Author: West Christian

Budgeting, Training and the Future of Serving
With Bart Christian, who is a nationally recognized speaker and the school nutrition industry, and Lindsay Aguilar, (Registered Dietitian and certified School Nutrition Specialist), the Administrative Dietitian for the Tucson Unified School District Food Services Department.

 

School Nutrition Education Program
Budgeting, Training and the Future of Serving
USDA Professional Standards Code 3330/4120/4130/4150/4160

Guest

Bart Christian, who is a nationally recognized speaker and the school nutrition industry.

Lindsay Aguilar, (Registered Dietitian and certified School Nutrition Specialist) is the Administrative
Dietitian for the Tucson Unified School District Food Services Department. Lindsay has worked at TUSD
for 15 years where she coordinates the operations of the various federal meal programs throughout the
district and nutrition support services. Lindsay has a passion for child nutrition and the importance of
the role of nutrition in education. Lindsay is an active member of the School Nutrition Association and is
on the executive board for the state association.

How are meals delivered during this time of the pandemic at Tucson Unified?

On March 25th, we started a grab and go meals with 12 bus routes. We had 114 bus stops across our
district. Our district is 225 square miles so we covered pretty much the majority of the Tucson area.
We did breakfast and lunch at one time. Our buses were out between 10 and about one 30 every day.
Actually, today is our last day of those bus routes for the school closure. We served just over 330,000
meals over the last two months to our community and then we’re starting back up on Tuesday with a
revised summer bus route.

What types of variety of meals and items are you serving in those grabs and go lunches?

We have been utilizing all pre-packaged items. Fortunately for us at TUSD, we had incorporated a 50- 50
model over the past two years so we’re doing half of our entree house-made assembled items that
we’re making in our kitchens and then we have incorporated pre-packaged items.

We were fortunate that we had quite an inventory. We have a centralized warehouse, so we have been
able to run our program off of the five-week inventory that we had coming into the school closure. We
weren’t in the situation that I know a lot of districts across the country really had challenges getting prepackaged items.

Some of the meal items that we served were:

– bean and cheese burritos
– corn dogs
– cheeseburger
– sliders
– grilled cheese

For breakfast items we’ve had:

– cereal and bagels
– pancakes
– French toast
– fruit cups
– fruit and vegetable juice

What are the issues that you faced while delivering the lunches and what was your alternative plan to get around with it?

We’ve had issues with shelf stable milk. We had a large inventory of that but it ran out on the first
month so we had to transition to regular fluid milk. Hand sanitizers for buses has been a challenge too
so we had to get creative with that and kind of figure out an alternative plan for that.

What is the response of the parents to the fact that you’re bringing food to kids and the type of food
they are receiving?

It actually has been overwhelmingly positive. The kids are making cards and pictures. They draw chalk
on the bus stops and sidewalks to thank us and hanging signs. We even had one family that made Tshirts for the staff on the bus that said “TUSD United”

I think the other factor is just the people are coming together and collaborating with our transportation
department and our school safety. We have school safety officers and crossing guards that have been
out at our bus stops. So just working together with those departments in such a positive way and
impacting our students and community has been my favorite part. It has been really nice for our staff as
well to get the positive recognition that they often, unfortunately don’t receive.

We are going to be elevated as an industry to such a high level in the district, because we’ve really
demonstrated that the food service workers are essential because they’re the ones who have had to go
to work.

That school lunch often has those misconceptions parents being exposed to the food has also been a
really positive kind of unintended consequence from this whole thing. Every day they take their kids to
the meal stops and they’ve been actually able to see the food they are getting. The food quality and just
being able to see the types of items that we offer to their kids has been a really nice impact for
everybody to experience.

What exactly are you doing with your staff to keep them engaged and keep them motivated on a on a
daily basis?

We have just over 200 site employees in our school kitchen. We obviously didn’t need all 200 on the bus
routes and in our central kitchen facility so we did a weekly rotation. We had groups of people assigned
to our kitchen to do our meal bag assembly. Then we had the groups of staff assigned to the buses for
the meal distribution. Then we had group of staff rotating to work from home.

We utilize this time to really educate and train our employees. The School Food Handler program has
been amazing to our staff to utilize during this time and keep them working and having meaningful work
and they did a lot of professional development training.

