[Darin Detwiler] Hey, everyone. Welcome to another edition of Spoiler Alert! I'm Dr. Darin Detwiler.
[Callin Godson-Green] I'm Callin Godson-Green.
[Darin Detwiler] And we are in Charlotte, North Carolina for the School Nutrition Association Annual Conference. And we're here by some fine folks from the Fayette County Public School District. Did I get it right?
[Michelle Coker] You got it right.
[Darin Detwiler] Yay! Go Fayette! Go Fayette! What's your big mascot? Your big school mascot.
[Michelle Coker] We have several.
[Darin Detwiler] Well, is it the biggest one?
[Michelle Coker] There isn't any.
[Callin Godson-Green] There are a bunch.
[Wendy Young] I say one, we'll get in trouble.
[Michelle Coker] Yeah, we have six big high schools.
[Darin Detwiler] Well, you don't just have six big high schools. You have a lot of schools, a lot of facilities.
[Michelle Coker] We do. We do. We have 61 kitchens and we have 67 programs.
[Darin Detwiler] And somehow you're not the biggest district.
[Michelle Coker] In Kentucky, we are not. We are the second biggest in Kentucky.
[Darin Detwiler] But that I would imagine many schools would. pale in comparison to having over 60 locations. Well, welcome to our show. And it's so fascinating to talk to people here at the conference. We hear conversations about different kinds of foods and different challenges. And that's really been kind of a central theme here of incredible people doing incredible work with a ridiculous list of challenges that they're dealing with. Now, one challenge obviously is your sheer number of kitchens you've got to deal with. What are some of the less obvious challenges that you're grappling with in what you do?
[Michelle Coker] There's daily challenges that occur. Of course, staffing is one of them. Our infamous NTI, non-traditional instructional days that occur. Is food coming in? Is food going out? Are the kiddos there? Are the kids sick and the population has gone down? Participation has gone down because they're out with illness. So a lot of different challenges.
[Wendy Young] Snow days.
[Callin Godson-Green] I'm not making them up. So if just snow days, if so obviously the school is closed, do you have staff that still have to go in, you know, depending on what preparation was done the day before? Or is it more about like, what if you can't get deliveries in? If there's no one there to receive it, what's the plan for the next day? Or are you guys just kind of in limbo then? The mercy of the weather gods.
[Michelle Coker] Right, so our staff usually doesn't come in on those days, but we do, if able, receive deliveries. And we have a snow patrol that goes around and follows and gets those, follows the trucks around to help get them into schools and at least get the product in.
[Callin Godson-Green] My God, I never thought about that.
[Darin Detwiler] Oh yeah.
[Wendy Young] They usually know ahead of time. Like they know to prepare and kind of plan ahead. So they're not leaving too much stuff out. So it's gonna ruin. Now, obviously we don't know what mother nature does. So if we did, we would not be in the predicament that we've been in without making school up on snow days.
[Darin Detwiler] Well, and talking about the school day, now the old stereotype of it's just the lunch lady, means that it's only lunch. You guys do far more than just lunch. What is the full spectrum of meals that you guys are dealing with on a day-to-day basis?
[Michelle Coker] We actually do breakfast, lunch, and even supper meals for our after-school programs. And when school is out, we do summer meals.
[Darin Detwiler] Wow.
[Wendy Young] And fresh fruit and vegetable program.
[Darin Detwiler] Is that like an opt-in or is that a?
[Wendy Young] It is an opt-in, yeah.
[Darin Detwiler] Do you have like the same numbers or is like, is there lunch, is your, maybe lunch is your biggest number of students participate in that? So you really have to track those numbers because that impacts not only your workload and your staffing, but also how much ingredients you have coming in and coming out. So you want to have that consistency. But like Mother Nature and the weather, you can't predict when Johnny doesn't show up for school or something like that. This starts to say you have to have staff that's preparing food that's, you know, you can't just prepare lunch. You would get your breakfast and then your lunch and your dinner program, your supper program. How is this like a 14 hour day? This has got to be a lot of work going on here. Nope. No.
[Wendy Young] We have six hour employees that basically have to an eight hour manager. So what has to happen is we have someone that needs to come in to prepare breakfast. So it's usually something we can pull together quickly. Our number one item that we have on a breakfast is cereal. So just kind of giving you an example of the amount of food that's being prepared at breakfast. is usually smaller. And we have about 42,000 kids. We serve about almost 14,000 breakfasts, just to give you a number. And then lunches were closer to the 26,000 marker.
