What It Really Takes to Change School Food w/ Felix Grego

Changing school food isn’t just about better ingredients—it’s about rethinking the entire system.

In this episode of Culinary 360, Felix Grego shares what it actually takes to improve K-12 food programs while managing the realities of scale, staffing, and operations. From moving away from processed meals to building menus that better reflect student populations, this conversation focuses on what’s practical—not just ideal.

When you’re feeding hundreds of students daily, even small changes have a big impact. Felix breaks down where schools can push forward, where they’re constrained, and what needs to shift to create meaningful progress.

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Robert Simmelink
Director of Culinary Services — Phoenix, Arizona
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Ryan Devereaux
Corporate Chef — Kent, Washington
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Paul Schutt
Corporate Chef — Denver, Colorado
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👨‍🍳 DISCLOSURE: 

Views expressed in the Culinary 360 Podcast are individual opinions and they do not represent the employers of each host or guest, or the firm with which each host or guest is associated. Our podcasts are for educational and informational purposes only and should not be deemed or viewed as advice or recommendations.

Transcript

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Some school districts may just get a lot of processed food, and that's what they're serving on the plates. And I'm not a firm believer of that. I mean, kids can get a home email even if you're serving 500 meals, right? Even if it's at least a couple of, entrees or whatever it may be on a, on a monthly basis or a weekly basis or daily basis, and so, another area that that the initiatives in what we try to do is culturally acceptable foods. Right. You know, what are the kids eating at home? What what are they, like, eating, and how can we incorporate that in our menus? Right. Are we doing enchiladas? It's a big, you know, Mexican, Spanish cultural foods that are in our region. But at the same time, then maybe try and bring some new stuff in to. Well, welcome to another episode of the culinary 360 podcast. I'm excited to have you here. I'm one of your host, Chef Robert, and I'm Chef Ryan, and today we're really excited to have Felix, Gago from the Rio Rancho School District, which is just outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and I met Felix about a year ago when he came into Phoenix for our tour de schools. And he's just really passionate about school food service. He's the executive director of student nutrition for Rio Rancho. But he's got a really cool background where he actually was a teacher for a while. Plus, he, also was a coach for track and basketball within the districts that he worked. So excited to hear about all this from Felix himself and Felix. Welcome to the culinary 360 podcast. Yeah. Thanks, Ryan and Robert, I appreciate you, inviting me to come out and share some of, the good work and stuff that we do here at, Rio Rancho Public Schools. So look forward to having some good conversations and talk a little bit about what we do. Yeah, this all started about a year ago. You actually came to Phoenix because we were doing the tour de schools where we, take a take directors from, the southwest around to some of the Phoenix area schools and see some of the different things that they're doing with equipment and surgeries and, you know, talking about throughput and participation and, you know, the different unique things that they're doing. And you and I got talking and you were telling me about some of the really cool things at the high school, and that you've got a actually a working farm there, I think, with both produce and animals, if I'm remembering correctly. Okay, maybe. Yeah. Let our computer listeners know a little bit more about that, because that was really cool. Yeah, sure. So, yeah, again, we went out to Phoenix and, you know, we did, you know, get the opportunity to take a look at some of the, the Arizona districts and some of the good things that they do, in particular with some of the equipment, that they had. And so, over the course of the last couple years, what we've done is really, enhanced, you know, our combines, our tilt skillets, a lot of our equipment to ensure that, you know, our, our kitchen staff have, you know, really good resources. And so, Robert and I, we're having a good conversation. And so here in New Mexico, the public education department oversees the national school lunch program here in New Mexico. Implement a farm to school type. It's called a New Mexico grown grant. And so with that being said, districts are able to apply and we're able to, get access with, with, you know, local farmers and ranchers, throughout, you know, New Mexico. And we're able to, purchase some of their local, produce, and, or their meats, from our ranchers. And so, there's a couple of partners that we have here in the Rio Grande Valley. So, those of you that are not, you know, do not know kind of the New Mexico landscape, the Rio Grande River runs kind of down the middle of New Mexico, and and it's one of the largest rivers. Not very big, but, there's a lot of farmers and ranchers that, that do a lot of agriculture and things of that nature. And so we have Wagner Farms, we, we purchase, chili from, from Wagner Farms. And then, you know, we put in some produce. And then we also have, we partnered with, Silver Leaf, which is a, again, another farmer. His name's Alon. Alon does not only farming, produce, but he also has, hydroponic. Okay. Greenhouse. That's cool. Which is pretty cool, man. And so he does, you know, butter lettuce. He does mixed greens. And so we partner with him and we try and get a delivery of, you know, some of his fresh product, to our high schools in particular. And we utilize that for our apps. Some of our, lettuce, salads, mixed salads. We do like a buffalo chicken salad, a Caesar salad. And with that being said, some of that meat we, we, work with USDA, kind of to, to showcase some of our product. And so our Caesar salad and as well as our carnitas tacos, we want for innovative scratch, for those items, this last year. So, yeah, we, we do a lot of partner stuff. Again, getting that fresh, fresh produce, produce to some of our, our students is, is is definitely a plus. Yeah. I just think farm to table cooking now for schools especially is just so important for kids, especially to kind of learn more about products to that are coming into the school and nutrition for them, kind of things like that. Speaking of which, can we take a step back? Don't just kind of let our viewers know a little bit about you and exactly what you do. Yeah, of course. Yeah, sometimes I jumped a little too far. It Robert Lojas go deep dive into weekly meeting conversation. With that, that definitely helped the viewers for