Awesome a-ha moments from SNA’s big annual school food conference

Tara Fitzpatrick

The School Nutrition Association (SNA) descended on Denver this week, with more than 6,000 school nutrition professionals checking out hundreds of education sessions and exhibit booths to gather resources and ideas. Here are a few of the ideas FM found especially noteworthy in the first two days of the conference.

Main ideas, bills to watch and advocacy from SNA’s Legislative Update

Is “universal free lunch” not the best phrase to use? According to Cathy Schuchart, SNA’s VP Gov. Affairs & Media Relations, the term may be off-putting to some. “Healthy School Meals for All” might be a better term, said Schuchart, as part of SNA’s Legislative Update, always a popular session at the conference.

“We have had a lot of victories but also a lot of setbacks,” Schuchart said. “We all know that we’re looking at a general election and we have a lot going on between now and next November.”

She acknowledged the “glacial pace” of Congress looking at Child Nutrition Reauthorization and walked the audience through several SNA-endorsed bills recently introduced, including HR 1424: Helping Schools Feed Kids Act, HR 1269: Healthy Meals Help Kids Learn Act and what Schuchart called the “ultimate bill” in getting free meals for all, Ilhan Omar and Bernie Sanders’ joint House and Senate Bill, The Universal School Meals Program Act.

Schuchart encouraged SNA members to respond to its regular calls to action and keep up the advocacy as much as they can in their necks of the woods, with SNA poised to represent on the Hill.

“One of the greatest benefits of being at SNA has been the number of calls we get from House and Senate Staff,” she said. “They say, ‘We need to hear what SNA has to say.’”

Training is way more than just a day

Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) is the 8^th largest in the country, with 266 schools and 208,000 students. As Senior Training and Quality Assurance Manager for the district, Tony Jenkins, MBS, SNS, trains the workforce that serves all those students. At the session New Hire Onboarding Training for Kitchen Staff in a Large School District, Jenkins shared his hiring process.

The process starts with a posting for the jobs online. OCPS as an employer is competing with three theme parks: Disney World, Universal Studios and Sea World. The pay is competitive, and when job applicants accept the job and pass background checks and physical tests, Jenkins’ work begins. It’s a process that’s been fine-tuned. It’s ongoing, well-documented and geared to help new employees get their footing and ultimately move up.

To make values part of training, the training videos show the lighter side of very important customer service tactics and service standards. Short videos illustrate how employees can be “welcoming, courteous, responsible, grateful and safe.” The “grateful” video showed how simple it is to say “thank you” and what a positive impact that makes.

Jenkin’s main point was that training is much more than a day. After a week of training on things like food safety, back safety (never bend, lift and twist at the same time!) and civil rights.

“After a week of training, does training stop there? No,” Jenkins said. “When they come out of one week of training, they will not be Superman or Wonder Woman. We ask managers to continue the training at the school for four weeks, as they learn the kitchen culture. But it doesn’t stop there.”

Tony Jenkins of Orange County Public Schools greets attendees after his popular session, New Hire Onboarding Training for Kitchen Staff in a Large School District.

Three or four months later, “we do a new hire follow-up visit,” Jenkins said. “The new employee, the manager and the trainer all sign off.”

School food myths and how you can bust them with marketing

Longtime friend of FM, Kern Halls, B.S., B.M., Chief Innovator of Ingenious Culinary Concepts, moderated a panel discussion with two foodservice directors focused on getting school nutrition programs the respect they deserve.

“Your cafeteria is the largest classroom in the school,” said Adam Russo, Food and Nutrition Program Director at Prince William County Public Schools. “We need to leverage that and we need to learn that. Having managers teach kids has elevated them to ‘lunch teachers’ in our district.”

Halls brought up the importance of the tone or emotion to use when communicating about your program to the community. According to Warren DeShields, Director of Food Service at Bridgeton Public Schools, “we try to build excitement and mystery.” For example, in “robo calls” to students’ homes, sometimes hints are delivered about a new special menu item or event.

Russo emphasized the importance of trust in social media and all interactions. “Ultimately we are in the trust business,” he said, emphasizing the role school food professionals can play in each student’s success. “It’s care. It’s empathy. You can’t be hungry to learn if you’re just plain hungry.”

And while we all communicate in the virtual world, Russo brought up the fact that there’s really no substitute for the personal touch. “We started saying to each student, ‘We’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow.’ And breakfast participation increased. The kids felt invited.”

Following the discussion, National Dairy Council’s VP of Nutrition Affairs Katie Bambacht shared new resources for school food pros, a marketing campaign called Made with School Lunch, with lots of ready-to-use multimedia marketing tools, including videos, social media posts, graphics and “What will school lunch make you?” posters in English and Spanish that show adults who ate school lunch and their young selves.  

Smoothies and slushies everywhere! This booth featured a nostalgic, summery new flavor: Rocket pop.

Menu planning success

Chef Matthew Mataio Gillis, Culinary Program Supervisor at Bellingham Public Schools, worked as a restaurateur and caterer for 20 years before he found school foodservice. At the session Tips and Tricks for Menu Planning Success, he shared some of his process for creating “wow” plates for K-12, like a chickpea masala that was featured on USDA’s website.

Gillis explained that while developing the recipe for masala, the coconut milk he initially used threw the nutritionals of the dish way off, so “here’s the hack,” he said. “This is where my classical training came in. I started thinking about thickeners and roux. We reduced the total quality of coconut milk, added liquid and jasmine rice with garlic and ginger, then pureed that and it gave us the same texture of the initial coconut milk and the flavor, too.”

These frosty fruit treats reveal a positive kindness message as kids eat them. How cool is that!

Drive-thru high school breakfast?

Let’s put a pin in this one! Also at the Menu Planning session, Shannon Solomon, MS, Director of Nutrition Services at Aurora Public Schools, shared her “work in progress,” a drive-thru for high school students that she thinks can increase breakfast participation. It would be manned by different school and athletic groups to make money for their activities. Stay tuned!

Attendees had to get past this big blue bear who guards the Colorado Convention Center at this year’s Annual National Conference for the School Nutrition Association.