Every school day, the kitchen staff at La Salle arrive around 6 a.m. to embark on the long journey of preparing entrées, sides, sandwiches, and more for some 700 faculty and students. 

First, they start by prepping and panning everything, heating the hundreds of  items necessary to feed the student body, and double-checking that everything is ready for whatever the day’s lunch has been meticulously planned out to be. Each staff member, working under the leadership of Ms. Megan Jones, current kitchen manager and head chef, focuses on each of their own specialties and responsibilities. 

Ms. Becky Tetherow takes on the salads, Ms. Andrea Wilson fashions the sandwiches, and Mr. Enrique Tavera Tapia makes the hot food options of the day.

What students might not understand is “how much work it is, how much things cost, [and] how much it costs to run a kitchen,” Ms. Jones said. 

Not only planning, but creating, acquiring, and funding the lunch for all of La Salle each week means the staff in the kitchen must balance a tangled thicket of variables in order to achieve success. 

Ms. Jones, still in training under the former kitchen manager Ms. Kim McCarthy, is in charge of unraveling that equation.

She has been professionally cooking for the last 20 years, following in the footsteps of her family and taking inspiration from her father and brother, who also work as chefs. 

To acquire the necessary bulk food and maintain every step of the process after that, the kitchen staff have to be highly attentive to every cost. 

Since the school’s policy is for the program to be self-sustaining enough to cover direct operating expenses, Ms. Jones explained, financing for everything from wages to ingredients is paid for by the sale of food to students and staff. 

This means that the price tag put on alfredo, nachos, burgers, and every other entrée, side, and drink available at La Salle has to pay for a whole lot more than the food or item itself. 

Every week, not only does a bulk order arrive from US Foods — one of the largest ingredient providers to restaurants in the United States — but staff members travel to Costco and Trader Joes for more individual purchases. Deliveries also arrive with items from companies who the school has special relationships with, where everything from sodas to soups and alfredo sauce are sourced. 

The prices of these different items in bulk then have to be considered when determining how to divide up the menu, how much of each dish to provide in a serving, and how many times items can be served in a month. 

In one particular example, a serving of chicken strips is sold at $4.50, though each of the three individual pieces included costs $1 in bulk. The remaining profit of $1.50 per serving sold then has to cover daily wages and all other day-to-day costs associated with serving an entire school every day. 

Even though chicken strips have a much higher cost to calorie ratio than many foods served, it and similar outliers are served due to their persistent popularity.

Like any business, explained Ms. Jones, the kitchen has to serve what people will buy to pay the bills.   

Still, the kitchen does price down some items. Specifically fruits, vegetables, and salads. Given the school’s lack of formal nutritional standards — receiving no federal support, the program is not beholden to federal standards — these are offered at less expense to encourage students to buy healthier options. This is part of a informal standard, which also includes the prioritization of fresh food generally, according to Ms. Jones. 

To determine what to serve and in what quantity, the kitchen keeps close watch on the buying habits of the student body. 

The number of purchases for each item are recorded and considered every day when deciding on the following month’s menu and the next order placed with US Foods. This record keeping allows the staff not only to establish what dishes are popular and in demand but also how much is needed to fulfill demand without wasting food or money. 

According to Ms. Jones, this year, the buying habits of the students have been especially erratic. With the popularity of items differing vastly depending on the day, it is hard to effectively purchase fitting quantities. 

To plan each month’s menu, more has to be considered than simple price or demand. When proposing new menu items, each suggestion has to meet several criteria: It has to be easy to prepare in large quantities, affordable enough to be purchased in those quantities, and appealing enough to encourage students to buy it at the window. 

This last factor is underappreciated in Ms. Jones’ opinion. The presentation of different dishes can have an oversized impact on popularity compared to the quality or quantity actually provided. 

“We make really good lasagna, and it takes all day,” she said. “I would do it every single week, but it looks a little scary in the window, [so] we don’t sell that much lasagna.”

The timeliness factor, on the other hand, plays into a different priority of the kitchen director. 

“We try and get you all through the line in under 10 minutes so that you have plenty of time to eat,” she said, meaning everything offered has to be extremely quick to serve, especially foods that cool quickly and have to be heated before consumption. 

“It just all has to be a really, really fast process,” she said. 

Ms. Jones crafts the menu each month, along with informal help from the rest of the kitchen staff and the suggestions of staff and students. But with no formal way for students to approach the program with ideas and a lack of knowledge of what qualifies as a feasible lunch item, according to her, many student suggestions never become a reality. 

Execution of each day’s meal plan has become harder since the pandemic, with volunteers who once used to speed up the process becoming scarce.

This school year only in November did the first volunteer arrive back to help get everything out on the 10-minute timetable Ms. Jones pushes for, and since 2020 there have been multiple years where there were no volunteers, or only volunteers from within the school. This challenge has been compounded by the unusual and unpredictable buying behaviors of the student body this year, leading to longer wait times for food and slower, more unpredictable lines for the students, according to Ms. Jones. 

After the frenetic lunch frenzy has subsided and students have retreated back to classes, all the remaining food has to be dealt with. 

The scraps from a school’s worth of meals are scraped and scrubbed from the floor, and the food that was never served is then sent to a refrigerator where staff can come pick up any of these leftovers. An email is sent out to the faculty about leftover food, and if none arrive, then it goes home with lunch staff or to the compost bin at the end of the week.

As Ms. Jones continues to settle into the role of kitchen manager and takes on more responsibilities both in the kitchen floor and organizationally, she is working to build a greener kitchen, and in turn foster a greener school. 

Her top priorities, supported by Ms. McCarthy, are to forge a new and more sustainable way for La Salle students to get lunch. In the short term, this takes the form of reusable dishware, coming soon to La Salle, and continuing the kitchen’s current support of the Earth Club at La Salle.

Ms. Jones said she aims to hopefully build “a more earth-friendly cafeteria,” where the lunch program can be the start of a broader focus on environmental awareness and protection at La Salle.