sure. So my name is Felix Vago. I'm the executive director here at Rio Rancho Public Schools. Student nutrition department. And so my primary responsibility is feed our students in the district. We have approximately 21 school sites, about 16,000 students. So it's a rather large operation. Cool thing is, all of our kitchens or our school sites have a kitchen, so we don't really satellite really food much to our students. So they get things right out of the oven. So right on the lines, nice steam wells and things of that nature. And so, I've been here three years. Prior to coming to the district, I was a deputy director for public education department. And we oversaw the whole state for the national school lunch program. So, you know, I worked, directly with other districts. Now I'm on the district level, to ensure that they're operating the national school lunch, program in compliance and make sure that they're, they're meeting all the standards that they're supposed to be doing. So I did that for about ten years, and then I was an educator prior to that, taught business and math. So that's a short but sweet version of myself, I guess, all over the place with the schools. Yeah. You've done, like a little bit of everything. Like a Swiss Army knife of the school districts. Yeah, like I like to. I like to consider myself pretty diverse in multiple areas. And and it's important to me, I mean, that our students are our future, right? And so we want to ensure that they get that good, healthy foundation, right. They're eating at schools and they're able to perform well in the classroom. So, I do pride myself and and doing that. That's awesome. That's really cool. Yeah. You were also, track and basketball coach, too, right? Yeah, yeah. So, like, you're everything you need. And. Yes, it is. Absolutely. Yeah. We have the, the New Mexico State basketball championships this week, so. Wow. Looking at some scores. And I was able to go to a couple games in the last couple nights and, and kind of check them out. But yeah, I taught, junior varsity track and field, jumps and, and, and, and sprints and then, middle school basketball, a little bit of high school basketball. So I enjoy, you know, working with the kids also. So it's fun to see them excel. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. We're we have, the Final Fours here in Phoenix this year. Which is going to be pretty cool. We got a lot of people coming into town for that and ignite. Ignite does a march madness thing. So I'm flying into, Denver, the headquarters, next week and, doing a bunch of food for the people who are coming in and. Oh, really? Numbers and picking. Yeah, picking their teams and all that stuff for the for the final for that, the ignite sponsors. Yeah. I'm going to be making a lot of food. Yeah. You are just serving a lot of, you know. Out of the kitchen. I didn't get the invite on now. And I know I'm from Renaissance Fair. Yeah, let's he's a he's a pretty good chef there. Yeah. Well, you are welcome to come to Denver and, participate. Is that. That's in a couple weeks I think. Well, we're going to pick number. Everybody's going to come to Denver and pick numbers next week. And then, it's the first weekend of April is the Final Four game downtown here in Phoenix. So so that that's ironic. I think I will be there, during that time frame, coming into town for 29th through the second. Okay. We have our spring break here. So I was going to take the family out to Phoenix and. Okay, enjoy the nice weather. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, let me know. Maybe we can hook up somewhere or something, but. Yeah. So yeah, because the stadiums downtown and, that's, that's where the game will be. So yeah, that weekend, it's going to be a little little nuts downtown. So, you know, you either want to be in that or you want to stay away from that. I don't know a little bit of both. Yeah. When the spring training start in Arizona. Two. Robert. That already started I think it was last week that started. You guys are going to be really busy in Arizona thing. Yeah. And, I'm trying to put together a, industry day at, the Diablo Stadium, which is Anaheim, or I guess it's the California Angels now. It's literally one mile from the off from the kitchen here. So it's like you can just come here, tailgate and walk over there and, you know, walk back because then you don't have to fight the parking and all that kind of stuff. So but yeah, awesome. And it's going to be brutal this, this coming week for all the, all the people who are coming into town for the games because we're having super, unseasonably seasonally hot weather, it's going to be over 100. And so it's going to be breaking records. We shouldn't even hit 100 until May. And it's March and we're hitting 100. Nice. It's snowing in Seattle right now. That's why I'm here loving living that. That's pretty interesting. The way the way the weather's kind of panned out. Even in New Mexico. We typically, you know, northern part of New Mexico, we get a decent amount of snow and we haven't got very much. Yeah, we got it all for you. We got it. We got a. Yeah. Is that where you're at, Ryan. Yeah, yeah I'm up in up in Washington. Nice. Yeah. I think they're, the actor conference is up there. Mid April I think so American commodity Distribution Association. Yeah. And so USDA supplements, you know, the some of the food costs for school districts. And then we work with big manufacturers, you know, like your Tyson's and the big guys to do a lot of the processing for the chicken and things of that nature. So looking forward to that conference. It's usually a really good conference to attend. Very, very good sessions, very diverse. I'd be interested. What kind of what do they talk about at those sessions then? So it's a lot of like, how you can incorporate some processed stuff. But I also do like a speed scratch type cooking and. Oh, and things of that nature, you know, how you can take. And so the big ones is like your, your cheese products, right? Your, chicken, your beef, you know, and how you can turn your entitlement into actual product that you can utilize in your meals, like, you know, hamburger patties and chicken patties and things of that nature. You know, different type of, you know, meats for your stir fries or your or your pastas and things of that nature. So, yeah, it's a great program and it really helps districts with, with, keeping that food cost a little lower. Just to ensure that you can still have a little bit of revenue to purchase good equipment for, you know, kitchens, you know. Yeah. Or or work with the farmers and, yeah, I was going to say, speaking of food cost, is it help working with local farmers more than getting products in from like big places like Cisco or something like that? Well, so it does help. I mean, there's there's there's a couple of aspects to that, right. You know, versus, for instance, the silver leaf lettuce that we get, it's literally probably two and a half miles