All kitchen planning begins with one simple question. What is the menu?

After that one simple question is asked it all starts to get complicated. This is true for schools, restaurants, corporate cafes, clubs, hotels, churches or where ever food is served.

School kitchens, whether elementary, middle or high, use to be relativity easy to design.

Everyone ate the same menu. If you were lucky you could get chocolate milk occasionally. And once you got to high school you might have a choice between a hot plate and a hamburger plate. School food service is a very different these days and I can’t wait to see what tomorrow is going to be like.

As a society we are no longer happy with a limited number of choices. Thanks to cable and satellite TV we now have hundreds of channels, a few even worth watching. Thanks to mall food courts, kids have learned they can all eat at once but everyone can also have something different. The food court mentality is the challenge for Directors, Managers, Food Service Consultants and Architects.

Today’s Food Service Directors are constantly trying new and innovative ways to get kids to eat. And, of course they want the kids to eat healthy meals as well. The Directors are bring pushed and pulled by a host of factors including menu, staff, food and equipment costs, technology, governmental agencies, parents and kids. And then there is today’s culture which of course will change by tomorrow.

 

Menu:
A child in elementary or middle school today will have at least two, if not more, entrees plus 3 to 4 fruits and vegetables and up to 3 types of milk to choose from on a typical lunch menu. This type of service is called offer versus serve. This means instead of cooking spaghetti entrée for 1,000 kids. The kitchen staff may be preparing 500 servings of spaghetti and 500 chicken strip meals. To better serve current and future menus the preparation and cooking equipment needs to be versatile and multi functional. More school systems are designing the new kitchens with two 12 gallon kettles instead of one 40 gallon kettle. With the "offer" versus the "serve" type of meal program the spaghetti sauce can be cooked in a smaller kettle since 1,000 servings are not being prepared. Announcing this week’s new menu offering….Vegetarian meals are now being served in High Schools.

Scratch Cooking? When many of us ate at school we were being served foods that had been prepared from scratch. While many items are still cooked from scratch, just as many if not more are to some degree prepared foods. I just hope there will always be the hot yeast rolls. It is interesting to attend the school foodservice association conventions to see what food is been offered and sold to the schools. The public can buy bag lettuce or salads in the corner supermarket. The schools buy it too, only the bags are a little larger. When the director figures the costs for the food, staff and equipment required to prepare the salad for the menu, it may cost less to buy the ready-to-serve salad. The director and consultant need to compare the current State equipment list to the menus being served and determine, which if any, of the equipment is really required.

Technology:
Did you ever figure out how to set the clock on your VCR?

With technology in the equipment being specified today, you can put frozen food into and oven, defrost and cook with a combination of steam or dry heat, and then hold the food at the precise temperature and humidity for hours. You would think everybody wants this technology? Yes and No - some schools systems may just want a timer and a thermostat while others want and use the most sophisticated computer cooking available. There is no correlation between rural or urban systems either so after many years of trial and error we have found the secret to determining the exact level of technology for each school…..You just got to ASK.

Staff:
As all Foodservice Directors can attest hiring and keeping good kitchen staff is a constant issue and uphill battle. Many new middle and high school kitchens are designed with the dish room equipment listed as future installed equipment. A reason for that is dish room positions are for part-time help. Trying to find some one to come in and work 3 to 4 hours a day in many schools is difficult. The staff not only has to be trained to prepare nutritious and delicious meals (well it has to taste good or the kids don’t eat) but there is constant training on health and welfare regulations and procedures. If there is even a hint of a food borne illness every newspaper and TV station in town is at the back door. Sometimes after a day of serving food to the "little darlings" even the hardiest of kitchen drill sergeants will need to just kick back and down a hard BOSCO (shaken not stirred).

Even with all the issues and the day to day strains the folks who work in the kitchen really do care. They care that in many cases the meals they serve to some is the only food they will get that has any nutritional value. They care to make sure the cafeteria and kitchen is clean and inviting. They care because the staff watches these kids grow from the little "dinky dudes" to the high school graduates.

 

Color:
Can we get a little help here?

The class rooms have airy open layouts with natural lighting and stimulating patterns and colors. The hallways and other public areas have wonderful color patterns in the floor, vivid color stripe patterns on the walls. The cafeterias have a cornucopia of colors and finishes, forms and patterns. And then the child, after all this stimulation enters the serving area and sees…..pale yellow or beige walls…Not all serving areas are devoid of color or life but many lack any interesting designs or color. Think of the mall food court……….besides your taste buds, what draws you to a particular counter? Is it clean, inviting, does it spark your visual taste buds? The mall food court experience is the competition to the food service director. It is a total package experience. But so many times this one small area gets overlooked. Why not continue the vivid wall pattern and color in the serving area? Or a floor tile pattern? How about adding some ceiling hung sound panels in bright colors? To really give the serving area great looks consider adding glazed ceramic tile in a unique or continuing design. Both full and half wall designs make a world of difference. And don’t forget that the serving counters come in almost any color imaginable.

We know that people select foods based on the taste and the presentation. With just a little more effort in the design of the serving area we can help with the presentation issue and the Foodservice Directors can take care of the taste issue.

Having spent the last 27 years in the Foodservice Consulting business, the school kitchens that are we are designing today are not the same as the kitchens my father designed years ago. And it is going to be fun to see what we are going to be designing a few years from now.

For more information about Camacho & Associates, Inc. Visit their website at www.camachousa.com