From Heat-and-Serve to “Jedi-Level” Scratch Cooking: A Kitchen Transformation Story

In this episode, we hang out with Greg Christian to explore how scratch cooking, kitchen “swarming,” and a whole lot of heart can transform cafeterias from stressed-out heat-and-serve hubs into joyful, efficient, good-food machines. Greg shares stories from the front lines of school kitchen makeovers, why cutting broccoli together can fix more than just lunch, and how real leadership (the kind that listens, laughs, and lets people shine) is the secret ingredient to lasting change. Pull up a tray! This one’s equal parts wisdom, wonder, and wildly good food.

Transcript

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From Heat-and-Serve to “Jedi-Level” Scratch Cooking: A Kitchen Transformation Story

In this episode, we hang out with Greg Christian to explore how scratch cooking, kitchen “swarming,” and a whole lot of heart can transform cafeterias from stressed-out heat-and-serve hubs into joyful, efficient, good-food machines. Greg shares stories from the front lines of school kitchen makeovers, why cutting broccoli together can fix more than just lunch, and how real leadership (the kind that listens, laughs, and lets people shine) is the secret ingredient to lasting change. Pull up a tray! This one’s equal parts wisdom, wonder, and wildly good food.

Transcript

00:00:05 Michelle

Welcome to the farm to school podcast where you will hear stories of how youth thrive and farmers prosper when we learn how to grow, cook and eat delicious, nutritious local foods and schools across the country…

00:00:16 Rick

…And the world. Hi, everybody. We're your hosts. I'm Rick

00:00:18 Michelle

And I’m Michelle  

00:00:20 Rick

And so today we have a.. always a special guest, but today we have someone from what we call the Chicago-Land area and is a consultant and is Mr. Greg Christian. Hello, Greg. Welcome to the show.

00:00:36 Greg Christian

Thanks for having me.

00:00:37 Rick

So, Greg, tell us about yourself. What do you do? When I was introduced to you, I was told you were the Obi Wan Kenobi of the sustainable food movement, which I'm a huge Star Wars geek, so I know what that means. But that's kind of a lofty, lofty thing. What is it you do there in Chicago?

00:01:02 Greg Christian

Yeah, and that was a writer that, you know, pinned that only 20 years ago. So just to be clear with everyone, that was not my idea and it just it made it into print. And so people definitely have fun with making fun with that with, you know. Yeah.

00:01:19 Rick

OK, so you are not a Jedi or and you're not one with the Force?

00:01:22 Michelle

I don't know. I think that you're one with the sustainable food force.

00:01:25 Rick

OK, there you go.

00:01:26 Greg Christian

I'm definitely one with the force though I guess so.

00:01:30 Michelle

Yes, yes.

00:01:32 Greg Christian

There's a couple of things we do. You know, one is we have a food service company in Chicago, a kitchen that makes thousands and thousands of meals a day for preschool kids. And it's 92 1/2 percent scratch cooking. We're at 52% minimum local.

00:01:44 Michelle

Wow.

00:01:54 Rick

That's very specific numbers. Wow.

00:01:56 Greg Christian

Yeah. And we're at 30 meals per labor hour. So it's this high zero waste for 20 years. And so we divert like over 98% of our waste from the landfill. And So what that means is that you know everything that we bring out into the world and the consulting side, which we mostly work in schools. We'd love to work in public schools for any schools that we do. You know, we're in jails and hospitals and all long term living. But our sweet spot is the schools and we bring those schools. And big kitchens and processed food to scratch cooking local food in their budget and. And so we used the like our learning laboratory in Chicago that makes thousands and thousands of meals a day, five days a week, 52 weeks out of the year and we practice, you know, just hyper efficiency, we practice 0 waste and we practice leadership and cross training and you know all these things that then we bring out into the world and that's what we do.

