What improvements has the cafeteria made this year?

I think improvement-wise just looking at what the kids like and what they don’t like. We did start doing smoothies, and I think some of the kids figured those out, they’re kind of a really bright color and we’re trying to tone that down by putting some fresh fruit in their also, they meet all the fruit requirements, we have the red and the blue, we’re putting blueberries in the blue and strawberries in the red. So, I think the kids are getting kind of used to those. Smart Mouth Pizza, we have a new recipe for a cheesy bread and some of the kids tried that, and that’s kind of fun. Kind of playing around a little bit with some of the pizza, we kind of played around a couple times when we had some leftover veggies doing a veggie pizza, a meat lovers pizza. We actually had a couple kids come back and say ‘When are you going to do that again?’.

What do you think has been really successful this year?

Well, the rice bowl is always crazy popular, the mashed potato bowl is always crazy popular. Paninis are very popular, we did some chicken tenders for a while that was new on our menu this semester, but we couldn’t get them for the end of the semester so we switched to the drumstick, which some kids liked that some kids not so much. But the chicken tenders will be back next year so that’s exciting. We’ve tried to look at what we’ve got that’s super popular and try to put it with other things that are maybe a little bit stronger, so we don’t have all the kids in one area. I think some of the things that we make from scratch have been popular, some of our salads, at least on the salad bar, she does a broccoli salad which is really good. The calzones are homemade here the kids seem to really like those.

How was your first year back at CHS?

I was here three years ago as the assistant manager in the main cafeteria, and then there was a retirement at Carmel Middle School, so I left to go to Carmel Middle School for 3 years, and the position here at the high school (kind of) over all the cafeterias the main cafeteria manager that opened up so I was asked to move back here. It’s kind of fun to see some of the kids that I knew from before.

What are the cafeteria’s plans for the future?

For the future, I guess to look at what the kids like, we look at our menu every semester so if we try something new and it’s totally bombing we want to take that off we don’t want the thing on there that kids don’t like. Some things we just have to try it and see, several of us do go to Indiana School Nutrition Association conference in the fall and there’s usually a big exhibit where there are new products we can try. We do like to try to make some things from scratch, we’re still trying to do that granted that’s labor-intensive to do that so it always depends on our staffing, whether or not we can do that.