We also utilize some other areas too. The Institute of child nutrition was something I assigned staff from
home just which they actually got a lot of feedback that they really enjoyed. Learning about the history
of the National School Lunch Program and then our district actually has a historical section on their
website.

I had them review all the history of TUSD and I was surprised that a lot of our staff reached out to me
just saying that they really enjoy learning about the history of the district and they do a really good job
with some stories and archives and stuff like that.

It’s been a combination of food safety training, nutrition education, and utilizing our state department
website as well for some of their trainings on the meal pattern. So, I think, a lot of people have provided
some feedback to me that they actually enjoy being able to have time to expand their knowledge in all
of these areas and take time to do the trainings and do all the trainings on school food handler where
we had them complete every single training that was on the website.

Thank you all for having those great resources available for us to use.

Advantages training your employees during the pandemic:

– Your staff is going to come back more knowledgeable and educated.
– They are going to feel better about themselves and the job they do.
– They are getting more exposed to areas they normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to learn
about.
– It has given the staff a lot more confidence in technology.

What type of other technology related tools have you been implementing over the past couple of
months?

– Powerpoint Presentations
– Zoom
– Office 365

In the past years, pre COVID and everything, did you all do any type of professional development day to start the year off for new hires and what do you anticipate for the future for getting those new
hires up to speed on where they need to be to start the year off?

Normally in the past, they would go through the district onboarding process. So that will stay the same,
but there is some training that they receive at the district level. Once they start with us, the new hire
training was just all in the kitchens.

We had a training guide that was completed for staff to go over certain areas and sign-off. So, I think
from this and the feedback that we’re getting from our staff, looking at the training guides, we’ll
definitely look to incorporate some more interactive and some technology pieces.

I think that videos are something that I’m definitely interested in. Either putting together some trainings
that include more realistic videos of our kitchen set up is and those areas to make it a more effective
piece for our new hires because we don’t have the capacity to bring them all in at one time. We were
hiring so many people throughout the year and they all started at different times. So we rely on our sites
to complete that training an utilizing some of the technology for that is definitely something that we’re 6
planning to incorporate.

What do you see happening for those large beginning of the year meeting for either managers or
segments of the team, or maybe the whole team?

I do definitely think there’s going to be some changes to our typical bringing everybody in and large
groups, especially for the start the school. We need to keep groups to 10 and under, and those things at
this moment in time, but even moving beyond that, I do think that from this whole experience, we’ve
definitely captured that you can still have effective meetings and interactions.

I do think it is important and our staff really loves to be around each other. So, I think that human
contact is definitely needed. But I do think that we can do some hybrids and smaller groups and utilize
the technology to have more consistent interaction with our employees instead of waiting to do it once
every quarter, we could set up things more consistently.

I definitely think this is going to change our staff meetings and trainings and in-services moving forward
for sure and across our district as well. I think it’s something that it’s going to be forever changed from
this entire experience. I also think that it’s going to be okay and positive things are going to come out of
this. I think we’ll all be stronger and have even better and more efficient programs because of things
that we’re going to have to do.

This is also going to allow us to be more connected with our staff much more consistently because now
we’ve got ways that we can utilize that can keep them feeling more supported and connected with our
central office.

What types of things are you considering this year when you’re looking at budgeting for this upcoming year?

I think at this point, the priority for us right now is just devising our reopening plans.
I’m working on kind of the four phases, we’re working on traditional students coming back a hybrid
model of some in their schools, some online. Preparing if, hope to God, we don’t have to go back to
schools being closed in online only. Then also the fourth option, because of some of the protocols and
changes that our district is going to have to make potentially that some kids would be scheduled in the
school building on certain days and at home others.

So, we have these kind of four phases that we’re working on reopening plans for. I think that the
challenging part and my concern of course is, what is this going to do to our participation levels? And if
we do have a percentage or population of our students that are going to be, online from home, how can
we still encapsulate providing meals to those students?

Of course, there would have to be regulation changes at the USDA level and our state level and I think
not just for food service but for education in general. I think participation levels are certainly definitely a
priority concern and then of course our budget, as far as our revenue loss, that we’ve experienced
tremendous losses as we conclude this physical year and how can we recover from that going into next
year. What are our school enrollment numbers going to look like? We’re in the process of doing a big
district survey as far as our family is going to be ready to come back in the fall and check if they feel
safe?

