Plans Unveiled for New Approach to Lunches at Walpole Schools This Year

The Walpole School Committee rolled out major changes to the school lunch and nutrition program district-wide that will go into effect this coming school year, at their meeting Thursday night.

The plan calls for all food for Walpole's seven public schools to be made at one central location, at the kitchen at the high school, which will then be delivered to the other schools daily.

According to Superintendent Lincoln Lynch, the former approach of producing the food at six kitchens across sevens schools has not made the district money in three years.

“It was determined about six months ago that we needed to take serious measures to turn the program around,” said Lynch. “We have been able to create a program that we feel will improve the quality of the product and the profitability of the program immensely.”

Food Services Director Maria Hall walked through the new process at the meeting last night.

“The approach that we are taking is a model that has been demonstrated, proven and actually is very effective,” said Hall. “Sometimes we think of that as a prepackaged product. We’re not doing that. We’re doing restaurant-level quality foods going out.”

The cooking of some of the food will be expedited in their new combination ovens, which use steam and convectional heat to cook the food faster.

Hall said that a raw chicken thigh or breast could be fully cooked to the correct internal temperature in 12 minutes.

After the food is cooked it will either be put into insulated transport carts for delivery or put into a blast chiller to bring the temperature down quickly in order for it to be refrigerated and used the following day.

The food put into a blast chiller quickly lowers the temperature of the product. Blast chilling, according to Hall, ensures that when food - such as meat sauce - is stored in refrigeration that the temperature of the refrigerator remains at an optimal level.

The refrigerated food will then be reheated and put into the transport carts for delivery when needed.

Throughout the new system the temperature of each piece of food being cooked and chilled is monitored and recorded to ensure that Board of Health regulations are upheld.

“The logged temperature at the time of cooking, at the time of chilling, at the time of it leaving the kitchen at the high school, at the time it arrives at the school site and at the time of service are all recorded, documented, logged and retained,” Hall said.

Kitchen staff and delivery drivers are trained and certified to understand the temperatures in which the food needs to be at each step, Hall said.

According to Hall, the centralization of the food services ensures consistency, allows for better quality controls and reduces waste.

In conjunction with the new nutrition system, the district also introduced their new head chef, Vinicio Cordon, who will oversee the centralized kitchen at the high school.

“When we went to a satellite program, instead of having seven cook managers district-wide, one in each kitchen and seven cooks at six of the seven buildings, we now consolidate that into the high school where we have two cooks and one master chef,” Lynch said. "The cost savings are enormous."

Lynch predicts that the savings could be close to $100,000.

Chef Cordon has been in the hospitality industry for about 25 years. For the past 12 years he has owned a restaurant in Plymouth called .

“I am so excited to be a part of this great movement," Cordon said. "I believe that it takes a community to bring something like this together and introducing the students of Walpole to new and exciting things, slowly, but really looking forward to developing new dishes that are nutritious and that taste fantastic.”

The school lunch menu will be posted online every two weeks. The first menu can be expected to be up on the district's website next week. Hall is also planning on possibly having an open house where parents can come and see the new system in action and ask questions.