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.
