For large school nutrition programs, food travels through multiple stages before it reaches a student’s tray. From receiving and storage to preparation, transportation and service, each step presents an opportunity to protect food quality and safety.
At Lodi Unified School District, Director of Nutrition Services Dr. Betty Crocker has made food safety a priority across their entire operation. With nearly 50 sites and an additional 37 locations receiving transported meals, her team has built food safety into everything from inventory organization to food transportation.
Crocker explained three practical ways school nutrition professionals can strengthen food safety throughout their operations.
1. Make Food Safety Everyone's Responsibility
Food safety shouldn’t belong to just the people working in the kitchen. In a large school nutrition operation, food may be received by warehouse employees, transported by drivers and handled by multiple teams before it reaches students.
“You’re only as good as your food safety,” said Crocker.
Crocker works to make sure everyone, including drivers and warehouse employees, understand that food safety is an important component of their job.
“When you have to transport food that is already cooked, that is a tight thread, and you’ve got to have quality equipment that the product will stack in,” said Crocker.
In order to keep food at safe temperatures from the central kitchen to each location, Crocker relies on Cam GoBoxes®. Constructed from high quality, expanded polypropylene material, Cam GoBoxes are extremely lightweight and maintain safe hot or cold temperatures when transporting food or beverages.
“My drivers come in and they take all of [the GoBoxes] and put it in their trucks… We have to be able to maintain the quality inside of the truck,” said Crocker.
“We were looking at smoothies and soup…and that was something that Cambro helped us out with. They had the inserts inside of their [Cam GoBoxes] so that we could begin to do that.”
When everyone is educated about how food safety is their responsibility, you’re able to create a culture where employees understand how their individual role contributes to protecting food. Whether they’re cooking meals in the kitchen or loading a truck for delivery, each employee supports the food safety process.
2. Build FIFO Into Your Storage System
Food safety isn’t only about the temperature of food, it’s also about how food is stored and rotated.
Crocker considers FIFO (first in, first out) the foundation of food safety when it comes to inventory management. A well-organized storage system gives employees the space and accessibility they need to rotate products when new shipments arrive.
“[Cambro’s] track shelving allows us that breathing space in our inventory so that we can rotate our product. When we receive a shipment, they can easily rotate [everything],” said Crocker.
Cambro’s High Density Shelving System (also called track shelving) can give operators up to 30 to 40% more storage! Designed with stationary starter units anchored to a raised rail system, mobile units glide easily in between for easy access and space optimization.
The district also uses Cambro’s Ultimate #10 Can Rack, a system with FIFO built-in, allowing cans to roll forward as they’re used.
“I believe that Cambro has been incredibly intentional on everything that they have put together because [the can rack] supports that FIFO method,” said Crocker.
Additionally, in multiple LUSD kitchens, Cambro’s mobile Camshelving® makes inventory more accessible by allowing employees to move shelving units in and out of storage areas, including walk-ins—something metal shelving rarely affords.
“You can roll the [mobile shelving units] out of the walk-ins, load them up and then roll them back in. In the middle of production, they can do the same thing; they can roll an entire shelf out. So, that changes the mindset of how you view a walk-in; a walk-in traditionally would have shelves that you do not remove,” said Crocker.
“In the middle of the pandemic, there was not a shelf that I did not move. We went from serving one meal at a time to serving groceries, and so we had to get everything on wheels and get them out and learn how to integrate that concept inside of what we do.”
3. Choose Equipment That Supports Safe Serving
It’s no secret that salad bars are prevalent in schools, but for Crocker, they’re indispensable.
”We just use these [Cambro] salad bars in such unique ways. I can’t even speak highly enough of it,” said Crocker.
Cambro salad bars provide a dedicated, organized space for serving fresh food while helping school nutrition teams maintain a consistent setup across locations. Crocker uses salad bars differently depending on the school level; elementary schools use them more traditionally for produce and other items that aren’t part of the entrée, while middle and high schools use them as “flavor stations” to complement the meal being served.
In schools without production kitchens, Crocker utilizes salad bars to offer fresh food to every student while maintaining a consistent approach to how food is presented and served.
“Salad bars are beautiful. It’s all about presentation. I view them as a blank marketing canvas,” said Crocker.
For their new campaign, “Keep it Fresh and Focused,” Crocker and her team created signage to decorate the salad bar and get the students excited to eat food that supports their education.
Food Safety in Your School
School nutrition programs must look beyond individual food safety tasks and consider the systems that support them. When you’re feeding students every day, food safety isn’t just another to-do item on the list, it’s a responsibility built into every step of the process. For more info on the food safety aspects of these and other Cambro solutions, connect with your local Cambro rep.
