“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.” Today, Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with Chef Persefoni Vordokas, a Brigaid program chef at Dream Charter School.
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00:00Brigade is a company that hires professional chefs to work in school
00:05kitchens. We get to work with real ingredients and limit the amount of
00:09processed food that kids get on the daily basis. We serve K through 12. We're
00:13looking at upwards of 2,400 meals a day. USDA has some pretty strict guidelines
00:18so we need to fall within those restrictions and also make sure that
00:21each plate is $1.50 or less. As a program chef, it makes R&D fun and
00:26challenging. No school cook ever gets the credit that they deserve. This is
00:32probably the most fun job I've had ever. For real though.
00:39Hey, good morning. Welcome to Dream Charter Schools. My name is Percy. I'm the
00:44brigade program chef for this school. We got a lot of kids to feed so let's get
00:48going. Good morning. Good morning. Howdy. School is five stories. K through 12.
00:54About 1,200 kids and we feed all of them. A little after 7 a.m. we're gonna
00:59walk to our main kitchen so I can take a look at the prep list and get breakfast
01:04going. Kids are gonna start coming into the building at 730. It's crunch time
01:10right now. The setting is way different than a restaurant. We have three kitchens.
01:15We have two cafeterias and one prep kitchen. They're spread around three
01:19different floors in this building. This building is six stories. We occupy three.
01:24Good morning. Typically we have 11 people coming into work. Today unfortunately we
01:31had two call outs. I'm switching out some numbers based on what everyone needs to
01:35make and what we need as priority versus what we're prepping for for tomorrow. A
01:40lot of moving pieces here. We just need to make sure although someone does call
01:44out in a school kitchen, that doesn't mean that the kids are more forgiving
01:48or understanding. They all still come to school and they all still deserve and
01:51expect breakfast, lunch, and snack. So we can't be short on that.
01:58Right now I'm getting all of my numbers and cars ready for middle school breakfast. So when kids come in they grab a
02:04bagged lunch. They have the option of cereal or a turkey, bacon, egg, and cheese
02:08sandwich on a whole grain English muffin and they take it and eat it in their
02:12classrooms. So everything in a kitchen, a school kitchen, which is different from
02:15a restaurant kitchen, is pretty much counted for. We count what we served and
02:19that's how we pretty much make our money back. That's how we claim our meals. So
02:24it's really important that we have the right counts for everything starting at
02:27the shift and then at the end of the shift we make sure that we count
02:30everything again. If we miss a meal then the school program doesn't get the
02:35funding that it needs. It's a lot of counts. It's inventory every single day.
02:38Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty. Every day we're
02:42slated to serve about combined hot and cold 600 breakfasts. All right we're
02:47gonna go upstairs y'all.
02:53All right. It is a lot of heavy lifting here. A restaurant requirement is you
02:58have to be able to lift like 50 pounds. Here I'd probably say like you have to
03:02be able to lift like a hundred pounds. So it's pretty nice. It's a nice gym
03:06membership. You guys are probably wondering after seeing like that
03:08state-of-the-art cafeteria that we have why we do breakfast at the door. We did
03:12see that participation rates weren't that high and there was a lot of food
03:16waste which is something that we also need to take into account because
03:19whatever food is wasted that we don't serve we just don't get our money back.
03:25Good morning! Breakfast sandwich or cereal? Breakfast sandwich right here. I
03:30got you. So in thinking about what we serve in a school we also have to think
03:34about what the requirements are to make it a reimbursable meal. For breakfast we
03:40have four components. Juice, fruit, grain, and milk. Breakfast sandwich? You got it.
03:47There you go. Breakfast sandwich? All right have a good day. And these are my
03:51customers. Super nice. So any child that comes in late will go to the second
03:56floor cafeteria and can grab a breakfast all the way up until lunch is served. We
04:00don't deny any late kids any breakfast or punish them for being tardy. Every kid
04:05deserves food. We create a pretty safe space for them. Good morning! Breakfast
04:10sandwich or cereal?
04:17Whoo it's gonna be a good day you got the last one. They pretty much cleared me
04:21out of the hot breakfast.
04:25So when I hear that bell I know okay cool school started now I can pack up.
04:32Everyone else after this is gonna be late and I'm building some late bags.