We’re working on building our real pain plants to ensure the safety of all students and staff as a priority.
With how these last few months has been running, decisions are going to have to be made quickly. You
can plan for all of this and then it’s going to be the constant change and adjustments that we’re going to
have to make.

At this point I think that’s the hardest budgeting piece is because there are just so many unknowns in
meal service models. What kind of service are we going to have? Is it going to be in the classroom?
Fortunately for us, we’ve been running a kind of a self-serve model at our elementary is where we
package all of the food.

So that is to our advantage. I think coming into this with the kind of grab and go concept is probably
going to be most likely what we’re going to have to do because of the physical distancing and those
protocols that we’re going to have to have in place, but is that going to be in the cafeteria or in the
classroom?

With a lot of the procedures that you’ve obviously been forced to implement over the past couple of
months, do you see any of those procedures carrying into this upcoming school year?

At this point, our district does have a face covering protocol in place for employees that are going to be
serving the public or working around others. So, I think, first the start of school, that’s something that
I’m preparing for . Ourstaff is most likely going to need to wear masks when they’re interacting with
students and other staff. I certainly think some additional cleaning protocols, disinfecting and taking
those extra precautionary steps that we’ve been doing is something that we’re going to continue to
carry forward. I think also just kind of looking at how some of our kitchens are set up and spacing and
some of our flow is something that you needs to be reviewed because if we are going to have to be
mindful of still trying to distance ourselves when we can, even if it’s not always possible, but that’s
something that we did during this time for our centralized kitchen facility.

We actually had place markers set with tape on the ground at our assembly lines to keep everybody six
feet apart and really trying to be mindful of that in our operations. So, I think, looking at our footprints
in our kitchens and what adjustments might we be able to make is something that we’re going to be
working on.

Any last pieces of advice that you have for foodservice workers and nutrition professionals across the country that you’d like to share as they’re planning and heading into this upcoming school year?

Make sure that you’re connecting with your district. I know oftentimes food service departments can
sometimes struggle to be connected and involved with the entire district, but certainly that’s something
that’s essential right now.

We need to connect with operations and all the different protocols and procedures that are going to be
implemented. If that’s not something that normally happens in your district, I think just making sure that
you’re inserting yourself in those conversations and not just hanging back because you can’t do it alone.
You need the support of your district and working with other departments and making sure everybody’s
on the same page. I think that’s something very important and some of those partnerships, connections,
I think is essential as we move forward into these challenging and unknown times.

Use the word, insert yourself into the conversation. I think there’s some districts where you’re going to
have to force yourself into the conversation. I think sometimes child nutrition feels like we’re on the
outside looking in. Not only can we not do it alone, they can’t do it without us. And that’s just the truth.
Whatever your level is, make that clear to your district, because you’ve been blessed to have a very
steady hand in what’s going on in your district in Tucson.

I just hope that the supervisor, the superintendents, the principals, these board members that have not
always given voice to child nutrition will realize exactly how vital and important these true superheroes
are on the job they do every single day.

I think this whole experience has helped most districts to get that well overdue acknowledgment. We
need to just ride that way for sure. Make sure you don’t pull back. Just keep the momentum going for
sure.

Making Tech Part Of The Team
With Bart Christian, who is a nationally recognized speaker and the school nutrition industry.

 

School Nutrition Education Program
Making Tech Part Of The Team
USDA Professional Standards Code 3430/4120/4140/4150

Guest

Bart Christian – who is a nationally recognized speaker and the school nutrition industry.

Technology is something that’s coming like a freight train and we really need to look at different tools
and different tricks that we can really use on a daily basis to help our staff understand the value, the
“why” behind what we’re trying to accomplish and really embrace the change that we’re implementing.

There are three constants in life according to Steven Covey.

1. Change
2. Choice
3. Principles

These things never change and what does change is your choice about how you’re going to address
change. One thing we don’t realize in this society is that we’ve been through tremendous amount of
change.

Baby boomers are viewed as being change resistance. We have seen the most change than anybody in
any generation in the history. When we first started listening to music, it was records on 8-track tapes
but now, we have everything on our phones.

There are just so many things out there that the things we’re going through now, as far as technology
goes, should honestly be easy for most of us. It’s not so much simpler than it’s ever been but it’s
different than it’s ever been.