00:03:12 Rick

The first thing that that hit me that made me realize you knew what you were talking about, were these stats you threw out. You know, they're very specific stats about scratch cooking and 30 meals per labor hour. I was a food service director before this. And boy howdy, I know what that term is. And for those of you who don't know, I mean that's how you determine if you're efficient in your kitchen. If you can do it, at least to break even or whatever. Labor is everything these days. So like, you divide how many meals you serve, by how many labor hours you have? So I just kind of wanted to throw that out there.

00:03:51 Michelle

Yeah, and usually I'm the one who's passionate about data. This is hilarious. But Greg, what I really want to know is like, what is the food we all love to eat? Like, can you, like, give us a sense of what a menu would look like, like a day?

00:04:07 Rick

When you say we, you mean the kids?

00:04:09 Michelle

Right. Yeah. Me and Rick want to know, and I'm sure all the listeners want to know. Like, what does a meal look like when you're making these meals?

00:04:10 Michelle

I meant us.

00:04:18 Greg Christian

That's so great. Yeah, so. We'll begin on the consulting side, finding out what the people in that school or that hospital or that neighborhood or that part of the country you don't want to eat and so every one of our we're in 17 kitchens now in Illinois. We've done tons and tons of kitchens all across North America and every menu. Because you know what's eating Buffalo, NY is a little bit different than what the in Puerto Rico, which is a little different than what date in Hawaii is a little different than what the kids in central Illinois.

00:04:59 Rick

I think Buffalo they eat wings, right?

00:05:01 Michelle

I grew up in Rochester, we eat wings and pizza dipped in bleu cheese. I still do this bleu cheese dressing.

00:05:11 Greg Christian

Super fun. Yeah. And you know, that's fine. And so we find out what people want to eat.

00:05:12 Michelle

OK, sorry to derail you.

00:05:20 Greg Christian

You know, and then we see if they're recipes and then we help them if they know what we come up with them and then we help them make it. And so I can just tell you what we're like, what we're feeding kids in our Chicago kitchen and just to backtrack a little bit, Rick, you know the, the reason I, I threw out that meals per labor hour, is because most schools are up between like 9 and you know 14 or 16 meals per labor hour, and that's serving in general mostly processed heat and serve tan frozen stuff and So what we do on the consulting side is. And make sure that they stay.  The thing at the meals per labor hours, they head towards fresh and local and they can do it. And so they don't need any more labor. It's really important people think it's more work. It's really more organization and more leadership and more efficiencies. And I can go into that, you know, down the road on this on this podcast.

00:06:24 Rick

Yeah. Tell us about that, because that's what we hear. The frightening thing is to transition from that heat and serve with the labor you have…

00:06:34 Michelle

So you tapped into the force!

00:06:35 Rick

Yeah, Like, what are some steps you go through to achieve that, I guess?

00:06:36 Michelle

And you make this happen.

00:06:44 Greg Christian

Yeah, we inherited the European style of “Kitchen-ness” and the European style of “Kitchenness” and America then does is, is it's a siloed approach. So in in the cafeteria, in the school, in your neighborhood, there's a salad bar person and there's people that like heat up the entrees and then serve them and there's maybe a dishwasher if it's a bigger house. And then there's, you know the fruit person, and sometimes they help each other, but in general they work in silos and so you bring a different “kitchenness.” I learned this working in Chinese restaurants in New York City in the early 80s. Where first of all, we teach kitchens. It was hard to learn that, like, let's eliminate stations. So we cook, one comes in and he or she normally stands and sets up a cutting board here. Let's just kind of stop all that. This is hard to do and then we like to get tables and wheels so the kitchen design changes with production and then we teach swarming and which means when it's time to tan cotton bread, the chicken tenders. And three-step breading process. Let's all do that and then let's all shift over to the broccoli and then let's all shift over to, you know, cutting up the oranges or whatever. And so this is a totally different way of running kitchens. And it's scary because what we're like kind of stopping or breaking away from is this way of kitchen this, that's hundreds and hundreds of years old. And this is the hardest part for people and so the leaders of these kitchens that don't have this, I'll just, you know embodied don't have this feeling in their body it's very it's easy to be very resistant. Then you'll see it was sliding Starbucks calls it sliding. Which is where you'll see the headset person at the window slide over and make a couple drinks. When the drink persons behind and then slide back to the window. So in another step in this forming is that this whole idea of clean as you go is kind of an ancient idea to me. And here's what I mean. So if you if you need four people to cut and then grab the chicken tenders because you go to school of you know 400, and it's going to take the entree person if you stay in your silos all day, all day, right. But it's going to take four people 45 minutes. So what you do is you put somebody in charge of this in this example of chicken, homemade chicken fingers. The one person sets up the station and maybe even gets the chicken and sets up the cutting boards while everyone is like over in the bakery area getting the blueberry muffins made and panned up into the blueberry muffin pans. You know things or one person makes the mix, but then two other people slide over and three people scoop the blueberries pops in the oven. Then all three of them slide over to the chicken tender station. That's all set up. Then they knock them out.

