We learned as much from
each other as from the speakers who
addressed our meetings.
"I regularly attend meetings spon­sored
by the state and by the
Massachusetts School Food Service
Association, because I am always
looking for ways to adapt creatively to
change."
For more information, contact:
Frances Ziter
Food Servic~. Director
Cathedral H1gh School
260 Surrey Road
Springfield, Massachusetts 01118
Telephone: (413) 782-5108
article and photos
by Wini Scheffler
23
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