Introducing a new technology program to School Food Handlers

Staffs tend to refuse the use of new technology program because of their fear that it might be hard to
use. That’s why ease of use is really important especially these days. In a lot of ways, some people also
just shut the idea of learning how to use it not just because they cannot learn it but they just decide that
they don’t want to learn it.

We had one meeting with a district before where the cafeteria staff were unwilling to kind of embrace
the program wholeheartedly. So we asked them how many of them has smartphones and everyone held
a smartphone. We asked them to take a picture of something and send it to us with some random text.
All of a sudden there were tons of messages coming. What they didn’t realized is that they did much
more steps taking the picture and sending them to us than the steps that they would take to take and
complete a lesson inside our program.

With this exercise we were able to prove that some people are really just not interested to learn these
things no matter how easy it is. We can conclude that it is more of a willingness to accept is versus the
ability to accept it.

However, with what we are going through right now, remote learning and access to that kind of
information is only going to be found through technology. We believe that this is going to be the
triggering factor that’s going to push people to the edge in a lot of ways.

How do we get our staff to embrace change and accept it as something that is of value?

• Understand that there are differences in generations. Millennials look to thinks for utility and it
is easier for them to accept new changes like this but older generations would still need to
understand why they need to do it and they have to know the usefulness of it.
• You have to know what approach you will use each of your staff because everybody looks at
learning differently. One thing may work with one person but it may not work with the other.
• Accept the different ways people accept information. Change your perspective on how you talk
to your staff depending on who you are talking to.
• Regardless of what technology you are implementing, your employees have to have time to
adjust to the content before you introduce the item.
• Allow your employees to process that this change is going to happen.
• Constantly remind them of the change.
• Group your employees based on their knowledge about technology to prevent missing the mark
when introducing it to them.

Engagement – occupy somebody’s attention

Activation – to cause them to do something that causes them to make something fully operational.

Key things about different generations

• If you want to engage in activation, for boomers, you need to grant them a responsibility that is
equal to their afford. You have to give them mentoring opportunities.
• When you’re engaged in activating the generation X group, you want to be sure you have clear
goals and expectations. They respond very well to goals. They allow for creativity.
• Younger people understand the need for each other. They understand that in order to be
successful, they need to feed off the knowledge and expertise to the other generations.
• Let younger people teach older generations. This will empower them and make them better
members of the group.

“Someone is sitting under the shade of a tree because someone planted it a long time ago.”
—-Warren Buffett

The world has changed so much in the last 10 years and it will change even more in the next 50 years.
However, people tend to resist change. They resist if they don’t understand why there is a need to
change. The most important thing is to explain the “why” first before explaining the “how”.

Strategies and tools for directors in introducing technology to your staff

• First of all, make sure that the company provided materials are easy to understand.
• It would be better to create videos with detailed and step by step instructions to help your staff
get familiarized
• Make sure that your tools are user friendly
• Build a training program that meets all your staff in the middle
• Focus on having accessibility to training on multiple platforms
• Show your staff you are 100% committed and not just doing it for the sake of compliance
• Set goals and follow up with them to make sure that they actually did it
• People will value training if they realize that you value training.
• Adjust your approach depending on different types of learners
• Produce different types of learning materials that would fit different types of learners
• Develop a culture instead of doing it for compliance

2 things that you need to have when introducing a new staff education program

1. Quiz component – to verify understanding
2. Consistent follow ups

“You can get everything in life you want, if you’ll just help enough other people get what they want.”
– Zig Ziglar

People basically want to feel relatively safe, secured and productive. If you can show people how that
they can be more productive, they can be secure in their job and they can be safe at what they’re doing
then you can get so much out of them. Our strength relies on our differences and not in our similarities.
If we only embrace those differences and figure out how we can do it all together.
Start by listening to your staff and understand where they are coming from instead of just going there
and laying all that they need to do.

Preparing Your Team For Post Covid-19 Changes
With Bart Christian, who is a nationally recognized speaker and the school nutrition industry and Joe Pettit, supervisor for Charleston County School District in South Carolina.

 

School Nutrition Education Program
Preparing Your Team For Post Covid-19 Changes
USDA Professional Standards Code 3440/3450/4140/4110

Guest
Bart Christian, who is a nationally recognized speaker and the school nutrition industry.