00:10:09 Rick

It's assembly line. It's an assembly line like almost.

00:10:13 Greg Christian

One person set it up and one person's going to clean it up. So then those three people slide over after they wash their hands and they jump on the broccoli or whatever. So that if you, if you had a camera watching the kid like my Chicago kitchen, you would see people moving like a swarm of…

00:10:26 Michelle

Yeah. Swarming.

00:10:32 Rick

Wow.

00:10:33 Greg Christian

And this is how this is how kitchens don't need any more labor to be to at least hold wherever they're at with meals per labor hour. Often they can improve them because this efficiency, this teamwork, this, this heartbeat, if you will, takes a bit to get used to, but once they're used to it, then I mean we can take kitchens in a year from like zero scratch cooking. We have one right now that at the end of year one was at 92%. Scratch cooking, you know, and 30% local food and no with no more labor.

00:11:15 Michelle

This is genius.

00:11:18 Greg Christian

And so I was blessed I came up. You know, a CIA, grad. And then I worked in high end joints and ran them.

00:11:26 Michelle

Oh my gosh, Greg.

00:11:26 Greg Christian

For a lot of years. But I was lucky to have spent a couple years in the Chinese kitchen on the Upper East Side. For this guy that opened up the first Szechuan restaurant in America. David Kay, who was just a famous restaurant tour in the 80s like Super famous. And it's too long of a story of how I ended up in this kitchen with all Chinese men, you know. But I did and that's where I saw it. And I'm like, what and I. And I'm like, you're a married man, like, so if you walked into that kitchen in the in the first half of the day, you could not tell who the walk guys were, who the BBQ guy was, who the expeditor was because you were standing around a table. Everyone with a cleaver. And everybody cuts the carrots and everybody peels the garlic and everybody follows the fish and everybody pitches the and. And it's like boom, boom, boom. And then the second-half of the day, they split up into the station and so this is the thing that we bring to leadership and bring the kitchens and once they start, they end up at first when you're a little kid, you're walking down the street and there's and the older people are double-dutching on the jump rope you're like, I can't do it. It's like I can't do it. So one of the things they do, it's like Illinois-based houses is I have them come to the kitchen and just…

00:12:51 Rick

Exactly where I was going to ask you, I was thinking the same thing. There. The people would be two. They would like. This will never work in my cafeteria. I know my people. You can do it, but if you have an example and you bring people in and show them how it does it, then a light bulb can turn on.

00:13:11 Greg Christian

What people run quickly learn is that it's going to be best to cross train everybody on everything. So in the in the kitchen that I'm standing in in Chicago, I mean, I've done the thing in the office when somebody calls in sick. It doesn't skip a beat. The heart doesn't skip a beat because everybody can bake 2000 blueberry muffins. Everybody can make you know 417 1/2 lbs of chili. And the other thing that we do is we eliminate volume, brain, so volume brain.

00:13:43 Michelle

What does that mean? What's that?