down the road. Yeah. The logistics are much better, right. And then you have I'm able to have that direct relation with the, with the farmers and say, I want butter lettuce is the, the lettuce or these are the products that I would like. This is what's going to be on my menu. And then they're able to kind of meet your needs versus, you know, you work with your larger, distributors and, and, and companies, obviously they produce, you know, based on what their market analysis is and what the supply and demand is. Right? Definitely. And then you don't get that, logistical cost working with farmers. And so it always out. Right? I mean, obviously, if you're going to get something organic, the cost of the, the, you know, the lettuce may be a little bit more, but then at the end of the day, your logistics are a little less. So it kind of balances out, you know. Yeah. The carbon footprint goes down like all that stuff. Go with it. But yeah, definitely. And but but I mean the overall quality, right is going to be much better if it was picked yesterday and then a week ago. Right. Yeah. So I mean, there's pros and cons to all of it. But we really I really enjoy working with the farmers. One of the things that we do is we get back. Right. And we have that relationship to. So we're giving back, state funds back into the state rather than maybe those funds going out of state. And so, helping local, you know, small, small manpower farmers, you know, and they have their families, they have their costs. And so it's a win win. I enjoy it, it's good. How do you promote that local with the students so that the students feel like they're I guess I would I mean, if I was going to school and I was finding out that for this lettuce or this meat or whatever's coming from, you know, maybe, maybe I even know the kids or the grandkids of the farmer, you know, I'd I'd want to know about that being the student. Are you promoting that within the school that this is coming from local and we're working with these people, and this is why it tastes so good. And really educating the kids more on that, because I know that so many, so many times I hear younger kids, they think they don't even know that a chicken really runs around a farm. They just think it it's that thing in that plastic tray with the paper, with the plastic wrap over it. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, that's a really good question. I mean, we really do, try and market you know, our product as much as possible. One of the things that we do on the month of October is we do like a New Mexico, New Mexico grown. It's a New Mexico grown month in October for New Mexico. We do one particular week where we get, a lawns and we get, you know, our red dots. So we utilize red doc. We get a lot of meat from them C4 farms, a lot of meat from those guys. And then like, Wagner, Wagner Farms, we get a lot of watermelon in that during that time frame, which is great because, water, bunch of watermelon. And we'll have staff make, you know, watermelon juice, and then we'll cut fresh watermelon, at one of our high schools, Diane from Wagner Farms was able to come up and help serve watermelon to the corn. Okay, we have pictures. And we were able to talk a little bit about, you know, where it comes from, right? Yeah. Corrales and Corrales. Corrales farms. You do realize that it's literally three miles down the way and they're like, oh, wow, this is amazing. And and you know, the of the watermelon is delicious. And then we also did one at Rio Rancho High School where we had, one of our cooks or chefs, was able to fry up some meat, for the kids right in front of them. And the owner from Red Hawk Farms actually brought us some fresh meat in. And it was nice because that day, the day before, they picked some fresh apples from their orchard also. Oh very cool. You know, up with a bunch of, fresh apples and, and, you know, we're able to give little samples of the, of the diced beef to the students, and they're able to kind of understand all of these guys are in Belen, which is, you know, only 45 miles down the road. And so we try to do a lot of marketing events on that. I've done a couple of presentations over at, a couple of our elementary schools, kind of the importance of eating healthy, nutritious foods, healthy fresh fruit and vegetables. We we also offer the USDA Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, which is like a supplemental program. Okay. And we were able to do is give them, unique fruits and vegetables. Right. And it's kind of like a snack in the afternoon for them. And then we give them an educational piece and we talk. Well, this jujube is from here in here. And so when we have fresh local stuff, we're able to talk about that. One of the, one of the sessions that I did do, we had just ordered some, fresh green peppers. And so we're able to give them samples as I was talking to them. Hey, this is where these pepper peppers are coming from. And did you know in your salad bars, you get fresh, grown vegetables from New Mexico. And so we're able to kind of talk about those types of things. But, we try to market as much as we possibly can, just so the students do recognize that, and then they can go home and talk to their mom and dad about it, or grandpa and grandma. And then definitely, you know, hopefully that sparks their interest to go to farmers markets and things of that nature. Yeah. So do so I'm guessing staffing in the schools for the cooks and chefs that you do have in there. Is it pretty since you are doing a lot of farm to table, do you like run classes with them or like do you kind of hired different of the outlook of, more knife skills and things like that. Do you know what I'm kind of saying compared to of like, yeah, yeah. No, definitely. I mean, there's a lot of like food and safety, trainings that we're required to do, obviously. You know, based on regulations and the programs that we're on. But, there are some knife skills and things of that nature that we do offer, for some of our cooks and some of our, our people that, staff our kitchens. You know, there's, there's conferences like Student Nutrition Association and Institute of Child Nutrition. They offer a lot of similar classes that you can either do online or if you go to the state conference, you can go and, you know, they they for instance, they they'll do like, a fruit carving class. And so people can go in and they can carve some through and make, you know, really cool things. And then then, you know, we judge them and they'll get prizes and things of that nature. So there's, there are a lot of resources, for not only our district staff, but staff in New Mexico in general and clear costs kind of the United States is finding those resources. Yeah. Is is important. Yeah. I work with the, w SDA out here in Washington and do like to add our agriculture department, but don't do cooking classes. In the kitchen here for lunch, ladies. And how to, like, sanitize a cutting board. Right. And