[Darin Detwiler] Going back to challenges with all these different meals, I mean, cereal is a little bit, hopefully more shale stable than others. But when you start talking about the fresh fruits and the diversity of the foods, now you have different requirements in terms of keeping hot foods hot and cold foods cold and the preparation service. How do you work in terms of, with the numbers, over 60 facilities, the training? I mean, you can't have a scale of operations that big without having new people. Even more frequently than every year, you have new staff coming in. How do you deal with the training and all that?
[Michelle Coker] We do a lot of training. Our managers, of course, have a mini cycle that they follow through and they're able to forecast. It doesn't mean the kiddos will always pick and choose what they got last time. They'll choose it those time. And we're just constantly having meetings and monthly meetings and opportunities to provide them information so they can stay on top of things.
[Wendy Young] And then from a digital side, we are able to look back on all of our digital temperatures and be able to monitor those temperatures so that way we know At the end of the month, if you show up and you have 80 temperatures, like you have an issue because you should be taking, what was the number you come up with.
[Michelle Coker] About over 200.
[Wendy Young] Easy. And that's a small school. That's not even like large scale, you know, four or five lunches. So we can usually tell digitally like who is doing a good job and who is not. Wow.
[Darin Detwiler] Well, and you have to keep up on that. You can't. be periodic with those numbers. And even when you have the schools closed down, you have to be, are you doing continuous monitoring of temperatures even if the school's closed for the day and it goes to someone's computer account somewhere? So there's a centralized person who's able to go, looks like we're having a problem over here, kind of a deal.
[Wendy Young] We do. We have alerts. Thank goodness for alerts. And then we kind of have like a time, like we have a temperature time frame too, like, or not time frame, temperature range. that we kind of know, is it being reset? We are very fortunate that we have our own maintenance crew that will come in and they take care of that. They do most of them on that side, like during all times. But the occasional, I left, you left the door open. Right, and that's who put your guys out. That happens. Like we kind of know the time of the day that happens and they will kind of give it a little time to kind of watch the temperature and see it coming down. But again, it's just the digital world has been very nice. I personally have never come in during a time when we were just taking handheld temperatures. We've had to do that because if something goes out, you have a choice.
[Michelle Coker] We used to pay staff managers to come in and pay them 30 minutes or an hour just to come in and check the refrigerators and the freezers. Of course, that doesn't entail over the summer and also over the weekends, fall break, spring breaks, as well as snow days. So that monitoring system has been very beneficial for us.
[Callin Godson-Green] And even, you know, like the person is in there anyway, what if they attempt something and it's out of range? There's no, like when did that happen? You know, like has this been like this all day or is it just right now? So it's still. you're catching it, but it's already happened at that rate. So yeah, what does that claim?
[Darin Detwiler] Yeah, years ago I was at a facility where the refrigerator had been left open and what it came down to was not even a kitchen staff. It was another teacher at a school. So they weren't allowed to have their own personal refrigerators in their classroom anymore because first it's a refrigerator, then it's a toaster, then it's a microwave oven, and all of a sudden you've got so many appliances in your classroom. And so they decided, well, the best option was we'll just use the refrigerator in the kitchen. And they put their lunch in there and they went and grabbed it out and somehow they didn't close it. And it didn't get noticed for like 1/2 a day. That's big no?
[Callin Godson-Green] Personal items in the fridge, yeah.
[Darin Detwiler] What's A no-no in the restaurant industry as well?
[Wendy Young] Like a teacher come in. Like usually we have our staff, we don't let the principal even have access to it because they should go through us.
[Callin Godson-Green] Yeah.
[Wendy Young] We're the food people. Yeah.
[Darin Detwiler] You always have those people that I know better. I can go wherever I want kind of.
[Wendy Young] Or it's my school. Yeah, it's your school, but this is not your kids. This is not your area. This is our. We need this area. Yeah. Let's work together.
[Darin Detwiler] Yeah. I don't want to say stay in your lane, but You get that. I just met up with, about an hour ago, she was the director of the food facility at a school I taught in. And many years ago, and she happens to be here because, profession, right? And she was reminding me that I had mentioned to her how much I love the potato salad that they make there fresh, right? From scratch. And that whenever there was a day where they had the potato salad, but I wasn't there, they always kept a little container for me, but I didn't go and get it. They would let me know and I'd come get it. And I was like, my God, that's true. You always did save a little, the little styrofoam bowl of potato salad. And she also knew that I would always go eat school lunch when they had the, like lunch is like a Thanksgiving dinner, you know, the mashed potatoes and gravy and turkey.
[Michelle Coker] Is that, yeah.
[Darin Detwiler] What else is big?
[Michelle Coker] That's our biggest for the year for adults to come. Yeah.