00:13:47 Greg Christian

Some people, when they use cups and you know and fluid ounces and pounds I mean so everything is in weight like a professional kitchen needs to be and this really helps production.

00:13:47 Michelle

Volume, brain, yeah.

00:14:07 Rick

Standards.

00:14:07 Greg Christian

It shows what we want. It makes just the right amount of food. So in my kitchen here, if they need, you know, 272 1/4 lbs of cut up honeydew. That's all they cost. Because everyone in my kitchen in Chicago here is working with it looks like every kitchen, right? There's a cutting board. The knife and side towels and tasting spoons and salt and pepper. Everything looks the same. And then there's one more thing. Everybody has a scale in front of them all day. So what happens in in these kitchens? In general, is food waste has been normalized and it's normally overproduction is not weighed. And so you know, if they make 32 extra burgers, they write, you know, 32 each and then make too many muffins or saw too many muffins. Anyway, there's less. There's not a lot of power in the inches. So, another word to explain this..  everything is weighed and everything is weighed throughout the process. So when the weight brain gets solidified and people's bodies then they can make the exact right amount of food because we measure overproduction on a scale on all of our projects. OK. And the amount of overproduction that wasted food, which is normalized in our country in general, that's the money that you can use to buy more expensive ingredients right there.

00:15:47 Rick

Yeah. Well, I think you've hit on the two things that if you're a food service manager that in order to be to break even or be profitable or whatever, it's meals per labor hour and food cost, you just hit them both the food waste and the normalization. I get that. I get that totally. Yeah. So what would you think would be a way is, is there a secret way to help scale this across the country, this, this, this thing, I mean you are a consultant that helps make this happen on a case by case basis, but what are the steps America or the world or whatever needs to do to do this more often and make it more mainstream?

00:16:39 Greg Christian

Yeah, I’ll do the best I can do to answer that question. There's a couple things. One is to make a policy related to scratch cooking and local food, so you know, 50% scratch cooking by 20-30 in all the public institutional kitchens and I made that number up and you know 30%, not counting fluid milk, you know, because fluid milk, you can play games with fluid milk and bread and then you know, all of a sudden you're at 25% local and like, not reasonably, you know, so excluding, you know, I would exclude at a minimum fluid milk and come up with a goal. And then the second thing.. so that's like setting goals, right?

00:17:23 Michelle

And we did. I'm just gonna let you know in the state of Oregon, we as is 2025 when we're recording, but we just statewide announced a goal of 33% goal for scratch or local. 

00:17:43 Greg Christian

Including milk?

00:17:49 Michelle

No. But keep going cause now cause now we're like now, what do we do? We're really counting on you, Greg, help us out. What are we going to do?

00:17:56 Greg Christian

Yeah, I would love to help you out. So what I've been doing when, when, when COVID hit and we all of a sudden couldn't be in kitchens because we weren't the necessary people. I immediately pivoted with my team to making videos. And so we have probably 100 videos. How to is to do this whole process and So what we did in those videos is we took 20 years of our practicing this… like making money practicing this. And now those are all built and we're going to make more next year we want to do we have to do a whole series on leadership. What we find is that at the end of the day this is about people, and leading these kitchens that are mostly heat and serve. But then to motivate and inspire the team that doesn't have the skills to really cook, that's another level of leadership that a lot of people need help with. And so I think that it's going to be through videos and this year 2026, we're going to start to practice this by having schools do a four day summer training. And then and then the and then a once a month phone call with us and we're not going to ever go to their kitchen. And we're gonna tell the equipment they need and you want to make a menu and then watch the videos and do it and we think that people can do this just through the videos because we have some of our older customers like from years ago that are we gave the videos for free because we wanted them to be them all practice, you know what works and doesn't work and they're using the videos to train their new people and they love them. Because, you know that's where our world is growing. You know, people are like on their phones and watching videos. So. And I think that there should be or could be a stipend to paying people to watch the videos on their own time and as a group, that's what I think the solution is. Because you know, we're ready to scale and we need to do this. You know, the food manufacturers, I honor them, but they run these kitchens. And then we need to take the kitchens back and get fresh food. Then we need to build local food systems. And the way you build local food systems. And I would say it for 20 years is you know, through institutional kitchens and so it kind of and it hits, it hits a couple of sweet spots. And if we can build pallets in kids malls so they crave nutrient dense food. I mean, I was 65 when I was a kid. It was my mom's job to build the palette in my mouth. So I wanted to eat the salad and vegetables. And I'm not seeing a lot of parents aren't still doing that a lot are, but some are working 2 jobs. It's really easy to just pick up fast food on the way home. And so, I think the schools are partially responsible these days to build pallets and kids malls by the time they graduate from grammar school and high school. You know, they, they know the vegetable reason they want to eat it.