knife skills and do this and this and this and like, we'll cook a meal together here and stuff like that. And it's, it's really cool to see like 25 lunch ladies in here. And they're all just like, this is freaking amazing. Like they're having like such a good time. Like, like maybe some of them. I've never juliann an onion before, you know, like and they're doing it and they're just, like, having such a blast. And then it's just like they go back to the schools more excited of, like, why aren't we doing more of this here? Like, let's get more fresh food in here. Let's work with farmers and get better products and stuff for the kids. And it's just cool to see them light up like that. Yeah, you get them out of the box, right? And they start thinking out of the box. It's not just school setting, right? It gets them thinking about the culinary arts. Piece our Department of Agriculture and, and Public Education, they put on similar things like that. They just did one, I think, I think in December at the Hispanic Cultural Center, or Native American Cultural Center, I think it was. And they have a kitchen there and they are able to make meals. It's nice. Yeah, I really enjoy that stuff. Yeah. I think that a lot of people don't take advantage of some of the resources that are out there. Maybe they just either haven't thought about it or just weren't put, I don't know, I feel that, you know, as chefs, we we love to give back all the time and educate and teach and things like that. So, you know, an example kind of like what you guys were just talking about. I had a district here in the Valley contacted me. They, they had been here for something, I don't know, a while ago. And so Alhambra contacted me and they're like, hey, could we do a event in your kitchen to get our staff out of their kitchens to make it a team building type thing? And would you teach them some of the basics of knife skills and cuts and those things like you were talking about, right. And proper sanitation, proper setting up a, a station, you know, the things that we learned when we were in culinary school and got out of culinary school and some of these, you know, and some of these food dudes and lunch ladies, they don't have a culinary background, but they're passionate about the students are passionate about the food, yet no one's really pulled them aside and showed them the proper way to do something. They've just had to learn on their own. And there might be tips and tricks where, hey, you know, this is a little bit quicker, this a little bit easier. You know, this is this is the way to do this. So I'm going to do that class. And I've already had I just casually mentioned it to two other districts, recently that I just happened to bump into and they're like, oh my God, can we do this too? And I'm like, hell yeah, you know, come on. And the more the merrier, you know? Let's let's have some fun. Let's get back. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's just so, so I guess we're going to New Mexico now and doing this there too. I know I'm there. All right. You know, my mind's spinning. I'm like, hey, Ryan, what do you got going on? Notice he goes to Ryan and not me. Yeah. Robert. Let's go. We got to come out. I've been trying to get, I've been trying to get Robert to come out the last couple of months, but he's a busy guy, so, I know, I know, you guys are busy, but getting getting your guys's expertise. Yeah, into the schools and getting that knowledge for for our staff is very, very valuable. Again, they start thinking outside the box. Right. And there's those ideas that, you know, between a chef or a kitchen staff person that they can, you know, just run across. Right? I mean, as professionals, we all come together and we're like, oh, I didn't I didn't ever think about that. Robert. That's a good idea. And it really helps it it helps people grow. I mean, in the food industry in general, I know when I go to conferences, you know, larger conferences, they do a lot of, like, chefs cook, like student nutrition Association, which is the national conference. A lot of awesome chefs go and there they'll spice up, lunch there. It's served to students. And who says that? You know, our students can get those special dishes, right. And so that's one of the things we try and expand to, one of the areas. So we have universal health, universal healthy school meals, initiatives. So that's basically says all students can now get a free meal, whether you're free, reduced or paid. Right. And oh that's it. Yeah. And so one of the initiatives that that they do there is is, is scratch cooking. So it was one of their requirements that you have to do 50% or greater scratch cooking. And so a lot of the times some of these, you know, some school districts may just get a lot of processed food, and that's what they're serving on the plates. And I'm not a firm believer of that. I mean, kids can get a home email even if you're serving 500 meals, right? Even if it's at least a couple, entrees or whatever it may be on a, on a monthly basis or a weekly basis or daily basis. And so, another area that that the initiatives in what we try to do is culturally acceptable foods. Right. You know, what are the kids eating at home? What do they like eating, and how can we incorporate that in our menus? Right. Are we doing enchiladas? It's a big, you know, Mexican, Spanish cultural, foods that are in our region. But at the same time, then maybe try and bring some new stuff in to the kids, like new stuff so soon? A lot of the things that we're doing here in New Mexico, not only in New Mexico, but in particular in my school district. And so what we try and do, that's awesome. Now, something that you had mentioned was you started talking about some of the different things that you're getting from the farmers. And I guess based on me, I just never really thought about it. I was like, all you think about is chilis and hatch chilies, of course, from New Mexico, because that's what you hear and that's what's marketed so heavy. And but I'm like, you know, you're talking about the watermelons and the apples, and it all makes sense to me now, but I just hadn't thought about that. And yes, you have a lot of different biodiversity, or growing climates because, yeah, there are flat areas. There is desert, there is mountains. There's I mean, New Mexico's kind of kind of unique. What are maybe some of the more unique foods that are grown and or fruits or vegetables that are grown in, I mean, New Mexico, that we wouldn't think of it variety. Right. And you can't get away from the green red chili, that's for sure. But, yeah. Yeah. Not the crazy Christmas, right? They call it Christmas when you mix the red and green chili sauce. Okay. Correct. Yeah. I can't wait to have the debate with you. Who's better, Colorado or New Mexico? Oh, you know, how is the no brainer? But I want, you know, if you come to New Mexico, I think we put green chili and almost every. We can put green chili and pretty much anything we cook. Right. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, you with New Mexico, I mean, it is it is, you know, as you get further down south, I mean, you know this, Robert, I mean, even in Arizona, I mean, you have to be resourceful of your water and water is valuable. And so that as I was talking about, that's like we didn't get a lot of snow. Therefore, our runoffs are going to be good. And so all that impacts our farmers and our food supply. But you got to think around the box like Alonzo. So relief man, I mean, yeah, he he got out of the box and he has a awesome hydroponic, lettuce system. And, I mean, he produces a significant amount of food out of that. And I think that's an area where I think people are really starting, to to excel right across the nation because we're coming across these weather conditions that are impacting our, our food, resources. And so, I'll give you a good example now, I mean, we just, got a hydro, tower, for one of our elementary schools, one of the ones that I talked. Yeah, I saw one of those set of school, district down, outside of Tucson. Yeah, they're they're really cool. And, I mean, you can put your seeds in, right? And then it has a hydro system and it's pretty self-sustainable. And for us, that was pretty important because, again, we've had school gardens. And what happens when you leave in the summer? I was watching the school garden. Right. And and then you have wind and you're not getting rain. And so you worked really hard to get it going and then it doesn't sustain itself. So rather, you know, these hydroponic systems are a little bit more sustainable. They still need a lot of love and they can be a little costly. But, you know, we really got to start looking in that direction, that's for sure. Yeah. And that's a lot less water than, watering a field. So. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I was up in Flagstaff the other day and there was only snow on the peaks, and there wasn't any snow below the peaks. So yeah, it's been same here. Has been a bad weather, bad year for runoff. Yeah. We'll see how it goes on. We won't know until the summer comes, I think. Yeah, sure. You guys are referencing the 100 degrees in March. It's pretty. Yeah. Pretty intense. Pretty crazy. Yeah, yeah. The California's got all the power. So they're going to take all the all the water. And Washington has all the, has all the water and snow now. So yeah we'll try to give you guys some maybe hopefully. Yeah. We're, we're, we're still trying to convince Texas and Colorado for that one. Yeah. It use a little bit more of that water I think. So when you were talking about, working with the farms, that reminded me of something, I was talking or the director, from Tucson Unified was at an event in my kitchen, sponsored by. It's it's a nonprofit called the Blue Watermelon. Project. And they, work with districts. They have a shelf in the garden program where they teach different, different recipes based on different products that you can get here in Arizona. But she was talking. And Tucson Unified has an a really great program where they are working with farmers in the area up to 90 miles away. And they're getting, something like 15 or 20% of their produce locally. And but they said that the hardest part was the transportation getting it from the farm to the school. And have you experienced those same kind of challenges? And what how did you get around that or what are you doing? Yeah, I mean, so so I've seen that and so so I'm not necessarily I'm fortunate because I'm kind of centered, you know, right now kind of north northwest of Albuquerque. Right. And and so in our general area again, that Rio Grande Valley, we're right on the Rio Grande Valley. There's a lot of farmers and there's there's more growers and farmers here, and ranchers, than there are in other locations of New Mexico versus like south east, right south west. If you're further down south or even further north, new Mexico is a pretty decent sized state. And so when I was with public education, for the time that I was there, that was the biggest problem that they had. And it was primarily for those smaller districts. Right. Okay. They didn't have they weren't there are feeding that many students, you know, let's just say, you know, it was a district of 200. Right? And so to get a delivery right of watermelons, I mean, they're not going to need a couple of pallets of watermelons, right. Maybe, half a pound of watermelons or. Yeah, or whatever it may be. Right. And the farmers would share that costs with them. So then their cost for whatever they were ordering was higher. Okay. And so logistically, you know, we've the state's been working with the like a lot of food hubs and things of that nature. To see if they can be that median and try and ship some of that product out to them. And then another big thing is, working with other districts that are in your region. Okay. To show that course. Hey, Debbie from Burnley. Oh, are you going to need watermelons next week also? Well, maybe we can work together and get a couple of orders from those growers, and then we can share some costs on that. So. But it's that's a big factor. I mean, Arizona's one of them, right. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. I guess you had to have to think about like what kind of trucks that they would use to to go back and forth with them. And I mean staffing too with the farmers, like, yeah, all sorts of things of like all that stuff kind of ties into kind of lucky that you have one just like two miles down the road, which is really sad, specially for your, your lettuce there. But I even when I was in California, I was when I was in restaurants and stuff like that, we always really wanted to work with local farmers, but one of the big things was how they gave us their produce was so difficult because we couldn't accept it, because it came in like a car and we're like, we don't know how long it's been your car. I can't accept it. Like I'm sorry. Like things like that were just such a, like a tight thing with that type of stuff. So working around that must be kind of difficult. Sometimes it's a, it's a big deal. And now that you're talking about that, I was just thinking about, so we work with the Department of Agriculture here in New Mexico, obviously. And then, you know, the state public education department, they oversee the national school lunch program. But, over the course of the last two years, that relationship has gotten a lot stronger. And so that communication as far as and where I'm going with this is, is your house standards right for the product? Right. You know, getting that that the getting certifications for you being able to sell to, you know, public schools, is a little bit of an obstacle for these farmers sometimes too. And so and then the knowledge. Right. And then, and then it gets into financials and procurement and, and contracts. And so getting these farmers and ranchers on board and all working together is pretty critical. