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Who's In the Kitchen with Dinah?
An Article Submitted by James Camacho of
Camacho & Associates, Inc. Food Service
Designers and Consultants.
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 |