00:21:36 Michelle

I'm just blown away by this whole conversation. Actually, Greg is phenomenal. The work you've all done and what you have figured out. And one of the things we hear from folks around the country is like when you said leadership. A lot of times it goes to the Superintendent, and the principal and I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your experience in working with yeah, school boards and administrative leadership?

00:21:59 Rick

School board.

00:22:04 Michelle

I'm just curious of your experiences.

00:22:08 Greg Christian

Most of our work has come from super superintendents and school boards. So these are first adopters, right? And these are people that really are tired of seeing all the all the process, all the food in the garbage can. And then the kids either hungry or crashing from too many carbs or acting out because it's all processed food. Right. And so I've dealt with, I mean with like first adopters and some. But I've also done assessment on school leadership and they the reason that the Superintendent, the head of school, the board did it is because like you know the moms or the kids storm the board meeting and said you got to change the food and you know, and so we focus, we want them to be a part of it and kind of expect them to and here's why, because if there's a problem in the kitchen like 20 years ago when I started this work in Chicago Public Schools. You know, I used to be a fancy caterer. Nightmare. Danny was one of my customers and he opened the door in Chicago Public Schools and I went in, you know, lacking humility. I mean, in the beginning of my career in this consulting world, I left bodies and when I realized like, I got to be nice all the time. 

00:23:41 Michelle

Can you tell Rick?

00:23:42 Rick

That, yeah, I'm still trying to figure that one out.

00:23:46 Greg Christian

Rick and really. What happened? The big turn happened like 10 years ago. I was working in Hawaii on the Big Island. The Lieutenant governor brought us out there to do 7 kitchens and three islands. And the lady, it was all women in this kitchen and up in Harvey. And they, the third day, they all circled around me and they said we want to talk to Mike. OK, great. I want to talk to you. And they want you, you have to say please and thank you in our kitchen.

00:24:13 Rick

Oh oh.

00:24:15 Greg Christian

And I went home and cried. I called my girlfriend. Like, I don't think I can do it. She can do it. I like. I don't think I can do it anyway. So we don't do bodies anymore. And so when there's an issue, sometimes there's an issue in the kitchen, we will be able to go right to leadership and say we need help in the kitchen Superintendent or at a board and there there's we have a resistant person. We know they can do it. They secretly don't think they can do it, and so they're with servicing. Is this immunity to change? We have empathy for that we, really do, I mean and so but we also know that if we're in the kitchen. And the boss like, oh, project right now, five schools in the district, and the Superintendent wants nothing to do with the program. And so we're forging ahead in year one, the first service director was, like, really hurt. Yeah, but the Superintendent doesn't come to any meetings. And then now we're in year 2. We're just going to do this and we're going to, we're going to be proud or we're going to shine. And whether the Superintendent wants to know what's happening in her kitchens or not.

