A Day with the Chef Making NYC's Best School Lunch

[soft music]

Brigaid is a company that hires professional chefs

to work in school kitchens.

We get to work with real ingredients

and limit the amount of processed food

that kids get on a daily basis.

We serve K through 12.

We're looking at upwards of 2,400 meals a day.

USDA has some pretty strict guidelines,

so we need to fall within those restrictions

and also make sure that each plate is a $1.50, or less.

As a program chef, it makes R&D fun and challenging.

No school cook ever gets the credit that they deserve.

This is probably the most fun job I've had ever.

For real, though.

[Persefoni laughs]

Hey, good morning. Welcome to DREAM Charter Schools.

My name is Perse.

I'm the Brigaid Program Chef for this school.

We got a lot of kids to feed, so let's get going.

Good morning. Good morning. Howdy.

School is five stories, K through 12, about 1200 kids,

and we feed all of them.

About a little after 7:00 AM,

we're gonna walk to our main kitchen,

so I can take a look at the prep list

and get breakfast going.

Kids are gonna start coming into the building at 7:30.

It's crunch time right now.

This setting is way different than a restaurant.

We have three kitchens.

We have two cafeterias and one prep kitchen.

They're spread around

three different floors in this building.

This building is six stories, we occupy three.

Good morning.

Typically, we have 11 people coming into work.

Today, unfortunately, we had two call outs.

I'm switching out some numbers

based on what everyone needs to make

and what we need as priority

versus what we're prepping for for tomorrow.

A lot of moving pieces here.

We just need to make sure,

although someone does call out in a school kitchen,

that doesn't mean that the kids

are more forgiving or understanding.

They all still come to school

and they all still deserve and expect

breakfast, lunch, and snack, so we can't be short on that.

[soft music]

Right now, I'm getting all of my numbers and pars

ready for middle school breakfast.

So when kids come in, they grab a bag of lunch,

they have the option of cereal,

or a turkey, bacon, egg and cheese sandwich

on a whole grain English muffin.

And they take it and eat it in the classrooms.

So, everything in a kitchen, a school kitchen,

which is different from a restaurant kitchen,

is pretty much counted for.

We count what we served,

and that's how we pretty much make our money back.

That's how we claim our meals.

So, it's really important that we have the right counts

for everything starting at the shift.

And then at the end of the shift

we make sure that we count everything again.

If we miss a meal, then the school program

doesn't get the funding that it needs.

It's a lot of count. It's inventory every single day.

2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20.

Every day we're slated to serve

about combined hot and cold 600 breakfasts.

All right, we're gonna go upstairs, y'all.

[upbeat music]

All right. It is a lot of heavy lifting here.

A restaurant requirement

is you have to be able to lift like 50 pounds.

Here, I'd probably say

like you have to be able to lift like a hundred pounds.

So, it's pretty nice. It's a nice gym membership.

You guys are probably wondering after seeing

like that state of the art cafeteria that we have,

why we do breakfast at the door.

We did see that participation rates weren't that high,

and there was a lot of food waste,

which is something that we also need to take into account.

Because whatever food is wasted that we don't serve,

we just don't get our money back.

Good morning. Breakfast sandwich or cereal?

[Student] Breakfast sandwich.

Breakfast sandwich. Right here. I got you.

So in thinking about what we serve in a school,

we also have to think about what the requirements are

to make it a reimbursable meal.

For breakfast, we have four components.

Juice, fruit, grain and milk.

Breakfast sandwich?

[Student #2] Yeah.

You got it.

Thank you.

There you go.

Breakfast sandwich? All right, have a good day.

And these are the my customers. Super nice.

So, any child that comes in late

will go to the second floor cafeteria

and can grab a breakfast

all the way up until lunch is served.

We don't deny any late kids any breakfast,

or punish them for being tardy.

Every kid deserves food.

We create a pretty safe space for them.

Good morning. Breakfast sandwiches or cereal?

There you go.

[upbeat music]

Woo. It's gonna be a good day. You got the last one.

They pretty much cleared me out of the hot breakfast.

[announcement bell]

So when I hear that bell, I know. Okay, cool.

School started, now I can pack up.

Everyone else after this

is gonna be late and I'm building some late bags.

I'll count what I have, and we're gonna roll downstairs,

and get the day started for a little R&D and for lunch.