[Wendy Young] Day wise, yeah. So in the chicken patty, can't, we couldn't get rid of a chicken patty. That's what you're saying, yeah. And our pizza, that's another thing. Like our pizzas are the trying pizza.
[Darin Detwiler] Not the square.
[Wendy Young] Not the square. We tried it.
[Darin Detwiler] I like the square. I mean, it's a different pizza, but I like the square. That's all I knew. That and tater tots.
[Wendy Young] I went into Dick's Sporting Goods and there I was telling Michelle about this. I said there was an upcoming senior and he was like, I really want that rectangle pizza back. And I said, I'm going to bring your rectangle pizza back just for you. Well, he was maybe the only one.
[Callin Godson-Green] Yeah.
[Wendy Young] You're like, you better get all your friends on this pizza today.
[Michelle Coker] Yes, because it did not go well.
[Callin Godson-Green] That's so funny.
[Darin Detwiler] So you have your occasional staff member who will eat the school lunch as well. Does that mess up your numbers or do you have to?
[Michelle Coker] No, they're included. They plan for it and they kind of know how many adults are going to participate in their social school site.
[Wendy Young] Oh, wait, are you talking about teachers? Are you talking about, oh, okay. How many, 259 a day, maybe? Oh, wow.
[Michelle Coker] That was low, surprisingly.
[Darin Detwiler] But if you get in the system and then you got the kind of predictable kind of numbers there.
[Michelle Coker] They're some very loyal patrons. So we, I'm sure your director appreciated you coming down. They saved you potato salad.
[Darin Detwiler] Well, and the students would be like, oh, Mr. D came to visit us in the cafeteria. I'm like, that's nice, that's nice students. I want my potato salad, you know?
[Callin Godson-Green] And like he's checking on us and you're like, nah, I'll get out of my way.
[Darin Detwiler] I'd be like, Lucy, when you go to the lunchroom, do me a favor, see if they got tater tots. They got tater tots. I want to know. But the students would be like, oh, he came to visit us.
[Wendy Young] And we had to increase our adult prices too. So, but where else are they going to go for five or $6 to get a full meal?
[Callin Godson-Green] Yeah.
[Darin Detwiler] Especially if you don't have time.
[Wendy Young] Yeah.
[Darin Detwiler] There's not enough time for the lunch break to do anything. Even if you bring your own lunch, you don't have enough time to wait for the microwave or find a plate or whatever kind of deal. Let's talk about some different foods. We've mentioned pizza and your chicken. Do you have local grown produce?
[Wendy Young] We do. We're very fortunate. So in Stanford, Kentucky, we actually utilize their grape tomatoes. So those go in all of our salads. We have a little grape and cucumber salad that also that goes in. And then we have local hydroponic lettuce that we only deliver to our six high schools just because of distribution. It's just, so that's why we do that way. We also have cucumbers during growing season. We have local watermelon during growing season. We have the green bell peppers during growing season. Am I missing anything else probably.
[Michelle Coker] Blueberries.
[Wendy Young] Yeah, we've done blueberries before. So yes, we try to incorporate those. We just have to be wise on our expenses. So food cost is important. We want to make sure that we incorporate and a lot of times they don't even realize they're eating local necessarily. We try to get the message out. But kids. And strawberries. So our strawberries right now, we're actually doing that for our summer feeding program too. So they are getting a local cucumber and they're getting local strawberries, like a bite size.
[Darin Detwiler] They don't know that it's local, they probably make a stink about it when, how come there's no this? And you're like, well, because it's not the right season for this.
[Wendy Young] Yeah, so it's all a balance. And so when you're menu planning, you have to sometimes just kind of go with what you got, just like you mentioned about the substitutions or in that regard. Sometimes it is. So we have to put it this thing saying, from target on menus, maybe subject to change. So whether it's within our control or not. So and you have to also be careful on how you promote local because people expect you to do like local everything.
[Callin Godson-Green] Yes.
[Wendy Young] You know, it's like they don't want a little, they want the whole thing and we just can't, we can't afford it. It's not. We're just not there.
[Michelle Coker] To the volume. We're such a large district. Sometimes just getting the volume. Oh yeah. We get what we can get and get it out to the school sites that we can and we kind of share the love and rotate it around.
[Callin Godson-Green] Yeah, your local farm is like, I don't have enough for you guys if you're really doing orchards.
[Michelle Coker] And here we got apples, so yeah.
[Darin Detwiler] It's crazy when you see like different schools and you know different economic areas where like I've been to some schools where there's a high school has its own shipping container hydroponic operation.
[Wendy Young] We've had that.
[Darin Detwiler] We purchased from them.
