ScratchWorks Blog, September 2024
By Abby de Riel
We sat down with Chris Tricarico, Senior Executive Director of the Office of Food and Nutrition Services (OFNS) at NYC Public Schools, a founding ScratchWorks district, to talk about the importance of scratch cooking and highlight the OFNS/Chefs in the Schools partnership. A staff member of Wellness in the Schools, a founding ScratchWorks organization, interviewed Chris to learn from his experience and about NYC’s new Chefs in the Schools partnership.
Learn more about this partnership: In 2022, the New York City Department of Education’s Office of Food and Nutrition Services (OFNS), Mayor’s Office of Food Policy (MOFP), and Wellness in the Schools (WITS) partnered together to form Chefs in the Schools. Chefs in the Schools is a Menu Development, Chef Training, and Education program building on the work Wellness in the Schools has done in public schools for nearly two decades. The initiative began with the launch of New York City’s first-ever Chef Council, and in almost two years, the Chef Council, WITS Chefs, and the Office of Food and Nutrition Services Recipe and Development team have created numerous scratch-cooked, plant-based, and culturally inclusive recipes now featured on the NYC public school menu. Eighty WITS Chefs will continue the second school year of an innovative side-by-side training program in NYC public school cafeterias with WITS Chefs also leading cooking and nutrition education lessons on the new recipes with students in classrooms.
ScratchWorks is supported thanks to generous funding from the From Now on Fund, Life Time Foundation, Newman’s Own Foundation, Wellness in the Schools, and Whole Kids Foundation.
Tell us a little about yourself. Where did your background in school food begin?
I started my career as an elementary school teacher in Bushwick, Brooklyn. I quickly fell in love with not just teaching but also being in the lunchroom and the cafeteria with my kids. I worked my way up to assistant principal and principal, and my interest in the lunchroom grew. As my career as a principal continued, I learned more and more about free and reduced-price lunches and school food as a whole. Then when the opportunity was available, I became the Senior Executive Director of School Food.
Without a doubt, the impact of being in that school in Brooklyn mattered — all of those kids ate and relied on free lunch. I was also a New York City Public Schools child from kindergarten through high school and ate free lunch too. Later, as an adult, I saw opportunities for us to take steps forward with the food we were serving children and create a better atmosphere in the lunchroom for both children and the cooks in the kitchen. If you can get the cooks to enjoy what they’re doing and love the food they’re cooking and serving, that will reflect how the children receive and enjoy the food at lunchtime.
New York City is the country’s largest school district. What inspires you to lead school food for the city’s one million public school students?
My staff. Everyone will always talk about how big New York City is — we’re the largest school district in the country, and we feed the most kids — but our food operations are district by district, borough by borough, and school by school. We have a dedicated team that can produce what we need in every single school. Our operations start from the school level up, not vice versa, making sure that schools have everything they need to produce the meals we’re asking for on city-wide standards. When we work on an individual basis, everyone in the field has the autonomy to make their own decisions to get the job done.
Organizationally, I have a great executive team, and everyone has direct reports. We emphasize culture building, providing training for our team, having an open feedback process, and providing the support everyone needs to get the job done. I think the key to how we build up our successes and work through our challenges is learning from each other. We inspire each other every day in that process.
This past school year, you formally launched the Chefs in the Schools program in partnership with Wellness in the Schools. Through this program, your cooks are learning culinary skills crucial for cooking from scratch, and more recipes are being added to the menu. What has it been like to ramp up operations after the pandemic? What elements of school food stand out as the most crucial in building a strong school food program?
The pandemic was an interesting time in New York City. We did things that we had never done before, so when we started to return to directly feeding children in school, I was really excited. I was even more excited with the announcement of NYC’s Inaugural Chef Council and working with Wellness in the Schools, the Mayor’s Office, and the Mayor’s Office of Food Policy to lift the Chefs in the Schools program off the ground. I don’t have the bandwidth on my staff to facilitate professional culinary training, so having Wellness in the Schools as our partners to be able to provide this training to our staff is key (especially one-on-one, side-by-side training). This has given our staff tools crucial for cooking from scratch, and they are more confident now to make, present, serve, and talk about the nourishing recipes available to students at lunch.
As I said before, people in our system and those partnering with us are the most crucial piece of this food service operation. We need to have the right people doing the job for the children of New York City and that takes a lot of training, time, and effort, but it’s something that I know with a partner like Wellness in the Schools we’re able to accomplish. Also crucial to the Office of Food and Nutrition’s growth and success is City Hall. Having a Mayor and Chancellor who support this work and nourish our kids through school food is beyond impactful. With this support and confidence in us comes expectations and being accountable for every detail and data point, but I’m fine with that. I want to be able to do what’s right and meet our goals to ultimately feed our kids well.
What does procurement look like to feed one million students?
Expensive. The luxury we have as a school food authority is that the more you buy, the cheaper you get it for, but still, the rise of food costs and salaries to run our operations, as well as overall inflation, is something we have to contend with right now and that will likely continue to be a challenge. I believe that this City is well-versed and can handle these challenges, and I believe that OFNS will continue to create a menu that utilizes the available funds in the right direction.
Our procurement is a large network of contracted vendors focusing on expanding our contracts with minority and women-owned business enterprises (M/WBE) and urban and rural growers. Employing a wide range of diverse vendors with a focus on local and seasonal ingredients supports our students at lunch and our communities as a whole. We are ultimately guided by the Mayor’s Office of Food Policy’s Good Food Purchasing initiative, prioritizing values like supporting local economies and purchasing sustainably. We are also very proud to be a part of the United States Department of Agriculture’s National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program, which help support our feeding numbers.