Joe Pettit, with more than 20 years of experience as a leader in the food and beverage industry with six
of those being in school nutrition, Joe brings experience and passion to see others at their best. His current
role is a supervisor for Charleston County school district in South Carolina. He also owns a professional
speaking business where he presents leadership and motivational talks for corporations, state national
SNA conferences and school assemblies.

What are the Five Ps and how can we apply them?

1. Plan
2. Prepare
3. Plant the seed
4. Practice
5. Produce

Ways to have a positive mindset during tough times

• It is never too late to start a plan.
• Have a vision of what you dream about.
• That way you can start to build that hope and that dream.
• Remember that if they can do it, you can do it as well.

E plus R equals O by Jack Canfield

• It means Events plus your Response/actions equals your Outcome.
• We can’t control the events that will happen to us. We can influence the outcome but what you
can have control of is how you will respond to the events.

The School Nutrition Industry in the next years

• If the school nutrition department’s vision is great service, great food, great quality and great
customer service even before this pandemic happened, it will still be their vision.
• We can use the momentum that has been created through this pandemic.
• We have been catapulted into national spotlight in a positive way so that’s going to allow us to
have a little bit more say
• When the city starts to set out more definition on how school administrators should do it, we
will adapt and make sure we deliver the best possible product and service.

New norms in serving food to the kids

• Some schools may encourage students to go outside of their classroom to get the food but
would impose rules to abide with social distancing.
• Grab and go meals will be practiced more.
• We will see more kiosks and carts.

How can directors/site managers keep their staff believe in and motivated and inspired to do what
they do if the kids are not in front of them every day?

• Always remember your ultimate goal, why are you here and why are you doing this—for the
students. They are the heart of our work
• Continue to make your staff feel that what they are doing is important.
• Appreciation is a huge factor that we’re going to have to connect with.
• Show them that you care about them as a person and not just on a boss – employee level.

What are the tools/resources they can use to continue the communication with their staff and keeping them motivated during this time of the pandemic?

• There are other different companies providing the same service but Zoom is definitely getting all
the love right now.
• You cannot cut training right now instead, double down on that to make sure your team feels
like you care and so they can feel that you’re pouring into them.
• This is also an opportunity for the school districts to get a new culture of training that will allow
all the stop to continue getting the training that they need even during this pandemic.
• Motivation wears out if there are no reinforcement so this situation will allow directors to build
a new culture of training.
• School districts usually hold a big district meeting at the beginning of the year but today, that
can be hard given the situation. You can instead use a different approach with the same fee, you
can get the keynote speaker to do an ongoing training (ex, three months) and it would be more
valuable rather than doing it in one go.
• We need to embrace the technology that, that we’re now being forced to use on a regular basis.

How to get your staff on board for this?

• Patience – We have to understand that they are not going to accept this change overnight so we
have to be patience of the process.
• Persistent – Constantly remind.
• Politeness – You can accomplish so much if you practice politeness. Tell them what they need to
do but be polite about it. Make sure to deliver news in a polite way even if it is bad news.
• Make them understand why they need to do it. They may not agree with you but if they know
the reason behind it, most of the time it works.

How do I start my goal setting?

• Ride your goals
• Know the WHYs
• Have your first and second step
• Have accountability
• Write down your goals

Resources and Tips for a Changing Food Service Industry
With Bart Christian, who is a nationally recognized speaker and the school nutrition industry.

 

School Nutrition Education Program
Resources and Tips for a Changing Food Service Industry
USDA Professional Standards Code 3220/3230/3450

Guest

Bart Christian

Mr. Bart Christian, who is a nationally recognized speaker and the school nutrition industry.

With over 25 years of experience in the School Nutrition, what are you seeing in the industry now?

• During this time, we make sure children get fed and ensure that the school nutrition department
are being appreciated for their hard work
• The industry has evolved the way they serve the kids; they have gone couple of different ways to
service such as driving ups service for parents to collect meals.
• In some districts, meals are separated for the day and for the week in order to maintain social
distancing
• Some people providing frozen food in that meal, something providing hot food that has to be
cooled and then reheated.
• They also are doing school bus delivery where they’re loading food up onto school, school buses,
same kind of process. Sometimes it’s a day. Sometimes it’s multiple days a work that’s worth of
food for a family and they’re delivering it either. By the bus route, either site the site or in most
cases, central location and letting people know that that’s where they’ll be. And then people come
to pick up their meals. Those two procedures are things that have never been done before in
schools.
• It’s been very critical that that schools follow proper procedures. One thing, a lot of people don’t
know about schools is that they’re very procedure driven. There is a literally a procedure for
everything that happens in a school nutrition environment from door to door.
• Since there are no SOPs, what we did with our team was, we put together standard operating
procedures for both those things drive up service and bus delivery. We also developed some
inserts and some things like that to go into the meals so that parents know the proper procedures
for handling it.