04:36I'll count what I have and we're gonna roll downstairs and get the day started
04:41for a little R&D and for lunch. You know in a restaurant you don't have to be too
04:48mindful of all the spaces and the people that are in it while you're prepping
04:51because it's usually just like your line cooks. In a school setting you're here
04:55during the school day so you have to be really mindful of the teachers and the
04:59students that are also here and know that there's class going on.
05:06Welcome to the prep kitchen. This is gonna be the kitchen that we have on the
05:10first floor. This is where majority of the prep happens where we receive all of
05:14our deliveries. There are four walk-ins. We've labeled all of our walk-ins and
05:19have designated spots for a lot of our product so by organizing it this way we
05:24definitely streamline the process and become more efficient. Right now I'm just
05:28coming in to grab what we need for service today which is going to be the
05:36soy marinated baked chicken thighs. We have about 500 pieces to cook off so
05:42about I'd say 21 to 22 sheet trays. One second if I can't pull I can push. There
05:49you go. Just a nice easy 160 pound sled push of chickens to start your morning
05:57off. Today's meal soy marinated chicken fried rice bok choy. As soon as you come
06:02in it's like a ticking time bomb. Service starts at 1130 your line needs to be set
06:07up by 1115. Dealing with scaling and mass production it's always important to also
06:13set your station up and that's something that I teach the team and train the team
06:16on. So now that I'm on chicken I know all right once I take the chicken out
06:20what am I gonna need. It sets you up for success it makes you a little more
06:23efficient in the sense of you're not walking back and forth and you're
06:26limiting the amount of steps you take which is also preserving energy and we
06:30preach that like thinking every single step through. When we're writing a recipe
06:34how many portions is a 10 pound bag of pasta like write that down so people
06:38know. It's little things like that that I think brigade chefs really think
06:43through to set all the kitchens up for success when they're implementing
06:48scratch food. As I have six trays of chicken working I'm also gonna just take
06:53a look at what I need for my R&D which is gonna be a Mongolian meatball bowl
06:58with Mongolian sauce and then also making sure that I have what I need for
07:02the carrot slaw. Just grabbed all my stuff for the carrot slaw that we're
07:09gonna be taste testing right now. It's first time I'm making this recipe we're
07:13gonna see how it tastes. I got Gabe right here helping me out as well. Things when
07:18we've developed recipes that are really important to take note of is obviously
07:21the cost and big component are the nutritional standards and guidelines.
07:25Restricted on how much sodium we can add into a component. We're restricted on
07:29calories and saturated fat. So we're gonna start off with recipe I made right
07:35now. It's a different item every day of the month but we try giving them a
07:38variety. Now I'm adding a little lime juice I added a little bit of sesame oil
07:42prior to that. I'm also updating how many grams of everything is so then I can put
07:46it in the recipe once I scale it. So instead of them getting it in 1,000
07:50teaspoons they're actually getting it in gram measurements. I'm putting in a
07:54little ginger just five grams. Kids don't typically love carrots so I'm trying to
07:59find a different way to prepare carrots where they would actually like it and
08:03would get a higher participation on them taking the carrot. When building a
08:08recipe I look at what the cost per dish would be. If you put out in a restaurant
08:12a dish that has a high food cost you also have the luxury of elevating the
08:18price of that meal to align with your 20% food cost. In a school kitchen you're
08:24running about a 40% food cost. We get $4 and I think 69 cents per meal that we
08:30serve for lunch. So we try getting a dish that's at a dollar fifty or lower. When
08:35it comes to vegetables there's five subcategories. On a five-day week we're
08:39required to serve all of them. So you have a dark green starchy vegetable, red
08:45orange vegetable, legume, and then you have an other. Other will be like your
08:49green beans, your bok choy, cucumber, you can do bell peppers. So carrot slaw this
08:55would credit for the red orange vegetable. All of this I need to just
08:58have a month ahead when I submit my menus for the following month. R&D in a
09:02school kitchen is completely different. You know where I was before out in
09:05Telluride, Colorado I did a lot of R&D and was able to put on like specials on
09:09the menu day of and it was a lot easier because I didn't have like any
09:12nutritional restrictions or set price restrictions. It's super important that
09:17whatever we prepare we always ask the kids if they like it or not and we can
09:20also see that in the numbers. We work for them. I might love one dish but if they
09:24don't like it it serves me no purpose because then I'm not doing right by them.