You know, in a restaurant you don't have to be too mindful

of all the spaces and the people

that are in it while you're prepping

'cause it's usually just like your line cooks.

In a school setting, you're here during the school day,

so you have to be really mindful

of the teachers and the students that are also here

and know that there's class going on.

[soft music]

Welcome to the prep kitchen.

This is gonna be the kitchen

that we have on the first floor.

This is where majority of the prep happens,

where we receive all of our deliveries.

There are four walk-ins.

We've labeled all of our walk-ins

and have designated spots for a lot of our products.

So, by organizing it this way,

we definitely streamline the process

and become more efficient.

Right now, I'm just coming in to grab

what we need for service today,

which is going to be the soy marinated baked chicken thighs.

We have about 500 pieces to cook off,

so about, I would say, 21 to 22 sheet trays.

One second. If I can't pull, I can push. There you go.

Just a nice, easy 160 pound sled push of chickens

to start your morning off.

Today's meal, soy marinated chicken, fried rice bok choy.

As soon as you come in, it's like a ticking time bomb.

Service starts at 11:30.

Your line needs to be set up by 11:15.

Dealing with scaling and mass production,

it's always important to also set your station up

and that's something that I teach the team

and train the team on.

So now that I'm on chicken, I know, all right,

once I take the chicken out, what am I gonna need?

It sets you up for success.

It makes you a little more efficient

in the sense of you're not walking back and forth,

and you're limiting the amount of steps you take,

which is also preserving energy.

And we preach that like thinking every single step through.

When we're writing a recipe,

how many portions is a 10 pound bag of pasta?

Like, write that down so people know.

It's little things like that

that I think Brigaid chefs really think through

to set all the kitchens up for success

when they're implementing scratch food.

As I have six trays of chicken working,

I'm also gonna just take a look at what I need for my R&D,

which is gonna be a Mongolian meatball

with Mongolian sauce.

And then also making sure

that I have what I need for the carrot slaw.

[upbeat music]

Just grabbed all my stuff for the carrot slaw

that we're gonna be taste testing right now.

It's the first time I'm making this recipe.

We're gonna see how it tastes.

I got Gabe right here helping me out as well.

Things when we've developed recipes

that are really important to take note of

is obviously the cost and big component

are the nutritional standards and guidelines.

Restricted on how much sodium we can add into a component.

We're restricted on calories and saturated fat.

So, we're gonna start off with recipe I made right now.

It's a different item every day of the month,

but we try giving them a variety.

Now I'm adding a little lime juice.

I added a little bit of sesame oil prior to that.

I'm also updating how many grams of everything is,

so that I can put it in the recipe once I scale it.

So, instead of them getting it in 1000 teaspoons,

they're actually getting it in gram measurements.

I'm putting in a little ginger, just five grams.

Kids don't typically love carrots,

so I'm trying to find a different way to prepare carrots

where they would actually like it and would get a higher

participation on them taking the carrot.

When building a recipe,

I look at what the cost per dish would be.

If you put out in a restaurant a dish

that has a high food cost, you also have the luxury

of elevating the price of that meal

to align with your 20% food cost.

In a school kitchen, you're running about a 40% food cost.

We get $4 and, I think, 69 cents

per meal that we serve for lunch,

so we try getting a dish that's at a $1.50 or lower.

When it comes to vegetables, there's five subcategories.

On a five day week, we're required to serve all of them.

So, you have a dark green starchy vegetable,

red-orange vegetable, legume, and then you have an other.

Other will be like your green beans,

your bok choy, cucumber.

You can do bell peppers.

So, carrot slaw.

This would credit for the red-orange vegetable.

All of this I need to just have a month ahead

when I submit my menus for the following month.

R&D in a school kitchen is completely different.

You know, where I was before out in Telluride, Colorado,

I did a lot of R&D and was able

to put on like specials on the menu day of.

And it was a lot easier 'cause I didn't have like

any nutritional restrictions or set price restrictions.

It's super important that whatever we prepare,

we always ask the kids if they like it or not,

and we can also see that in the numbers.

We work for them.

I might love one dish,

but if they don't like it, it serves me no purpose,

'cause then I'm not doing right by them.

That needs salt.

If I add in small increments, I'll be within my limit.

The Brigaid pounding fathers,

they created a pretty awesome template

where we add all of our ingredients in it.

