Cafeteria staff members, Glenda Bright and Sara Morrow, prepare another meal for the students. Photo by: Brandon Heims

By Brandon Heims

Bosco sticks, chicken nuggets and quesadillas are just a few of the many lunches that are served to the students in the cafeteria. The hardworking staff of the cafeteria is the key ingredient to prepare and serve these meals. Mrs. Williams has been working in the cafeteria for sixteen years but in only two years, she became café manager. Her day is “busy,” she said, with a schedule of coming in around 5:30 to 6 in the morning and leaving at 1:30 to 2. Her schedule includes creating the menus, listing the ingredients of each meal and figuring out the servings for a student, who might be diabetic. She also creates, edits and analyzes a nutritional chart, which goes online for all community schools to see. On some days, Mrs. Williams’s schedule consists of catering for any meetings.

Along with Mrs. Williams, there are twelve other cafeteria staff, who help prepare the meals throughout the school year. Glenda Bright is in her seventh year, who comes into work around 6 to 6:30 and starts off her day by helping with breakfast. “Everyday is different,” Mrs. Bright said. Around 9:30, Sara Morrow, in her fifth year, arrives to work and begins to help with preparing lunches.

Additionally, the PHS lunch staff meets with several other schools in the community, working together to create menus for each month of the school year. “All schools get together [and] all go by the same government guidelines,” Mrs. Williams said. “The schools use the same type of foods, [since] they buy from the same distributors, but [serve it up] in a different way,” she states. Mrs. Williams is always trying to figure out new ideas for students. She will go to food shows and poll students at the school on what they think about new recipes or what they believe would be good to eat. One example is that they served a new hamburger, which students seemed to like. She believes that pizza and chicken and mashed potatoes are students’ favorite foods for lunch, and for breakfast, biscuits and gravy seemed to be students’ favorite. Mrs. Bright said that she likes when the cafeteria receives new foods to eat, for example the barbecue chicken quesadilla.

Lunch has been changed this year. Ms. Williams says the new system gives more fruits and veggies and better types of grains, which students seem to enjoy. The system offers a lot more food, giving students more options and variety.  Mrs. Bright believes that students do not like the new system because it took away ingredients, which may have seemed to make the food taste better. She also believes that this new system benefits students, who might be vegetarian, since there is the new salad bar.