Month: February 2025

I call the school food team at Fallbrook Union High School District my amazing dream team. Every one of them cares so deeply, and they’re fearless. There’s not an idea that you can throw at them that they’re not willing to try. 

Our School Food Professionals learned a lot of their skills right here. Our team member Veronica Bernal is a great example. She’s an excellent cook at home, but at home, you don’t often have to make 400 of the same dish while meeting a whole list of nutritional regulations. She learned that on the job. 

There was a point where our program felt like it was hitting a wall. We were using a lot of home recipes and what I call “Chef Pinterest,” going online and asking “What can we make?” We could read recipes and buy ingredients, and we were managing to do pretty well, but we knew there was so much more we could do if we had the skills. So last summer, we decided that the team needed more training. 

Sometimes people confuse talent and technique. Talent is when you just naturally have the skills they need. It’s a very unusual, one-in-a-million thing. Technique, on the other hand, is taught. If you want to get really good, you need someone to look at what you’re doing and say “I see a spot where we can teach you.” 

We’re committed to staff development. For example, we built our team’s techniques by bringing in a couple of chefs for hands-on training. They taught our staff about everything from braising, overnight roasting and grinding meats to making house-made sauces, prepping more efficiently and much more. We had a master baker come in and lead our staff through immersive baking training on topics like grinding grains, understanding baking percentages, using different types of yeast, proofing and others. Chefs from the Chef Ann Foundation worked with us on a number of techniques for blending, brining and making dressings

That training transformed our program, increasing not just the skills our staff bring to the table but their confidence as well. Our team members saw that they really can do this work. And by putting that time and effort into training them, we also showed them how valued they are in their jobs.  

One program that has made a huge difference is the Chef Ann Foundation’s Healthy School Food Pathway program, which helps School Food Professionals learn the skills they need to succeed in scratch cooking, whether they’re aspiring, beginners, or experienced in the field. Before it came into being, there wasn’t any solid, structured pathway to help people move up in this industry. But the program opens people’s eyes in terms of what they can do, and it gives them the knowledge and the assistance they need to get there, covering subjects like scratch cooking, menu development, recipe creation, nutrition, regulations and compliance, procurement, inventory management and more.

More than half of our team have completed the pre-apprenticeship program, with another five team members starting it in March. About a third of us have continued on to participate in the nine-month apprenticeship program. 

Learning is a process. My team takes the attitude that everyone is going to fail at some point along the way. That’s just how people grow. But if we learn from it, pick up and keep moving forward, we’ll keep getting better and better. A lot of businesses teach people what they need to know to accomplish their job, but they don’t always give them the background. Understanding that “why” makes a huge difference. Look at the regulations we follow – of course, it’s important for staff to know what they are, but they also need to know why they exist in the first place. 

You never stop learning. I’ve been doing this work for a long time, but every time I go to one of these trainings, I still find myself saying, “I never knew that before.” No matter who you are or how much experience you have, whether you’re a pre-apprentice or a master chef, there’s always a new skill or information that you can learn. 

In my last district, I was incredibly fortunate to have a director who mentored me, sent me to trainings and really helped me understand this work. I wouldn’t be where I am without her. When she left, she asked me to make sure to do that for other people. 

If you’re considering working in school food, let me tell you – it’s the best career ever. If you love working with kids, want the ability to make a lasting impact on their lives and are ready to learn, it’s the perfect job for you.

Any parent can tell you that it can be a struggle getting kids to try new foods. But helping them overcome this issue has many benefits. Studies show that kids who are exposed to diverse foods and flavors early are more likely to try new foods throughout their lives. And incorporating a diverse diet has many long-term health benefits, such as improved nutrition, longer lifespans, reduced risk of metabolic syndrome and healthier gut bacteria.

So what’s a parent to do? How do you get your child to trade in their familiar go-to dishes and try new foods? We asked the experts — two School Food Professionals who work every day to help students expand their palates and develop lifelong healthy eating habits. Here are their tips on how to turn picky eaters into brave food explorers.

• Meet them where they are: The healthiest meal in the world won’t benefit your child if it stays on their plate. So when trying to get your child to try new flavors, don’t push them too far out of their comfort zone. “You have to keep in mind that these are younger kids who might be nervous about trying something different,” said Tanya Montes, Central Kitchen Lead at Cypress School District. “For example, we dial back the heat and spice when we make salsa. That way the kids can taste the flavor profile, but it’s not going to scare them off.”