Tell us a little bit more about Non-congregate and Feeding Standard Operating Procedures

We put together a free complete document about the SOPs so it can be accessible to all. We have made
them available to the country.

• Bus services, delivering and receiving boxes – making sure that we properly handle cardboard
containers so that people will be aware of not being infected by the virus
• Cleaning a school bus – we make sure that they are safe and clean. So, we provided a COVID-19
approved germicide instructions that can be used
• Proper hand washing, proper personal hygiene

What’s the new hand-washing procedure in a bus environment?

My recommendation in our procedure is to wash your hands thoroughly before you start put gloves on
and wear gloves all the time. That way you’re not touching anything and if your gloves become soiled or
they become torn, or you need to change them, if you have an opportunity to wash your hands at a stop
or side, then obviously do that.

We’re encouraging people to take the gloves off as gently as they can. One simple technique is you’ve got
gloves on your hands, gloves get soiled and you want to take them off, you can take your thumb and run
it up the inside of the glove and just kind of peel the glove off that way as best you can.
And then drop that glove in the trash and take your clean ungloved hand and do the same thing with this,
this try and only to touch the inside of the glove and then discard that glove. We’re dealing with a lot of
new territory and the goal is to keep things as safe as possible when you’re handling food.

About the Free Food Safety Training

We’ve added on our food handler solutions website which is the Free Food Safety Training. It’s a full 8-
chapter course to help people that are not familiar with food safety. It’s a wonderful tool, especially
even if you just break off some chapters, you can kind of skip around and take chapters independently
of each other, but it’s a really great tool to take or to pass along to folks that maybe just aren’t familiar
with food safety and want to give them a little bit of something to get them started.

Can you share with us the best way to do meal inserts?

We started the inserts out from a basic information, so people would know how to handle their food, but
as the complexity of service became more evident and these complex meals were being served and the
complex meal basically means something that needs this cooked then needs to be and then reheat it and
then serve. That’s basically the definition and people are also adding in frozen food.

• There are districts that are providing a week’s worth of food, and they’re basically given such as a
hamburger, frozen hamburger patties, frozen chicken patties but there were no instructions for
parents.
• When a school district starts adding and providing that kind of food, it opens things up where they
not to provide parents with good solid instruction so that they could say that they did. So, we
developed the insert that has that handling of hot food from, in terms of getting it.
• Not eating it immediately and then putting it at the right temperature, cooling at the right time
and then reheating. We did the same thing with cold food, and then we added the frozen food in
so that people would know that the frozen food needs to be taken immediately and putting them
in the freezer.

Milk and Meal Packs

• A lot of schools are serving milk and USDA is a mandatory meal pack and that milk also needs to
be cool. There is some shelf stable milk that’s being used, but by and large, it’s not shelfs stable.
It’s the kind of milk that you have in school all the time. It’s a cooler and the kids get it as they’re
getting their lunch. So, we did that and we also developed an insert for basic home food safety.

Flyers and Inserts

• Not only does it apply to the meals, but you’ve also got a flyer you can insert in that it gives them
some tips for their own safety at their house when they’re preparing their own meals. This was a
pretty good thing because we had a lot of people take advantage of both of those tools.
• We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from people who have used it. The interesting thing about the
inserts is that they’re editable. If your district is doing something a little different, they’re all word
documents, and you can edit them to fit your circumstances since you want to do that.

Labeled Templates

• We also put together some labeled templates, you can actually print labels off penal off and
stick them on a bag of a meal or whatever. Their language is in Spanish and in English. There are
also some DIY items about how to create your mask and how best to wear them.

COVID-19 Resources

• There are a lot of different resources on the COVID-19 resource page which, can be found at
school food handler right in the navigation area, just by clicking on COVID-19 resources at the
top of the page.
• The key thing about a mask is this, you can make your own, and that’s exactly what’s on there is
instructions to do that. Care’s very important so we added a resource on there about taking care
of your mask how do you care for it, how do you wash it etc.