00:25:36 Rick

Sometimes  my experience it's been like they don't know.  And I'm Speaking of school boards, superintendents.  They don't know what they want until you show them what it is. So in other words, I've been at the helm of different operations, different school districts where it the public is screaming for local food and school gardens and everything. And it's a big thing. Another is it's not that they don't value that. It's that there's so many there might have other pressing issues like graduation rates, and they don't think food is a part of that. So It's my job in Oregon here with Michelle's what we've done for the last 15 years, is try to make that more mainstream. And like we've encouraged people like if it's important to you.. like folks did you know that every school district in in America you can go to your school board meeting and you find out when the meetings are and you'll get 2 minutes to speak. And if enough parents say local food and healthy food and scratch cooking is so important to me, they'll just go oh, then they keep hearing that keep hearing that. And then me as a food service director, I always brought my school board folks to lunch at one of my elementary schools and showed them some of the scratch dishes we've made and things like that. But and we invited them to ribbon cuttings for school gardens, and if they don't know about that, they're not going to advocate for it. But that's. But that's the thing. You know, some people, communities really care and some it's just that they don't know about it, I guess, right.

00:27:29 Greg Christian

Yeah. What I do what I try to do with the with leadership and the board is get them into the kitchen and come for a meal, meet the cooks, have the cooks tell them their names. They all know the football coaches name. All of them, you know and say, this is Betty and she's the number three person in the cafeteria. She's been here 20 years. She's, you know, Betty…tell me a little bit more about yourself. All my grandkids are in the school now, but I worked at this school and my kids went to the school and all my grandkids. Ohh said you know this human piece like I can't stress it enough. There's we have all this data and I have tons of data and recipes and processes and good ideas. But at the end of the day it's about people and often, the work initially is about. But, getting the heart of the house, that cafeteria respected more people complain always on all the projects that they're not respected. But then if you look at the food they're serving, it's like it would be hard to respect you like we're, you know, we're doing a project at the juvenile detention center here in Chicago and it's there was 250 young men that you know, just haven't had the right guidance and they have fallen down in the kitchen, started all complaining about like we're not respected and I'm like I didn't say this but I want to say Have you looked at what you're serving for once? You know, and so. It's a dance, you know, YouTube between getting them respect, getting them, seeing and then getting them to take some risks and do things that are initially uncomfortable, like cutting up a bunch of broccoli in when they're used to frozen broccoli. Like, that's a thing.

00:29:24 Michelle

That was brilliant actually. I'm trying to think what I want to say in part because, exactly what you hit on my sister in upstate New York was a principal for 20 years and that's what her focus was. She's like. Well, I want the kids to achieve academically. She didn't make the nutrition connection, but she made the respect connection. And that that created the environment in in, in her theory of change. But I, you know, we're having coffee with you this morning, and I'm just really struck by your story and what you're sharing with us because I wholeheartedly believe we all do the best we can with what we have. You know, the information or the tools and that, you know, humans are, are wired for progress.

00:30:11 Greg Christian

Totally.

00:30:16 Michelle

And so many schools, so many districts, and now more than ever, want to be serving better food. And we've just been stuck. And you know, then I've been doing this for more than 25 years and hearing you talk is like the first time I see a break in a specific bottleneck that we haven't been able to crack. 