So, as I'm making recipes, on the spreadsheet on the corner,

I can see how many calories there are for the whole recipe,

and then per portion.

Not only do I see like the nutritional information,

but I also see the cost per serving.

I think a little bit of salt

brought out all the other flavors.

So, I'm gonna package this up, put it in the walk-in

and then see where we're at with chicken and keep going.

[soft music]

That's the timer for the first round of chicken.

We're gonna take it out.

Super important that we temp every piece

and make sure that we are at 165 or higher

and that there's no pink.

A child's immune system is still developing,

so we want to make sure

that everything is definitely cooked well.

We are good to go.

I never ate school food growing up.

And today, I eat school food every single day.

It's thoughtfully prepared food

with real ingredients from scratch.

The marinade for this chicken doesn't come out of a bag,

it's not coming out of a bottle.

Like, we're actually preparing the soy marinade,

giving kids opportunity to taste vegetables,

or flavor profiles of things

that they typically wouldn't have at home or outside.

I think that's really important,

even for like social interactions as they get older,

they can speak authentically

about like them not liking bok choy.

Right here, it's really important

that the amount of chicken I put in one hotel pan

is consistent throughout.

And that is because when my high school cooks go upstairs

to start serving lunch to the high school students,

they know how many hot portions that they need

and they can actually take

the accurate number of sheet trays

and not leave us with less food for a K through 8.

All the students do get the same meal.

The portion sizes will change.

You're serving a 5-year-old

and then you're also serving a 17-year-old.

I mean, some of these five year olds slam that food,

and I'm like, slow clap, I love to see it.

In a restaurant, you know,

you have your line cooks at the end of the night

telling you like, oh man, that was crazy,

we just did 200 covers

and it's like they've been open for six hours.

Here, you're like,

wow, we just did 700 covers in an hour and 20 minutes.

Shout out to the dishwashers because we got one person

doing dishes for 1200 kids that we're eating,

so much love to all the dishwashers.

So, this right here, guys, is warmer.

We add a little water in right here

and this keeps all of our food

at 140 and higher ready for service.

This keeps it out of the temperature danger zone.

So, you know, kids get hot food.

It's a vital piece of equipment to every school kitchen.

As soon as I take this out, then it's gonna be 10:00 AM,

which means that the whole team's

gonna come upstairs and gather, and we're gonna talk about

serving sizes for all the kids upstairs, downstairs,

and what they need to work on after service.

[soft music]

Hi guys. Happy Thursday.

Few updates, because of the weather,

I did get a text today from Sysco.

The truck's gonna be coming in tomorrow.

Today's meal, soy marinated chicken, fried rice bok choy.

We have enough bok choy for everyone

to get some on their plate.

Fried rice upstairs, downstairs is the same.

It's gonna be an eight ounce portion.

Chicken is gonna be one each.

Sweet. All right, good to go. Break.

We listen. We don't judge.

We listen. We don't judge.

[soft music]

So, it's 11 o'clock right now.

I'm just gonna do a little walkthrough on the line.

Make sure that majority of the stuff is pretty much set up.

The way it works is we have kids coming in on both sides,

so they come in, we offer hot food first,

then they have their cold food options,

and then they break off in the middle.

So, we need to make sure all of our wells are on,

so we have hot water in here and the hot food stays hot.

And then this is all of our cold food options.

If kids don't want the hot plate,

then they have the option of five other items.

All together, we have six services per day.

We're gonna have four services down here,

and then we have two services upstairs

on our fourth floor cafeteria.

Each lunch period is 30 minutes long.

We probably get through the lines in about 10 minutes.

We'll come back here. I make sure all of that is good.

Do a little service check,

make sure our water fountains are clear.

We have some red trays for the kids to grab what they need

and making sure we have fork, spoons and knives.

We always post all of our menus right by the cafeteria.

Kids can come in here as they're getting water,

they can see what they're gonna have

for breakfast on a day or lunch.

All of these items are determined a month in advance.

The menu's created based on

things that I know have worked well in the past,

higher participation numbers.

All right, now that I've already

kind of done my walkthrough, I feel comfortable

with where we're at with timing and set up for lunch.

Let's just go back in and continue the R&D

[soft music]

So, this is a recipe I saw on our Brigaid Slack channel

from Alex over in New London.

So, I have some canola oil, some onions, some scallions,

garlic, and ginger, as well.

