Our school’s lunch ladies serve more than 500 students everyday and make sure all the food always tastes good. Most students know the lunch ladies for serving their meals, but they do more than just hand out food. The kitchen staff, made up of only four people, arrive early in the morning to prepare food for the students. They arrive before breakfast to set everything up for the first meal of the day. After that, they start preparing for lunch by around 9:40. By lunchtime they already have been working for long but they continue cooking throughout the day to keep food fresh.
Lunch is split into six periods, and the staff batch cooks for each one. They divide their roles and rotate to fairly share their responsibilities. Some serve food on the line, some handle the cooking while serving food on the line. According to Ellen Dew, the kitchen manager, they batch cook throughout the day to make sure the food stays fresh each period. She said, “We batch cook each period, so the food is fresh every period.” The busiest time of the day was the sixth lunch period, with more than a hundred people going through the line. Even with all of the food they serve, they still rotate positions every day, some work as the cashier, some on the serving line, or in the kitchen.
The lunch ladies also have to adjust to unexpected situations. Field trips, for example, change the number of students eating on the day. Ellen Dew said, “The majority of the time, we don’t know if they have a field trip.” So most of the time, it’s just a surprise. She said, “But when we do, they usually ask for a different lunch, like a bagged lunch.” The staff has to stay flexible for preparing food based on the school’s needs. The new federal guidelines have also changed the way the food is prepared. Ellen Dew said, “We can’t have salt like we used to; we have to meet the federal guidelines.” Despite these rules, the staff continues working to make meals for students.
After the last lunch is served, the lunch ladies still have some more work to do. Cleaning up the kitchen takes them about an hour to do. They finish cleaning around 2:15. Along with cooking and serving, Ellen also manages the paperwork and stays late if another staff member is out. “Sometimes I stay over when I shouldn’t,” she said. She does this to keep the kitchen running, and without her work, lunch wouldn’t run nearly as smoothly. The work she does behind the counter is just as important as what happens in the cafeteria.