00:30:39 Greg Christian

You know, when I work on and I have people around me that are young and smart and fast and computer and I'm very lucky for that. They're and they're patient with me. You know, I'm like I've got like paper on my desk with paper clips, right. They don't even know what a paper clip is. But you know, I teach them like we're walking into the kitchen and new kitchen and we have a bunch of wounded people. And here's what I mean, I'm not talking about what happened in their childhood or in their marriage. I'm talking about watching kids that they love throw your food away every day. And imagine, Rick, if you worked for me and you handed in, they gave you homework and you had to work. And then here's the report. Right. Here's the rest work. And I took it and I threw it away. Every time you handed something in, I threw it away. Now for 20 years, Rick. But you don't leave. You stay. Because for some reason. Then you say it right and it's probably, you know, these people said the love for the kids, the deep love, right. And so we're walking in to people that don't have a lot of tools. We're often the kids don't know their names. The Superintendent born is never even in their kitchen. They don't know their names and the people you go to church with their grandkids and their neighbors are throwing their food. And So what we do is we that's why we try to like pee in a few layers away. This is straight out of Steve Saffron and Logan's book of the Three laws of performance, you know, I mean, I've studied systems change with, you know, you can study. You can write all the policies you want. You can study system syncing a lot like I have. That's all juicy stuff, right? But we walk in and somebody's making 12 bucks an hour, and they've been there 20 years and somebody's throwing their food with a lot of people throwing their food. A lot of their food, right. Their hearts are hurts. They don't open the meeting with that. But their hearts are hurt. So now how do we do a little? You know, I'm not going to say so mad at healing. I'm not gonna bring the table and put hands on people, but how do we free them up a little bit of the often shame that they have their job is to feed kids the foods in the garbage. And they're you know, they're crossed. So we get them gently to see what they want different things.  Like let's say you have a great meatloaf recipe or vegan pizza recipe or whatever it is, and everybody that you service who loves it but you know how to make it for 500? Well, we know that part. You just have to dream and then once they make their first meal, that first blueberry muffin, that first, you know, whatever people in Oregon, right. And it's not in the garbage and maybe it takes four or five times before it's not in the garbage. And then there's a buzz. The school smells great, and now there's some pride. You know, sneaking in and they're like, waiting and hope. And so we don't talk a lot about this because we don't want people to be defensive around. So, this piece about people and the other strong piece is that like the leadership piece, it's just weak they you know I'm not going to say that like almost anyone can run a processed food kitchen. But the difference is I can take you for like, a Michelin three-star Kitchen. And I can take you to a kitchen where they're serving almost all processed food. The energy is very different.

00:34:46 Rick

There you go. Yes.

00:34:47 Greg Christian

And so, you know, getting this accountability, getting this like future based language, this is from, you know, Werner Erhard and his friends, you know, making promises, giving your word, being account. Well, I declare, I promise, right? I request this is different language. That's mostly. I'm sure you use that kind of language, Rick. People weren't like flopping around in your kitchens. Everybody was. I'll use the term on purpose, but in general, you don't have to be on purpose. You're at 8 meals per labor. Or it's simple food and you can gossip with the custodian for an hour, but you know, and so bringing this piece in can't just start with this accountability leadership, you know stuff I mean, we start with it, but we kind of ease in by getting them to dream big first.

00:35:46 Rick

This has been really fun. It's been really enlightening and really good conversation and a lot of food for thought. And of course, but it's good food for thought for everybody to like to see what direction we should keep continuing to strive for in our in our schools. I really appreciate it.

00:36:07 Greg Christian

Thanks so much to you too.

00:36:09 Rick

Well, everybody, we'd like to thank everybody for so much for listening today!

00:36:13 Michelle

Farm to school was written, directed and produced by Rick Sherman and Michelle Markesteyn, with production support from LeAnn Locker and Lauren Toby of Oregon State University. This podcast was made possible in part by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

00:36:28 Rick

The content and ideas of the Farm to School podcast does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Oregon State University or the United States Department of Agriculture. The USDA and Oregon State University are equal opportunity providers and employers.

00:36:42 Michelle

You want to learn more about Farm to school? Who doesn't? Check out our other episodes, show notes, contact information and links that Rick is so good at putting in to like things like the three laws of performance and learner Earnhardt like Greg mentioned. Future based language Greg. You taught us so much. Like really you just gave us a Masters class and you know, we're just scratching the surface. So search that up by Googling up farm to school podcast, Oregon State University.

00:37:11 Rick

And we'd love to hear from you. Stop by the website Michelle just mentioned to say hello or give us an idea for a future podcast.

00:37:17 Rick

And thanks again, Greg, for being our guest today.

00:37:20 Michelle

Can't wait to meet you in person, Greg.

00:37:23 Greg Christian

Alright, thanks. You too.