Alex told me that the kids

really liked it over in New London,

so we're gonna give it a go

and see if the kids in the Bronx like it as much.

Gabe right now is gonna be putting in the rice

that we're gonna serve with the meatballs.

And then in 20 minutes

we're actually gonna throw the meatballs in,

so the rice and the meatballs come out at the same time.

Right now I'm just getting the slurry ready.

So, slurry is just corn starch and water.

The intention of a slurry

is like you add it to the sauce slowly

and then it thickens the sauce up

and creates like a nice glaze.

So, like all of these like cooking terms

and, you know, techniques I've learned from working

in like different restaurant kitchens,

never in a school setting,

and applying them to school food

has been very pivotal and important

to the quality and success of this program.

Until recently was out in Telluride, Colorado

as an executive chef.

And I think that really prepped me for this position

because we had a lot of weddings.

Cooking at scale and being efficient,

making sure that you can plate

a hundred hot items and get it out on time.

All right, now I'm adding a little brown sugar to the mix.

But with sugar you gotta work quick

'cause you don't want it to melt and be caramel sauce.

This is gonna be a mixture of soy sauce and water.

And now I just want to bring this mixture up to a boil,

so that I can add the slurry.

That's super important.

If you don't add the slurry

while the liquid is really hot or boiling,

then it just doesn't get the consistency that you want.

So, now we just wait and let physics do its thing.

Chemistry, I don't know. Science.

Pour it in.

That's the slurry.

As I'm doing this,

I'm also kind of looking over my shoulder.

The first period already started, it's K through 2.

You can see a lot of teachers in the back right now

on the other side of the line

helping push these kids through.

Alright, so here are the meatballs.

And you're gonna be like, oh wait, hold up, wait a minute.

These are pre-made cooked meatballs.

We always try doing things

that make sense in a scalable kitchen.

If there is good quality food out there

that's already pre-made, which makes it way more efficient,

then we can also do that.

Alright, let's add the meatballs in

and let's add 20 minutes.

First period of lunch already is underway,

so I'm probably just gonna go out

and see if the kids are liking their food.

Is yours good?

Where did they get that from?

Where did they get that from? They went to the toy store.

[students speaking amongst themselves]

[soft music]

All right, so the rice is ready

and the meatballs are ready.

The rice looks good. Look at that, grain for grain.

The best way to like really cook rice at mass scale

is gonna be through a hotel pan with water.

So, we're also gonna add chopped scallion.

It's important in recipes, you know,

if we can't add like more salt,

it's like what else can we add to add some more flavor?

I'm just gonna mix the meatballs.

And it looks nice, it looks saucy.

I think each meatball is half an ounce, so giving them four,

that gives us that two ounce meat, meat alternate credit

that we need to make it a reimbursable meal.

Plating also is something that we always worry about.

You think about school food

and you think about a lunch tray with all of its squares.

That's not how kids eat outside of the cafeteria.

Showcasing that kids do eat on a regular plate

and what a portion should look like

as far as like grains, fruit, protein is super important.

Will this dish look better on a plate,

or is it gonna look really cool on a bowl?

Will it eat well?

These are all little things

that we think about and take into account.

We'll plate two ways.

And I'm gonna do like a four ounce portion

to see what it would look like for K through 8.

And then I'm gonna go

with an eight ounce portion of rice on this big plate

and see what it would look like from 9 through 12.

Mm.

Prego.

It's actually really good.

A lot of people are like,

oh, this is good food for a school.

I just think this is just good food.

So, I plated a couple now for the staff to try

and we're just gonna get their opinion.

I think it checks all the boxes. Sweet and savory.

[soft music]

So, service down here is coming to an end.

We have one more period,

but I'm gonna go check upstairs for high school.

They are gonna be going into

their second lunch period right now.

[soft music]

Shay, you good?

Yes, chef.

[soft music]

Lunch is pretty much done, K through 8.

What we do right now is we put everything in this table

and I just take account of what we have left over.

And then from there I will put it on a production record,

so we can have an accurate count

of all of our reimbursable meals to file a claim.

And this is just a nice time for like the team to regroup,

get ready for the next day, clean up.

That pretty much wraps up majority of the day.

♪ Stop in the name of love ♪

Okay.

Kids are gonna be going home soon,

which means y'all need to go home soon.

And we get to do it all over again tomorrow.

Cut.

[Persefoni claps hand]

[soft music]