[Wendy Young] But here's the thing. That went on for like a year and a half, and then it's like, where did that teacher go? Because we no longer have. Yeah, like, so it's just changed. And we're okay with that. We're part of it. We want to be partners with anybody, whether it's in the community or in the schools.
[Darin Detwiler] So a lot of challenges, but at the same time, you know, dealing with some flexibility. What are some things that are non-negotiable? when it comes to the food you're putting out and the service you're providing.
[Michelle Coker] We're very passionate about what we do. And my number one rule is feed the kids. No matter what, feed the kids. And they take it to heart. If they don't have food, they reach out to other sites. They get the food in. If they don't have staffing, they do a call out. We try to get bodies in there. And that's a no-brainer. We have to feed kids no matter what.
[Wendy Young] It's behind everything that you do at the end of the day. Like literally one time we had a I don't know exactly the emergency, but all the kids had to come to the football field. And so everybody had an all call and everyone brought food out and was working on getting these. It was during lunchtime, of course, right? When they have this, it's during lunchtime.
[Callin Godson-Green] Yeah, they're like, I can't even miss a class for this.
[Wendy Young] They couldn't go back into school. So it's like you had to rely on other people. So that's one benefit of being large. I feel like that we definitely, everybody cares and they want to do the right thing. All hands on deck.
[Darin Detwiler] But you're also one of those districts that we were doing the right thing in terms of you were doing the providing meal options during the pandemic. I mean, there's, again, there's the unpredictable, but there's also the, we still do this. We still have students and families that they need these meals. And it's beyond the school. And it's just incredible. I don't think people give enough credit to what school programs are doing in terms of making sure Because it's not just keeping all students fed. You're also dealing with the challenges of there's these food allergies, there's these medical concerns, there's these variations in the meals. Because there's not a one-size-fits-all. I mean, it would be easy if you could do a one-size-fits-all. Apparently not square for pizza, but it would be easy if it was a one-size-fits-all. But with that number of schools, do you have like here is a plan or protocol we go through in terms of dealing with food specific needs, health and allergen kind of things.
[Wendy Young] We do. So that all goes through our POS system and that comes through the nurses. So it goes into one system from the nurses, the nurse puts it in and then that immediately goes to our system. So it's not like me putting in an allergy and then no one else knows about it. So I feel like that process that we have works really well. We're fortunate that we have more than just one option. We have multiple options. Like at the high school, there's no reason why kids, any allergy, can't eat. It's a little trickier at elementary and middle school, but we're able to work with the managers. So we empower them. to be able to have the information. We use an online menu that also has every ingredient listed. So we also empower the parents because we need them to understand what we do have. And then sometimes, it's when a kid doesn't get the food that they keep coming up and we're like, you can't have that. It says you're allergic. We have to remove that food. It's Interesting how that allergy at some point is no longer there. Yeah. So, you know what I mean? It's just, we want to help, but sometimes it turns into a different scenario.
[Darin Detwiler] Yeah, I encountered a student years ago who I had never heard about this before as an allergen. He was deathly allergic to carrots. And I'm like, well, you know, there are things. So I'm glad I asked. I don't think we're going to encounter any carrots, but I need to respect the fact that you have this issue. And so we have to account for that in going on the school field trip. But I know there's a lot of teachers who don't even ask those questions. And they'll bring snacks for their students or they'll take them on field trips and don't account for the fact that, okay, there's these issues here you have to address and account for as well.
[Wendy Young] So I want to mention something real quick because I just went to a class during this conference. that was quite eye-opening. And as soon as she got up and she said it, I was like, my goodness, this is what we need to be focusing on. Okay, so you know how they're talking about the ultra processed, which number one, they don't even have a definition for ultra processed, right? Well, what happens is it's like the three, the fastest sugars, the sodium. So like you take one out, you got to put the other one back in. That's just part of making a recipe composition an item. So What she talked about, though, was very, you talked about carrots. That's what reminded me. When you take something out, you put something back in. Well, more than likely, like beets. I feel like beets is the one that's taking out the red dye and they're putting in beets. Well, same thing with a carrot. It's like if you're taking something out and you're putting something else back in, allergens. So there's just a whole, like right now in the government, they're wanting to change a lot of stuff with this. which is scary and it's things like that. Like it takes someone else that does the job to say it's not as simple as what you think. And your kitchen at home, absolutely. But when you're talking large scale and you're feeding at lunchtime 26,000 kids, it's a lot.