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Do you think you'll you as you as you keep going with the farm to table cooking and things like that. Do you think you'll try to work with, more farmers out in New Mexico in different areas and stuff? We, I, I do try and expand kind of where I get product. I like to spread the wealth, so to speak. Right. Spread the wealth. Help me help you. You know, you give me things that, you know, maybe we're not serving on our menus and things are nature. And so, I'm, I'm looking at redoing my procurement for my district because obviously there's a threshold that I can't spend a certain amount over unless they, you know, they put a bid in. So when I did do a bid, I didn't get as many, bids or farmers ranchers that I wanted to so I can expand, you know, that, that, that market for our district. And so one of the things that I'm trying to do is in and, I'm in the process of doing it, putting out a new contract to accept new bids, to try to get more farmers, on our bid and try and get them used. And I know that again, public education and Department of Agriculture, they're really expanding the program to try and get more products. That's another one, right? Not only farmers, but products. It used to be very specific to produce. But now it's expanded into the meats and then it's expanding more into like different products like dry products. Right. Like like puzzle air harmony and. Okay. And, you know, your powdered chilies and your honeys and your mushrooms and things of that nature. So the program is growing here significantly. Good. That's nice. That's nice. So I kind of have a question with like your lunch menu or breakfast menu or things like that. Do you change it like every week or is it kind of like a set in place thing? I know you mentioned like you have really good salads and things like that and do chicken wrap. Do you kind of play and like try to write different menus every once in a while or you kind of just keep it kind of steady throughout? It's both I think, I think, obviously all y'all know, I mean, being chefs, right? You may, think that this item that you put on the menu is fabulous, right? Maybe, maybe your clientele or your customers didn't have the same palette as you. And so, it's it's, trial and error, I think. I think cooking, I mean, you we do have things in our menu, especially for just kids love. And they'll eat it every day. I mean, it's the basics, right? And, you know, stuff like that. Right. But it's also incorporating again, trying, you know, we we just started like a walking Frito pie, right, with the Frito bag. And that flies off the shelf right. Right. You know, the participation is high on that. So obviously those items that are high demand, we keep things that the kids aren't looking at and where you're seeing it getting thrown in the trash, we're going to try and remove those things. Kind of back to your question is, we usually run a, four week cycle. Okay. So we cycle out menus every four weeks, and then, you know, a few times a year, two, three, four times a year, we'll go in and look at the menus and then we'll change them up. For instance, our, our person Amy does the menus for our district. She just did the menus for next year. So, you know, obviously we have product and you got to prep for next year. You know, we have commodities, right? I talked about those types of products that USDA will get us. You know, our meats, our cheeses, all those different type of products. We have a certain amount of entitlement. So we got a forecast and we got to say we're going to use 10,000 pounds of beef. We're going to use this amount of cheese. And so she's she's working on the menus now. And so we're prepping for for next year for sure. Nice. That's good I always forget because like our job starts like January 1st and then the schools like they in like June and like yeah. So when you're like starting next year I'm like dang that is like a really long time for next year. But I'm like, never mind. It's like a few months away. Yeah, I it's interesting. You know we're up we're in middle of March already. I'm like, I know, it was just the beginning of the year, a couple weeks ago, right. Yeah. It's like January lasted forever. February went by really fast. Except the last week in February was the longest week ever, for some reason. And now it's already like the end of March. It's like, where did this all go to? So there are only 28 days in February. Yeah, it's still but I don't understand why that that that last week lasted longer than January. Yeah. And we got what what is it? 31 days in March. It's kind of interesting right now. Shortest month to the longest month. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We. When summer rolls around, do you do a summer feeding program? We do? Yeah, we do some summer. Summer feeding. So we'll, Well, obviously feed all our students that are doing, like, our summer programs. Right in June. Okay. You know, whether it be recreation or education or just depends of kids need summer school or it's an arts program or whatever it may be. Right. We'll we'll run those and then, we usually open up a but we, we, we go to parks, and we give out, you know, our, our a breakfast and lunch to transport kids in the summer. It's important that. Yeah. Sometimes I mean you I'll face facts, right. Sometimes the meals don't emails that a kindergartner at school right near breakfast, some lunch. And then they go home and they're eating ramen noodles, and it's not healthy, nutritious stuff, you know, or whatever it may be. Or parents are working late, and so there's a frozen pizza and they gotta make a frozen pizza. And so we still try and do kind of homey meals, right. Obviously. You know, the park stuff that we got to take, we take in our cameras and coolers and we sort of try and serve as many, hide items as we possibly can, but anything else or even just a family being at a park. Right. And they want to snap instead of spending $30, McDonald's, they can get a few, yeah, few meals for their kiddos there. So we do. We usually do about 8 or 9 parks. Oh that's excellent. That's really. And we run it straight through usually usually June through like the end last week of July. And then school usually starts here at the beginning August. So fast and furious for sure. Always working. Yeah, yeah. Is there any sort of tie in with the students going to the farms, field trips or anything with the Department of AG or anything like that? Sure. I mean, there's a couple programs we're trying to get, more of our program, our, teachers and principals on board to try and go some of our farms. And and they do go, I know that, I have a buddy that runs another farm right here in Corvallis, and he was telling me that he had a middle school go down there and sometimes like, Stem courses. Right. Science, technology. So, okay, the Steam labs, Stem classes, they'll go down and they'll they'll kind of show them, you