FOODSERVICE OPERATOR OF THE MONTH
needs more acid, so let’s get in a little more lemon juice.’ But you need those basics first.” That’s the core of Perkins’s and Jacob- son’s advice for other operators looking to begin or expand their scratch-made offerings: Go slow and steady not only with your rollout, but with your training for less experienced staff. “It’s easy for a director like me with a strong culinary background to come in and say: ‘Here’s the new recipe, just follow the instructions,’” Perkins says. “But when you’re working with large teams across a range of buildings, some- times with spartan equipment setups and sometimes with not that much ex- perience, that doesn’t work. They need to be supported, trained, and given the tools to execute.” GET TO KNOW MADISON MET- ROPOLITAN SCHOOL DISTRICT’S JOSH PERKINS See what’s in store for Perkins’s oper- ation, which was named FSD’s Sep- tember Foodservice Operation of the Month. Q: What is it that makes your opera- tion excel? One word: commitment. Our team is very talented, which is important—but I will say that talent can get you through only so many 12-hour days. It’s the commitment that helps you get through the challenge of all those lit- tle things that come up in a foodservice operation every single day. This is a team that is that does not flag in the face of a challenge, and at an op- eration the size of ours, they do come up. The team relies on each other, and we all have each other’s backs. When it comes to planning and execution, they’re are constantly communicating with each other: “This is where I think I’m going to run into a tough time. Can you help me with this or that? What can we do together to solve this problem?” And that’s really what gets you through, day to day.
Q: What are your goals for the operation in the coming year? We’ve only just pushed the ship into the water with school opening, so at this point our front-and-center focus is on making sure these new menu options are exe- cuted correctly with the same quality every time. Our Nuestro [Mundo Community School] pilot also helped us see the desire for more vegetarian options, so we we’ll continue to expand what’s available. We want to make sure our new menus are really inclusive and have something that makes every student say, “I want to come back here to eat.”
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QUARTERLY | Q4
PHOTO COURTESY OF MADISON METROPOLITAN SCHOOL DISTRICT
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