[Darin Detwiler] Even at the university level, people expect it to be like these luscious gourmet, 37 varieties of produce and, 18 different entree items kind of thing. And it's all organic and, made from scratch kind of a thing. And yet, even at the university level, I just want that convenient, highly, ultra-processed food because that's what I like. there's this whole new thing coming out about how younger generations their definition of meal is changing. It's really more, it's not a dinner, it's a meal. And what's a meal? Well, it's more like a snack.
[Callin Godson-Green] Snack, yeah.
[Darin Detwiler] And so it gets difficult when here's this great option for you at the lunch counter and the kid's like, can I just have a?
[Callin Godson-Green] Protein bar and yeah.
[Michelle Coker] So we try to concentrate on cleaner labels. We don't concentrate on organic and all that. We concentrate on fresh items that are cleaner labels. So for comparing products and they taste really good and real similar, we're going to see who has the less ingredients and help cut some of those items out.
[Darin Detwiler] And it must be weird too, because I would imagine that the younger students, it's more, you're communicating that to the families, whereas if they're older students, you're probably communicating that more and more to them. Just like you're saying with the allergens, the older the students are probably taking care of themselves with the allergens, but the younger first grader, you can't expect little Timmy and Sally to know the ins and outs kind of a thing. When you hear, well, Timmy and Sally don't realize that french fries come from potatoes. Yeah, sometimes. Exactly. Crazy. Which that was a thing. You talk about all this and yet when I went to school, when I went to elementary school, There was like the same Monday, the same Tuesday, the same Wednesday, same Thursday, Friday. And there was no variation and you just got the one meal. And the only variation was the, was it milk chocolate? I'm sorry, was it chocolate milk or regular milk? I don't remember any variations. Today there's so much variety that it just, I don't know, many of our students, do you find them asking more and more questions? Like, I heard about this Cyclospora, or I heard about this radioactive shrimp, or I heard about this recall, or I heard about this. Do you hear students asking these questions?
[Michelle Coker] We don't necessarily.
[Wendy Young] No, I felt like if we were our managers were hearing that, they would say something too.
[Callin Godson-Green] It's probably more parents to be honest, even thinking like that, looking at the menus and stuff.
[Wendy Young] There's been somebody that have contacted us and those are usually the more interesting conversations. It just gives you an opportunity to educate them. Yeah. And you want to welcome them in to come in and see, come eat with your child, come see what we have. Oh, do you do that? You'll see that we have side salad. You will see that we have, you can see we have fresh fruit. And all of it's about what your child picked up and what they told you they ate.
[Callin Godson-Green] Yeah. So they're not like, why are you giving my kid pizza every day?
[Wendy Young] And you're like, well, they. So then the computer side really helps us with that too, because it helps us monitor like what did they choose? Like we have specific they got a hamburger this day, or they did the Oriental meal this day. Oh, is it like?
[Darin Detwiler] With their ID card or their student number or something like that.
[Wendy Young] So RPOS allows us to be able to just literally split screen. So whatever they come through and get, they will say we don't, not all the items, but just the entree item. So if a parent calls and we've had, even the same thing with foodborne, you've had to deal with that foodborne illness where we can literally go in and say, okay, this is what they had. This is the temperature that item was tempt to. We can prove that we've got the data to show them that we did not give an item that was undercooked, that was the right temperature.
[Michelle Coker] And also too, if those wonderful pictures that go out on the media that come to you and say, my child only received this. So when we do get those phone calls, then we do. We contact the kitchens, the managers. We look at our production records. And sometimes when I get back to them, I say, oh, we had so many orders left of this and so many orders left of that. They don't realize that. They go by what the student has told them, which is understandable. And so it's eye-opening for them as well. And like I said, we want to invite them into our programs. We want to show them. We want them to see And if we're in the wrong or if we did run out or did not have the item, then we're going to try to fix it as well.
[Wendy Young] And there's been times that happened. I don't feel like it's that often.
[Darin Detwiler] Sounds like a whole new world of transparency. But I think that's what we're kind of expecting. It's like we have the means. I mean, you buy something online and you can have on your phone where exactly it is on its way to being delivered to you. would think that you'd be able to follow up on certain things. I don't think the students necessarily realize that, but definitely it sounds like the parents are really wanting to make sure that there is that value that you clearly provide. thank you both for coming and spending some time with us. it's such an eye-opener when we have these conversations with restaurants or with convenience stores or with food manufacturers. You hear one side of the story and literally hearing this different side of the story, something that many people are more familiar with, either as parents or having gone through the lunch line themselves. I don't think that we put too much thought into, wow, the level of technology and transparency and the amount of information and even the forecasting that goes into doing what you guys do. So thank you so much for making sure that school days are remembered for all the right reasons.
[Wendy Young] Well, thanks for having us. Thank you.