There’s a big myth that scratch cooking is more expensive. We know in practice that it’s cheaper to eat seasonally with simple, plant-based ingredients. What are some of the new Chefs in the Schools recipes on the NYC Public Schools lunch menu where this is reflected?
The ingredients themselves are less expensive. Looking at scratch-cooked, plant-based meals as a whole, there is extra labor involved that might cost more upfront but pays off in the long run, which is what the Chefs in the Schools program is guiding us through right now. The more we implement training in school kitchens and at our headquarters on scratch-cooked recipes with nourishing ingredients, the better and more efficient our cooks are at preparing those recipes. Our goal is to have any recipe we make, scratch-cooked or not, neutral when factoring in ingredient and preparation costs.
The Kidney Bean Rajma is one of my favorite new Chefs in the Schools recipes, with beans, tomatoes, onions, garlic, cilantro, and spices like cinnamon, cumin, curry, ginger, pepper, and turmeric. It’s a delicious and completely plant-based option. Students have also expressed positive feedback about the White Bean and Pasta Primavera recipe, which has white beans roasted with diced tomatoes, peppers, onions, and herbs and spices.
It’s challenging to continue creating new recipes with a set list of ingredients, so we’re experimenting with different types of pasta and rice. We are looking forward to getting new vendor contracts in the upcoming year that will grow our ingredient list.
Talk about the three elements of Chefs in the Schools recipes: scratch-cooked, plant-based, and culturally inclusive. How has OFNS partnered with Wellness in the Schools and the Chef Council to create recipes that reflect the diverse cultures of New York City’s kids?
We have set menus across the district so meals are equitable for every single student, but we want to make sure children are exposed to new food options just as much as having something to eat they’re familiar with. Making recipes and meals scratch-cooked, plant-based, and culturally inclusive is at the forefront of our recipe development discussions. We’re proud that our menus represent the multicultural city and students we serve. Our three-step recipe development process is designed to be inclusive: first, recipes are developed by a diverse group of chefs and culinary industry professionals from Wellness in the Schools and the Chef Council and tested in our headquarters kitchen; second, we work with student and parent groups in diverse communities to taste recipes and hear feedback, guiding any changes we may make to a recipe’s ingredients or preparation method; and third, we sample recipes in cafeterias for all students to make a thumbs-up or thumbs-down vote and see what it’s like to have the recipe served on the line.
Last year, for the entire school year, we saw a growth in the average daily participation of students (calculated by total meals served versus attendance in schools). Having the numbers go up is a great sign that students like what they’re eating. In the next year, we also hope to start tracking the quantities of individual meals students select to compare what is most popular, given that we always serve three to five options daily. This will allow us to see which new scratch-cooked, plant-based, and culturally inclusive recipes have the biggest buy-in from the students.
Most importantly, these new recipes are then prepared by OFNS cooks in school kitchens who serve them to students. What elements of culinary training have had the biggest impact on the kitchen culture so far? What has been challenging about building a strong kitchen culture?
Knife skills stand out the most. Training on culinary techniques like knife skills from Chefs at Wellness in the Schools is something we’re fortunate to provide to our staff. Some of our cooks have never had the prior experience of preparing recipes in large quantities and at such an efficient pace, so having fundamental culinary skills is a huge boost to each cook’s confidence as well as the kitchen morale as a whole. WITS Chefs also train our cooks on how to run a kitchen and build a strong structure of daily operations. It’s wonderful to have a certified Chef in the kitchen who has a mix of restaurant, catering, and private chef experience and can open our cooks up to different ideas of how to get this work done. A diversity of opinions in the kitchen can be a challenge, too, but we have found the partnership this year helps make this challenge an asset.
What stands out the most to you and what are you most proud of what you (and we) have been able to accomplish this past school year?
I’m proud of expanding the relationships with all of OFNS’ partners. Chefs in the Schools is a great example of a public-private partnership between New York City and Wellness in the Schools. The partnership has developed out of almost two decades of Wellness in the Schools working in New York City public schools, and we have grown so much together in just two school years. It’s also a huge accomplishment to increase our production of scratch-cooked meals and have what was initial hesitation or complaints turn into excitement. School staff, principals, students, and cooks are used to a ready-made meal like a burger; change is hard. Yet, after a year of increased scratch-cooking, we’re hearing so much positive feedback from everyone in the schools and seeing meal participation increase.
On an individual level, it’s inspiring to see cooks in action, from the schools where one cook is in the building by themselves feeding 300–400 kids to a kitchen team of 17 workers feeding thousands. Some cooks thrive on their own, and some operate well as a part of a team. Each cook navigates the daily operations so well, and, yes, the number of meals served daily is inspirational! What’s most special is that most of our cooks and the WITS Chefs who come in for side-by-side culinary training are community members in the area where the schools are. Some even grew up attending those schools and are now in the kitchen serving the next generation of students. It’s community-led through and through.
What is one piece of advice you have for school food operators aspiring to increase their district’s cooking from scratch?
It can be done. It can be done with time and effort. But nothing ever happens without asking a lot of questions and asking different people the same questions.
Ten years ago, people would tell you we’d never be able to do it; we didn’t have the right equipment, we didn’t have enough staff in the kitchen, and so on and on. That’s all an important part of the conversation. But the challenges can always be a part of the solution, and we’re presented with the opportunity every day to grow from our challenges. Surround yourself with visionary people like you who aren’t afraid to challenge you in new ways to get to the place you want to be.