“Competing Against Yesterday For a Better Tomorrow”
Greenville County School Food and Nutrition Service…I’m sure you’ve seen them on social media. Actually, I know the majority of you reading this have seen them on Facebook, Instagram, and/or Twitter. I also know that a lot of you have questions about how Joe Urban, their Food Service Director, does what he does, so I reached out to Joe to ask if he’d spare some time for me to pick his brain and this is what I learned.
Greenville isn’t a one-man operation, which Joe was the first to admit. He inherited and brought on extremely talented individuals that help make their program a success. One of these individuals is Brian Hickey who accompanied Joe for the interview. Brian came from higher education and is now a Culinary Specialist at Greenville. From the little time I spent with him, it was obvious to me that he understands the formula of what it takes to be successful in a district like Greenville, and I have a sneaky suspicion that Joe is partly to blame.
Believe it or not, there was a time at Greenville when they were not as successful as they are today, and they probably struggled in a lot of the same ways other districts are struggling today. At one point, roughly 20% of the schools were supporting the entire district. That blew my mind because there are over 100 schools in Greenville. These 20% of the schools were secondary schools, and every other school was either hemorrhaging money or just missing the mark. What Joe and his team found was that most, if not all, of the elementary schools thought it was normal and acceptable to not be in the black. Joe explained to me he was in the restaurant business for over 20 years before transitioning to K12, and in the restaurant business, you don’t let your restaurants fail, because failure means you get shut down; Joe wasn’t about to let any of his schools fail. Joe and his team found that the primary area where the elementary staff was failing revolved around offer vs. serve, and once his team was taught how to successfully implement offer vs. serve, a lot of their problems vanished.
Now I know most of you are here just to find out how they’re serving 100% Certified Angus Beef, brisket, ribs and have done away with all canned fruits and veggies. I promise I’ll get there. First, I need to touch on how Greenville became “Greenville”. Unfortunately, Joe didn’t come up with some crazy revolutionary idea I can share with you; they made small changes over time and continuously used their wins to fuel the program to becoming the best it could be for their students.
If wins were the fuel, training was the spark. Joe runs his program like a successful business, and he needed to teach his staff to do the same. Joe explained to me there are three things a manager can control that affects roughly 85% of their raw cost: food, labor, and supplies. Joe trained his team on how to be experts on portioning, ordering, inventory, labor costs, efficiencies, and putting the right people in the right positions. As you can imagine, by doing this, they freed up money that was being tied up in areas that it shouldn’t have been, and once they did, they put it towards higher quality food; they completely got rid of canned fruits and vegetables within the district and started serving the highest quality, premium proteins available.
Okay, let’s talk about the Certified Angus Beef. Greenville isn’t printing extra money in every cafeteria manager’s office to afford what they serve. In the case of the Certified Angus Beef patties that were on the line when I was visited, they just did a little research that enabled them to get them in the district. Joe found that if he purchased his beef patties commercially, he could get one that was higher quality and less expensive. The beef patty that was available through his past buying group was lower in quality and roughly 20 cents more expensive than what he uses now. Greenville has roughly 77,000 students and an ADP of 76%. What I’m trying to say is they serve a lot of burgers, and by serving a higher quality burger that costs less, they realized a ton of money they were able to reinvest into high-quality food for their students.
Another way they can afford their high-quality food has to do with menu planning. The prime rib grilled cheese sandwich is one of the more expensive items on their menu, and when it came up in conversation, Joe teased and said nobody wants to know how much that costs, because it’s so expensive. What Joe and his team focus on is looking at the big picture. Once you understand that food costs don’t have to be met at every meal sold and that it can be broken down by day, week, month, cycle, and annually, you’ll be able to explore more innovative menu ideas. Joe also offers a wide variety of menu items and strategically menus moderately priced items that fit well within their budget, in addition to more expensive items. There is enough variety to where their menu mix is going to be ideal, and the average cost of the meal is going to balance out. And let’s face it, they’re on a three week cycle, and the prime rib grilled cheese is one of seven items being served that day. One of which is your standard grilled cheese sandwich.
I have to say, I truly enjoyed my time with Joe and Brian, and I felt like I left with something more than just a full belly. Joe’s program is a perfect example of how you can overcome challenges through the power of training, passion, and thinking just like a business owner. Now, obviously every district is different and certain things have to be scaled, but if you do what I mentioned above and practice what Greenville practices by only competing against yourself “yesterday”, you’ll grow to heights you never thought you could. Greenville did, so can you.
Stay tuned for part two of my Greenville visit which will touch on the importance of serving ethnic foods within your district and why you see so much of Greenville on social media and why they want to see more of you there too!