Getting back to life with a new ‘normal’ setting, what can food service operations do in ensuring
parents and making customers feel safe again?

Two things —food safety in a child nutrition environment and school environment has never been an
issue. Food has always been safe there. They’ve got a painstaking measure to be sure that food is safe.
Personal hygiene in a child nutrition environment has always been taught. They’ve always done that and
they do a really good job. Make sure people wash their hands and follow guidelines.

Wearing Gloves & Masks

• Once the schools reopened, people will just take those extra measures to make sure that they
wear gloves all the time. If there are kids in the environment, gloves are not necessarily a required
for every single task in the kitchen outside of serving the food. I would say that in every
opportunity – you may find yourself wearing masks in school.

Maintaining Social Distancing

• As you’re handing things to people, be careful about touching people and maintain social
distancing. I believe this is something you can do now, as far as the restaurants go, same things.

I think you’re going to find servers that are going to be wearing masks that are going to be
wearing gloves. You’re going to have people in that kitchen that are going to be doing the same
thing.

Wearing appropriate uniforms

• Wearing things that they’re accustomed to wear is also a way towards making the customers
feel safe. Whether the customers come back quickly or not, it’s going to really depend on two
things. It’s gonna depend on how the restaurant and school markets the safety precautions
they’re taking.

Scheduling by Batch for Lunch

• Also, how quickly customers are still comfortable. I think the more your social distance in a
restaurant, I think you’re going to find people that are going to a 300-table restaurant or 300-
person capacity restaurant, maybe go to a 7,500, 125 people because it’s a spread the distancing.
You’re probably going to see schools go into more of a longer lunch period so that they can bring
kids instead of bringing the whole cafeteria in at one time. Maybe bring them in, in thirds. So, it’s
spread them out around the cafeteria.

“There’s going to be a lot of things to be different, food safety is not really going to be the issue. It’s
going to be the context.”

Do you feel like there’s any negative repercussions to just taking extra precautions?

No, there’s not. Caution can be overboard, but in this case, I think caution is not a bad practice, especially
follow you’re buying yourself into that grouping of people that have been more susceptible.

I watched people in the grocery store. I’ve noticed people taking things off the shelf, handling bugs and
he’s normal, and then reaching up and adjusting their mask or they got the mask down over their mouth
so they can breathe through their nose. It’s been shown that people that wear masks tend to touch their
face. As much as 75% more than they do when they don’t have it. What begs the question is that – can we
be disciplined more wearing a mask? As if you are touching things and then you’re texting your face and
you’re moving your mask around, it kind of defeats the purpose of them because of that.

Cause the mask is to protect what it’s to protect me from you. If you’re wearing them, you’re getting
somebody else or airborne and that can be an issue. So, I think it wouldn’t have restaurants, food, service,
operations, those kinds of things.

When they’re wearing masks, that it’s very important that they practice the proper use of the mask. Cause
they’re adjusting it. Then it’s going to just tell the confidence of customers that won’t cause problems.

As a nationally recognized speaker, what can people do in these times to stay positive in mind and just keep up a good outlook towards the future in life?

• Stop watching the news. You can try watching to maybe every two or three or even four days,
things aren’t gonna change that much. You’ll notice an immediate improvement attitude.
• Take time to watch your favorite movie or have some me-time. If you want to watch television,
watch something funny or watch some, watch something exciting, or action packed. Read your
favorite books, and listen to your favorite music and talk to yourself. Reflect. Ponder!
• Don’t constantly tell yourself that this is the end. We’re going to be in this. It’s not going to get
better because none of that’s true. It’s not the end is it is going to get better. Timing may be an
issue, but it will get better. There’s no reason to think it won’t.
• Be kind to people. There’s so much stress in this world right now that when I go into a store.
When you walk into a store, smile and say good morning. You can ask the staff how are they
doing or to people more or less. You will feel in your heart that people need that.
• You need to know that you are not alone. For some people, they’ve been trapped in their house.
Some of them for weeks and they feel alone. I think if you can share a kind word and a smile with
somebody, it reminds them that they’re not alone. I’ve seen a big response when I do that. That’s
the key thing – a production line guard. You get what you give you reap what you said. And if you,
if you want to get positivity and good back from people, you must give it.