• Get creative: What do you do if your kids are scared they won’t like a new type of food? Try filling it with flavors you already know they love. Incorporating your child’s favorite flavors can give them the boost they need to try something different and possibly discover a new favorite. “When just 10 kids out of 550 tried our hummus recipe, we figured we needed a new direction,” said Parisa Shukla, Director of Child Nutrition at Cypress School District. “So we thought, ‘Why not make a dessert hummus?’” Her team kept the same healthy hummus and added a bit of chocolate and vanilla flavors that they know their students love. “The kids ended up really, really liking it,” Shukla said.

• Bring the influencers on board: When kids see their friends trying something different, they’re more likely to want to try it themselves. “School gives you a free space where you see other kids eat a new dish and you’re like, ‘Maybe I’ll give that a shot,’” Montes said. The benefits aren’t just one way, either. Incorporating diverse food choices also makes a huge difference for the kids who are seeing their cultures represented. “I’m half-Afghan, and I never saw the kinds of foods my family ate at school,” said Shukla. “When kids see dishes from their culture on the menu, it helps to normalize them, they don’t feel shy or embarrassed when they’re bringing these things from home.”

• Don’t give up: If your child just won’t eat new food, don’t get discouraged. Depending on the child, it can take more than a dozen exposures to a new dish before they are willing to try it. Once they do, they may still find it’s not to their taste, or they may discover a new favorite. “The first time we served tikka masala, a lot of our students were really unsure about it. But now a lot of them walk in and say, ‘Great! It’s tikka masala day,’” Shukla said. “And if they decided that it’s not a food they like, that’s OK, too. They can have yogurt and scratch-made granola instead.”

Everyone’s tastes are different, and not every child is going to like every food. But by being willing to try new dishes, kids open themselves up, not just to a healthier future, but to a lifetime of delicious discoveries, connections with friends and culinary cultural experiences.

Delicious and healthy school meals don’t make themselves. They are planned, cooked and served by a team of School Food Professionals with diverse skills, roles and backgrounds, as well as a shared commitment to helping students succeed in the classroom and beyond.  

School Food Professionals bring skill, care and creativity to the nearly 3 million lunches served across California each day. While the “lunch lady” is a familiar image, School Food Professionals work at every level to make sure our kids get the good and good-for-you meals they need to do and be their best. Members of the school food team are involved at every stage of the process, from menu planning and sourcing ingredients to creating new recipes, cooking meals, serving kids, educating students on food choices and much, much more. 

Jobs and titles vary from school to school and district to district, but here are some of the key roles on a school food team:

Food Service Director: The people who oversee school food programs at the district or school-site levels go by many names — Nutrition Supervisor, Executive Director and others. Along with leading the charge to transform school food in California, they build, train and supervise school food teams; ensuring they’re complying with all state and federal requirements, keeping the department on budget; purchasing equipment and ensuring it is maintained; tracking and reporting meal counts and more. 

Registered Dietitian / Nutritionist: If you want expert advice on school nutrition, menu planning and healthy eating, talk to your local school district’s Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN). RDNs work in a number of roles with schools, helping guide them in meeting nutrition requirements and making healthy food choices. RDNs come to the work with extensive training — including earning a master’s degree in a related field, completing at least 1,000 hours of supervised practice and passing a national exam through the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.  

Head Chef: School food chefs work at the intersection of art and science. They use their creativity and vast experience — many have worked years in restaurants and other professional kitchens — to devise new recipes that are exciting, healthy and bursting with flavor. Then they take those recipes and work out how to make them at scale for all the students in their school or district. Along the way, they work to source the best ingredients, often working with local producers as part of a farm to school program to make sure the kids they serve get meals made with the freshest possible produce and protein. Finally, they train the members of their staff so that they can make these creative new dishes consistently from meal to meal or school site to school site.

School Food Service Employees: Just like a busy restaurant, a school cafeteria requires many different skills and people to make it run. You might think of these staff as the lunch ladies, but they include all the people who make it possible to cook and serve meals to students, from the cooks who make sure that recipes are executed perfectly to the cafeteria staff who prepare ingredients, maintain equipment, provide kitchen support, serve food to students, wash and sanitize dishes and kitchen tools and more. These staff are also the face of school food, interacting directly with students, offering guidance on meal choices and creating a friendly environment where kids can relax and recharge before going back to class. 

There are many more people involved with creating delicious and nutritious school food, such as warehouse and facility workers, delivery drivers, administrative staff, bookkeepers and others. But whatever their title, whether they work in the kitchen or cafeteria or somewhere else, they are School Food Professionals, and they play critical roles in helping our children build healthy, thriving and successful futures.