know, how things work for kids, just like hydroponics or even just traditional farming. Yeah. I, I would like to see that happen a little bit more here. And we've been working on that, one of the areas that we've been kind of doing, we just started is, like cooking with kids, right? But we call it, roving chef cart. Okay, so we purchased two roving chef carts, and they're really cool. They have, like, a monitor. Right. And they have a camera where you can see. I'm sure you guys. Have you guys seen those before? No, I haven't. The sun's cool, so I'll send you some pictures. Yeah, well, you guys can check them out. Yeah. But long story short, we're trying to implement those in our in our elementaries to where the kids can go, and they can learn about washing their hands, sanitizing and handling food, and they can go in, in the kitchen and kind of see the operation behind the scenes. Cool. And then they can cook. For instance, we did, they cooked some pizzas, right. And they decorated their pizzas and we did that. So, we're looking at trying to expand that, but it goes back to kind of what you're saying. Right, right. Labor costs. We gotta keep our labor costs in gear. And so it's a balance for sure. Okay. Yeah. So that cart is it just are you just seeing like product right there or is there an induction plate on there or does this go in front of an oven or so. There's a conduction plate where you can chef it up. Right. And, and you can you can heat everything up. And then underneath there's, yeah, like a refrigerator and then there's a oh, wow. Off to the side. Oh, wow. So I mean, let's say you wanted to do, like, an omelet bar. Yeah, you could do an omelet bar utilizing it. Which is pretty cool. Yeah. That's that's what. But like that, we there's no, oven in them, so, like, okay, so we got, put their name and location and put them in the oven, and then we brought them out. Yeah. So I can take him home. Okay, cool. Very cool. Yeah. You know, we talked so much about farms and food and everything like that. We talked a little bit about your cooking equipment. Like, what do your kitchens kind of look like inside? Like you mentioned carby ovens and tilt skillets. What else do you kind of use in your kitchens right now for the farm to table cooking? Or is it kind of just basically those two things? Yeah. I mean, so some are large schools. We like the commies and the tilts because we're, we're serving, you know, upwards of a thousand kids a day, you know, a lunch and a breakfast. And so our larger schools, we we go with those tilts and commies. A lot of our elementary schools, you know, obviously have the ranges. And, because we're still doing about 4 or 500 meals in a lot of our kitchens, we utilize a lot of oven, we bake a lot of stuff for, for our elementaries. And so, we just kind of enhance the majority of our when I came in, we had a lot of hot equipment, and it was a little bit of, grant monies that I was able to get for the district. And we, put new, convection ovens, double deckers, these double decker ovens. So almost all of our kitchens now have four, nice. So double stacks. And then, you know, we utilize, you know, our immersion blenders and, and the traditional stuff. Right. Yeah, lots of sheet pans, lots of, lots of shotgun pans, you know, things of that nature. Know. And then, all of our schools have salad bars. So, we have kind of the Campbell salad bars, and then we just got, some grant monies out of Dairy Macs to promote kind of breakfast. And so we got some nice stainless steel salad bars that we just got for our elementaries, just enhancing as much as we possibly can. I think we're going to put a couple more combos in to some of our middle schools now. And so, I mean, again, you're as good as some of your resources, right? And in your, in your brain being innovative and being a good chef, you guys know how that goes. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Where do you see the future of school food service in general going? But def definitely where is the future of Rio Ranchos school meal program going? So I mean, again, I think I think at this point we have a solid foundation as far as staffing. We have a foundation of, you know, where we getting our product, you know, utilizing pharmacy school. I think all of our facilities are been modified and a lot of our resources have have done better. But in our district in particular, I like to see breakfast participation increase. And, breakfast is a little bit difficult because everybody's in a rush in the mornings, right? Right. Parents are running late and trying to get those kids into school early enough to try and eat. And so what we've been trying to do is a lot of grab, though, a lot of breakfast stuff. But again, it's, it's it's a little sometimes it can be a little difficult doing the breakfast items from scratch, as you know, from breakfast to, to a lunch. And so it's that balance and increasing breakfast participation, I would say as far as like a, a state, I think New Mexico does pretty well because we have universal free meals. And so our, our participations have increased significantly for lunch. But again, historically across the nation, the struggle for national school lunch program is breakfast participation. It's unfortunately and you see the data, right? I mean, 40% of your kids are eating breakfast. What happens to the rest of the 60? Well, they're probably hungry until they go to lunch or they grab a, Nutri-Grain bar or something on the way out. So, we're really trying to expand that here. Looking in those types of things. And then, we'll see on the national level, it's very interesting on what's happening. Right? We had all the administration, we have new administration. And so historically they've been reducing, sodium and sugar content from their menu items. And so you take a lot of flavor out of the product. It becomes a little bit healthier. I mean, in some instances, but maybe not all. But now I think with the new administration, I think, you know, they're trying to change certain things up. I would like to see them increase like, fruit portion sizes, veggie for portion sizes and proteins from the protein, I mean, for ounces for, you know, six ounces for a kid that's 260 pounds. It plays football. You know, sometimes that's not enough or not. Yeah, not enough at all. And so, I, I would hope that USDA would take those things into consideration and, and, you know, maybe increase reimbursements for school districts so they can have a little bit more money to purchase organic products. Yeah. Okay. You know, things that we do, you know, we run a decent budget, so we're able to try and purchase those extra things. And then our state does supplement some monies to do New Mexico grown stuff. So there's a lot of facets. A lot of people don't realize how complex, you know, school lunches. It's it's very ex, you know, there's a lot of compliance behind it. And there's you're serving a lot of kids, right? