The changing role of the FSD

The standard 3 1/2-by-2-inch space of a business card hardly is enough real estate anymore to contain the true job description of a foodservice director.

Most FSDs concur that their job is very different today than it was even half a decade ago. According to FoodService Director magazine’s most recent Big Picture research, 73 percent of operators strongly agree that the scope of the foodservice directors’ job has expanded in recent years to include responsibilities outside traditional foodservice operations.  

Typically, those roles include hospitality services, environmental services, housekeeping, laundry or facilities. FoodService Director magazine’s 2015 FSD of the Year Lisa Poggas, for example, oversees environmental services in addition to nutrition services for two hospitals in the Denver area, dividing her time roughly 50-50 between the two disciplines. Jean Ronnei, current president of the School Nutrition Association, ascended to the post from her role overseeing transportation, facilities, technology services, nutrition services and security and emergency management as chief operating officer of Saint Paul Public Schools in Minnesota. “So many of the issues that nutrition services face tend to be the same kind of business concerns that other departments have in our world,” said Ronnei in an interview with FSD magazine soon after assuming her new role. “It is about resources and training and equipment and  infrastructure and systems thinking, [and] I see those as the same themes that run through the departments that I have today.”

Related:How the CIA is prepping students for the new norm

But the intangible responsibilities are harder to pinpoint. We took a look at how foodservice directors and other professionals define the changing role, and what it means for the future of the business.

Voices of change

A cursory look at current FSD job listings turns up the expected requirements: creating menus, overseeing the P&L, the ability to lead and motivate, food-safety expertise. Some of the other desired competencies called for, however, bring into focus the modern evolution of the role: maintain excellent relationships with customers, guests, clients and other departments; responsible for responding effectively to changing demands; community and service-minded.

Recent headlines provide context for why such sensibilities matter now more than ever: “Oberlin students take culture war to the dining hall” (The New York Times); “Johns Hopkins students successfully ban Chick-fil-A from campus” (Yahoo News); “Heated debate surrounds push for deep fryers in schools;” (The Texas Tribune). With customer activism on the rise, foodservice directors have to know even more to adequately respond to the new demands of today’s diners.

Related:Describing today's foodservice director

Despite offering kosher options for years, Dartmouth College found itself under scrutiny this fall after a student circulated a petition demanding that the college’s kosher kitchen adhere to stricter Orthodox standards than its current certification guarantees. “Kosher dining has become, for us, very mainstream,” says David Newlove, associate VP of business and hospitality at Dartmouth. “But now we’re grappling with challenges from super-Orthodox students, and how do we accommodate their needs?”

In addition to engaging students, education is required, Newlove says. So he and one of his chefs who oversees Dartmouth’s program have taken online courses in kosher and halal.

Authenticity—the crux of Oberlin students’ beef with their school’s menu offerings—also is key. “We have to be authentic. You can’t be authentic-like,” says Newlove. That means ramping up training for employees across the operation, “so that if you’re going to offer a particular ethnic food, that it’s good,” he says.

Evolving tastes

Activist customers aren’t the only forces imposing a shift in operators’ expertise. At Lee Memorial Health System in southwest Florida, new regulations and consumers’ growing awareness of health and dietary concerns forged a new mission for the foodservice operation under the direction of Larry Altier. “Five to 10 years prior, Lee County was in a boom state, and the real focus was on driving financial results in a positive way. We were less inclined to be focused on health and wellness in what we did,” says Altier, system director of food and nutrition. “That’s completely changed, partly because of the Affordable Care Act and partly because consumer advocacy has changed.”

Consumers have more information, Altier says, because of TV’s Food Network, blogs and other media, a reality that poses what he calls probably the biggest challenge facing FSDs today. “There are so many different sources of information, and not all of them are accurate,” he says. “As an operator, you can’t ignore that, and you have to try to find the balance. … Identifying the tidbits that are of value and representative of new thinking is as big a challenge as anything.”

The new climate has led Lee Memorial to adopt a more whole-foods, plant-based approach to the menus overall in its cafeterias and retail operations. Among the changes: removing fryers from the kitchens and transitioning 20-ounce sodas out of the cafeteria, where they were subsidized for hospital employees, to vending machines only.

A call for backup

Although FSDs’ roles are expanding, that doesn’t necessarily mean operators are being equipped with staffs and resources to help absorb those new duties. “The amount of time I spend at work has greatly increased,” says Newlove, whose current charge includes parking, an outsourced hotel on the Dartmouth campus, mail services, print services and the card office.

The key, he says, is hiring the right people who are flexible and can help take on some of the new demands of the department. “You’ve got to hire a chef that’s willing to go out and do cooking demonstrations and teach,” says Newlove. “You can’t be that chef in a white coat anymore. Everybody’s jobs just become more broad.”

Altier agrees, calling resource management the second biggest challenge facing FSDs in their expanded roles. “The other problem with the explosion of interest in food is the belief that there are chefs on every street corner,” he says. That’s not the case. “If you’re going to innovate and create, you either have to get lucky, or you have to develop [and train] your own talent.”

Know your role

Not everyone in the profession sees the added demands as a good thing. “The issues that we’re talking about can be viewed as challenges in the negative sense,” says Bruce Mattel, associate dean of food production at The Culinary Institute of America. “But I think a lot of people look at them as challenges in a positive sense and draw them into the position.”

In times of lean budgets and staffs, FSDs who can evolve and innovate—and show their worth above and beyond the boundaries of the core job description—are likely to be successful, operators say. “Because we’re penny pinchers when it comes to dining, that translates into other businesses,” says Newlove.

To stay up-to-date with the ever-changing demands of the role, Altier finds inspiration in the usual places: industry publications and  events. But he also looks outside of the industry. “You have to keep your feelers out there to see what people are doing,” he says. “It’s from the out-of-box thinking that you find creative genius.”