Looking for a little inspiration to help boost your menu? Welcome to our column featuring bites of nutrition knowledge and insight for your team’s menu creation needs.
Listen 👂: Click HERE to listen to the article!
The kitchen is often referred to as the “heart of the home”, well welcome home to our cafeteria kitchens, and the space where many meals and good conversation take place in the effort to unite teams, students, and communities with the one thing we all need and love - GREAT FOOD! If the kitchen is the heart, then all of our staff - frontline, managers, chefs, dietitians, and administrators are the heartbeat! We love to celebrate the pulse of this special profession in this edition and throughout the school year! Enjoy some food for thought curated and ready to serve up some quick and easy strategies for success.
Read 📖: The Labor of Lunch, Why we need real food and real jobs in American public schools, by Jennifer E Gaddis. Create a book club this year and use this GUIDE to dig deep into Gaddis’ goal” to spark a progressive movement that aims to transform food in American schools and with it the lives of thousands of low-paid cafeteria workers and the millions of children they feed.” Team Pisanick is intrigued and is doing our own book club this fall after Maureen had the pleasure of meeting the author this year at the SNA Annual Conference in Boston.
Watch 👀: Check out this national spotlight video from the team at Good Morning America and see if you don’t end up with a smile on your face. “Validating one’s life's work” and starting a “School Lunch Hero Day” celebration is an inspiring purpose for Jarret J. Krosocza. The lunch lady uses tools of kindness to create a memorable book series that celebrates the star of the story…” Lunch Lady” the true school lunch heroine! Consider using these graphic novels for your elementary school incentives this year. How about a lunch lending library with these and other books teaching students about school nutrition in fun new ways? Lucky tray day just got literary when you give a book to the winner, while encouraging participation in a fun new way!
Menu Pro Tip ✅: We love new school years and new food trends to inspire our school kitchen experts with the tools and tricks to make standardized recipes come to life in their cafeterias. Check out some of this season’s inspiration recipes. For many of us, the season’s bounty is ripe for the picking and placement on our menus. Check out these Harvest of the Month ideas to start your year strong in celebration of local gems that taste best at the peak of harvest! Want to celebrate the “endless summer” - we do! Recipes like this seasonal and tasty Watermelon Feta Salad will keep the sun shining in your cafeteria for staff and students. We love fresh from the garden surplus, and for those cucumber enthusiasts, we also love a fun way to add a twist to a simply fresh salad with this Smashed Cucumber Salad.
Ponder 🤔: Inspired people inspire people! Have you ever considered partnering with experts in mental health and or team engagement? We may be the experts in food, business, and regulations but many of us don't have the expertise in areas that often play a large role in our staff’s lives - both at work and beyond.
“You don’t just feed kids, you feed souls” was the opening theme at our back-to-school training which not only celebrated the importance of school meals and the professionals who serve them, but also a call to action to understand the many ways mental health plays a role in our work. By engaging with Wraparound Experts we not only set the tone for the importance of recognizing our role in supporting mental health in our cafeteria spaces, but also embracing it!
How often do you try “team building” exercises and leave the space feeling like you didn’t get your point across? Well, we see you and ourselves in this struggle. Open the door for inviting the experts in to get the job done in fun and inspiring ways that have proven to help your team and yourself develop the most valuable asset you have - yourselves! We partnered with our friends at the Effective Leadership Academy to help our school clients turn their potential into performance with their sessions “Immersive Mindfulness Moments to Support Teamwork” and “Inspiring You to Inspire Others”
Learn 📚: The rising tides lift all boats! Our team partnered with our favorite “Lunch Nerds” at LunchAssist to provide scholarships to these lucky schools. We understand that the way to support our school lunch heroes is to provide them with dynamic, impactful, and SHORT video training that informs, inspires, and encourages them to thrive in professional development. Who doesn’t want usable, succinct messages, and when needed in Espanol, to help break down the barriers for frontline staff’s success? Struggling to find a solution for your staff? We highly recommend checking out this library for a diverse and effective strategy to empower all staff to stay afloat this year!
Innovate 💡: Innovate, Immerse, Inspire - this year’s theme for our Innovation Academy ‘24, celebrated the power of community. Intended for our local community schools who often miss the opportunity to attend local and national food shows that conflict with the school work calendar, this day aimed not only to teach, but also serve those front-line lunch professionals with a day to engage, taste, and VOTE for new items they would like to see brought onto the local school bid and into distribution. If you have the opportunity to attend professional development as a district - you know what I’m talking about. Teamwork makes the dreamwork and time spent together learning and engaging in innovative ways serve a multitude of goals. It’s not about checking a box on achieving the minimum professional development standards, but investing in your team’s efforts and hours to pursue meaningful training that promotes your mission.