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, yeah. You know, a lot of people don't think about this, but I've had our other directors, you know, reference this, that you are the biggest restaurant chain in the state, you know, or in your town, you know, because you are feeding more people than the rest than than a restaurant does. So, you know, you're you are you are that that restaurant chain. Yeah. For sure. It's it's a lot and it's very rewarding. Now I mean, you go go home at the end of the day in our district probably served about 10,500 launches a day and yeah, 6000 breakfasts minimum. So, you can say you know, I helped contribute to that amount of kids, right? That's. Yeah. Eating out. You're feeding your whole community basically, or half, half the community if you think about it. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. So to be proud of, like I said, you're the Swiss Army knife of the school district out there, I feel like. Thanks, man. I got a little bit. I have a little bit of everything. Yeah, I always I was trying to spice it up a little bit, man. I just found out that's kind of the way I see it, you know? Never bored, never bored, never dull day. That's for. Yeah. Spice it up with those chilies. Yeah, that's pretty good. I was actually telling a time my wife. So Santa Fe is really, big on food, right. And tourism now. And they have some really good restaurants out there. And I miss one of the Spanish restaurants out there. The chose us pretty good out there. Oh. Nice Italian. Robert, I'm like, man, you got to come up here sometime and I'll take you up to Santa Fe and we could do some food tasting. You could get some ideas. Yeah, but, yeah, I mean, New Mexico's cool, man. You guys got to come down with some. Definitely. Yeah. A number of years ago when, before I moved to Phoenix, my wife and I took a trip to, Albuquerque and Santa Fe and spent most of the time in Santa Fe, and. Oh, my God, you you you could stumble in anywhere. And it was amazing food. You you couldn't find bad food in Santa Fe. It was so crazy. And it just smells so good from the wood burning to all the food that's cooking all the time, that it's just like, wow. And and people are so into their food up there in Santa Fe. It's just like, you know, there you find a local and you ask where to eat. And they just get so pleased and they just rattle off all these places and you're just like, oh, yeah, okay. I had this one one. Just run. You'll probably get about five, right? Yeah. Right. And I'm like, are you trying to get a drink? Are you trying to get, munch breakfast. Yeah. Nah. Yeah, yeah. That's good. Yeah. And and the, the New Mexico red sauce. Oh, man. It's just, chili. It's it's. Yeah. And it's so it's trying to explain it to people. When I came back, it's like you're eating dirt, but in a good way. It's so earthy. It's so earthy. I mean, it's just, like, complex and earthy. It's just. Yeah. And the texture. Yeah. I mean, and then it has he. Right. And you're like, all right, it's going on. But it's not spicy, but it's rich. It gets you in the back of your throat and it's just, oh man, I guess it's kind of like when if you go to the Yucatan, you have like a, a mole from there or something like that. It's just like you know. Right. It's. Yeah. So different getting me hungry. Robert. It's almost that time. Yeah. I'm hungry now too. So we gotta wrap this up. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I haven't been there yet. But, there's a, New Mexican restaurant here in Phoenix that, Chef Christopher, he's, like, the most famous celebrity chef here in town. He that is, he recommends this place as his go to. So I've got to get over there and and try it and see what's, see what it's all about. And, you know, get my my new Mexican. Nice. You know, red sauce. Phil. There you go. Very nice. Yeah, well, I think we should wrap it up here. This is a good one. So nice meeting you and learning exactly how passionate you are for this, district with the schools in the farming, I love it. Yeah, thanks. I appreciate it, guys. Like I said, the welcomes always, come visit, Rancho Public Schools and New Mexico have some red shirts. I really love that about it. Come out and visit. Man. It was nice to see you, Robert. Nice to meet you, Ryan. I see you, too. Yeah. You know, putting this this on for us and hopefully some, some people got some valuable, informative information. Oh. Definitely our talk. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Thank you very much, man. Have a great rest of your day. Sounds good guys. Thank you. Felix, I thought that was so much fun meeting Felix. It was awesome to hear about how passionate he was with the farm to school cooking and how passionate he was and how, cozy is to the farms in the farmers that he uses, which I think is really cool. Yeah, that's what you know, his passion when he was down here for the tour to schools, you know, it just was it it just spilled out. And he got everybody else passionate about that. I mean, his enthusiasm just ran wild, and he just loved to talk about his program and what they're doing. And, you know, we've heard we've heard some similar things about this. You know, like I mentioned, you know, Tucson's doing a program. Katie, over there at Saint Brain, Scott got something going on. So it, you know, the the farm to student movement really is taking hold. And it's great to see that because, you know, I've been cooking for a long time. And I remember when I first got into the industry, there wasn't the farm to table movement. Everything came from the broad backpacks. Yeah. And even if you're doing scratch cooking, it was still coming from the broad layer. Wasn't coming from a farmer. And, you know, as that changed and evolved over the years, it's it's so great that that, you know, that became the movement. And that's now the standard in a restaurant. And to see this, you know, becoming now a movement with schools, it's going to be great. You know, now we're educating the the little ones, the kiddos, and you know, what is what what foods should taste like and what you know, what what is local and what is seasonal and all of that, you know, you know, we've talked about this with other people. You know, you don't want a tomato in January. No, no, a tomato is tomato. Well, here, here in Arizona we can get tomatoes in March. But, you know, in other places. Yeah. It's you want it when it, when it tastes good and season. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. That was a good one. I enjoyed him quite a bit. Like they said, it's like the Swiss army of that district. It feels like the Swiss Army knife district. He's he's done a little bit of everything. Yeah. Yeah. Good person having that in that role. Do you feel like spinning today Ryan I can't with my kitchen right now. Yeah okay. Well then give it then give us some more of your enthusiastic without spinning eggs. Thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. Don't forget to click the subscribe button.