09:27That needs solved. If I add in small increments I'll be within my limit. The
09:32Brigade, Founding Fathers, they created a pretty awesome template where we add
09:35all of our ingredients in it. So as I'm making recipes on the spreadsheet on the
09:40corner I can see how many calories there are for the whole recipe and then per
09:44portion. Well not only do I see like the nutritional information but I also see
09:48the cost per serving. I think a little bit of salt brought out all the other
09:53flavors so I'm gonna pack this up put it in the walk-in and then see where we're
09:57at with chicken and keep going.
10:02That's the timer for the first round of chicken. We're gonna take it out. Super
10:08important that we temp every piece and make sure that we are at 165 or higher
10:13and that there's no pink. A child's immune system is still developing so we
10:20want to make sure that everything is definitely cooked well. We are good to go.
10:26I never ate school food growing up and today I eat school food every single day.
10:31It's thoughtfully prepared food with real ingredients from scratch. The
10:36marinade for this chicken doesn't come out of a bag it's not coming out of a
10:40bottle like we're actually preparing the soy marinade giving kids opportunity to
10:44taste vegetables or flavor profiles of things that they typically wouldn't have
10:48at home or outside. I think that's really important even for like social
10:52interactions as they get older they can speak authentically about like them not
10:56liking bok choy. Right here it's really important that the amount of chicken I
11:00put in one hotel pan is consistent throughout and that is because when my
11:05high school cooks go upstairs to start serving lunch to the high school
11:08students they know how many hot portions that they need and they can actually
11:12take the accurate number of sheet trays and not leave us with less food for a K
11:18through 8. All the students do get the same meal. The portion sizes will change.
11:23You're serving a five-year-old and then you're also serving a 17 year old. I mean
11:29some of these five-year-olds slam that food and I'm like slow clap I love to
11:33see it. In a restaurant you know you have your line cooks at the end of the night
11:39telling you like oh man that was crazy we just did 200 covers and it's like
11:42they've been open for six hours. Here you're like wow we just did 700 covers
11:48in an hour and 20 minutes. Shout out to the dishwashers because we got one
11:55person doing dishes for 1,200 kids that we're eating so much love to all the
11:59dishwashers. So this right here guys is a warmer. We add a little water in right
12:03here and this keeps all of our food at 140 and higher ready for service. This
12:09keeps it out of the temperature danger zone so you know kids get hot food. It's
12:14a vital piece of equipment to every school kitchen. As soon as I take this
12:18out then it's gonna be 10 a.m. which means that the whole team is gonna come
12:22upstairs and gather and we're gonna talk about serving sizes for all the kids
12:25upstairs downstairs and what they need to work on after service.
12:31Hi guys happy Thursday. A few updates because of the weather I did get a text
12:45today from Cisco the trucks gonna be coming in tomorrow. Today's meal soy
12:49marinated chicken fried rice bok choy. We have enough bok choy for everyone to
12:53get some on their plate. Fried rice upstairs downstairs is the same it's
12:57gonna be an 8 ounce portion. Chicken is gonna be one each. Sweet all right good
13:01to go. We listen we don't judge.
13:16So it's 11 o'clock right now I'm just gonna do a little walkthrough on the
13:19line make sure that majority of the stuff is pretty much set up. The way it
13:22works is we have kids coming in on both sides so they come in we offer hot food
13:27first then they have their cold food options and then they break off in the
13:30middle. So we need to make sure all of our wells are on so we have hot water in
13:34here and the hot food stays hot and then this is all of our cold food options. If
13:38kids don't want the hot plate then they have the option of five other items. All
13:42together we have six services per day. We're gonna have four services down here
13:47and then we have two services upstairs on our fourth floor cafeteria. Each lunch
13:50period is 30 minutes long. We probably get through the lines in about 10
13:55minutes. We'll come back here I make sure all of that is good do a little service
13:59check make sure our water fountains are clear we have some red trays for the
14:03kids to grab what they need and making sure we have forks spoons and knives. We
14:07always post all of our menus right by the cafeteria. Kids can come in here as
14:11they're getting water they can see what they're gonna have for breakfast on a
14:14day or lunch. All of these items are determined a month in advance. The menus
14:18created based on things that I know have worked well in the past higher
14:23participation numbers. All right now that I've already kind of done my walkthrough
14:27I feel comfortable with where we're at with timing and set up for lunch. Let's
14:30just go back in and continue the R&D.
14:36So this is a recipe I saw on our brigade slack channel from Alex over in New
14:40London. So I have some canola oil, some onions, scallions, garlic and ginger as
14:46well. Alex told me that the kids really liked it over in New London so we're
14:52gonna give it a go and see if the kids in the Bronx like it as much. Gabe right
14:55now is gonna be putting in the rice that we're gonna serve with the meatballs and
14:59then in 20 minutes we're actually gonna throw the meatballs in so the rice and
15:01the meatballs come out at the same time. Right now I'm just getting the slurry
15:04ready. So slurry is just cornstarch and water. The intention of a slurry is like
15:09you add it to a sauce slowly and then it thickens the sauce up and creates like a
15:13nice glaze. So like all of these like cooking terms and you know techniques
15:17I've learned from working in like different restaurant kitchens never in a
15:21school setting and applying them to school food has been very pivotal and
15:25important to the quality and success of this program. Until recently was out in
15:30Telluride, Colorado as an executive chef and I think that really prepped me for
15:35this position because we had a lot of weddings. Cooking at scale and being
15:39efficient making sure that you can plate a hundred hot items and get it out
15:44on time. All right now I'm adding a little brown sugar to the mix. With sugar
15:49you got to work quick because you don't want it you don't want it to melt and be
15:52a caramel sauce. This is gonna be a mixture of soy sauce and water and now I
15:57just want to bring this mixture up to a boil so that I can add this slurry.
16:00That's super important if you don't add the slurry while the liquid is really
16:05hot or boiling then it just doesn't get the consistency that you want. So now we
16:08just wait and let physics do its thing. Chemistry, I don't know, science. Pour it in.
16:19That's the slurry. As I'm doing this I'm also kind of looking over my shoulder.
16:25The first period already started it's K through 2. You can see a lot of teachers
16:29in the back right now on the other side of the line helping push these kids
16:33through. All right so here are the meatballs and you're gonna be like oh
16:37wait hold up wait a minute these are pre-made cooked meatballs. We always try
16:43doing things that make sense in a scalable kitchen. If there is good
16:47quality food out there that's already pre-made which makes it way more
16:51efficient then we can also do that. All right let's add the meatballs in and
16:55let's add 20 minutes. First period of lunch already is underway so I'm
16:59probably just gonna go out and see if the kids are liking their food. Is yours good?
17:04Where did they get that from? They went to the toy store.
17:22All right so the rice is ready and the meatballs are ready. The rice looks good.
17:30Look at that grain for grain. The best way to like really cook rice at mass
17:35scale is gonna be through a hotel pan with water. We're also gonna add chopped
17:38scallion. It's important in recipes you know if we can't add like more salt it's
17:43like what else can we add to add some more flavor. I'm just gonna mix the
17:47meatballs and it looks nice it looks saucy. I think each meatball is half an
17:51ounce so giving them four that gives us that two ounce meat meat alternate
17:55credit that we need to make it a reimbursable meal. Plating also is
18:00something that we always worry about. You think about school food and you
18:03think about a lunch tray with all of its squares. That's not how kids eat outside
18:07of the cafeteria. Showcasing that kids do eat on a regular plate and what a
18:11portion should look like as far as like grains, fruit, protein is super important.
18:16Will this dish look better on a plate or is it gonna look really cool on a bowl?
18:20Will it eat well? These are all little things that we think about and take into
18:24account. We'll plate two ways and I'm gonna do like a four ounce portion to
18:28see what it would look like for K through 8 and then I'm gonna go with an
18:318-ounce portion of rice on this big plate and see what it looked like from
18:349 through 12.
18:38It's actually really good. A lot of people are like this is good food for a
18:44school. I just think this is just good food. So I plated a couple now for the
18:48staff to try and we're just gonna get their opinion.
18:53It's sweet and savory.
18:55So service down here is coming to an end. We have one more period but I'm gonna go
18:59check upstairs for high school. They are gonna be going into their second lunch
19:02period right now.
19:13Lunch is pretty much done. K through 8 what we do right now is we put everything
19:17in this table and I just take account of what we have left over and then from
19:22there I will put it on a production record so we can have an accurate count
19:25of all of our reimbursable meals to file a claim. And this is just a nice time for
19:29like the team to regroup, get ready for the next day, clean up. That pretty much
19:33wraps up majority of the day.
19:37Stop in the name of love.
19:41Okay. Kids are gonna be going home soon which means y'all need to go home soon
19:44and we get to do it all over again tomorrow. Cut!
19:52you