Cici: Hello, today we will be interviewing you.
Lunch Employees (Mr. Anthony Kowalak and Mrs. Maggie Ruperto): OK.
Cici: Ok, we will be first questioning you about your job.
Praneeta: What is your job in the lunchroom?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Operation Managers for the whole district, for all 10 schools in West Windsor Plainsboro.
Mrs. Maggie Ruperto: I’m the lunch supervisor.
Ananya: Do you enjoy working at the cafeteria?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Absolutely
Mrs. Maggie Ruperto: Of course.
Cici: And why do you enjoy working at the cafeteria?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Just being around with the younger generations providing healthy nutrition in the school for kids just like my son.
Mrs. Maggie Ruperto: Because it’s a friendly environment.
Cici: What is it like working in the school cafeteria?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: It’s a lot of fun and challenging; there’s a challenge every day and another challenge is the meal and we have lots of regulations.
Mrs. Maggie Ruperto: It’s really fun because everyone in the kitchen is so nice.
Praneeta: Ok, what do you like most about the atmosphere of the cafeteria?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: I’d say the people, the staff, they’re all so dedicated. They’re all so dedicated to their jobs, to being with the kids.
Mrs. Maggie Ruperto: The kids, I love the kids.
Praneeta: Tell us about yourself, what are your hobbies?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: obstacle course racing, mud runs, etc.
Ananya: Do you like serving the students food or if you are a cashier, do you enjoy being near the students?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: That’s a fun part of my day, when I cashier or serve, when I get to talk to the kids. There are a lot of less fun things like paperwork for the lunchroom.
Mrs. Maggie Ruperto: I enjoy being near the students, I don’t really like cashiering.
Cici: What goals are you looking for in your job?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: From our standpoint, provide as many meals as we can. A big goal is breakfast that we created this year, because there is more variety that we can offer for the students.
Praneeta: How do you decide what food to make what day?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: always a challenge. We have a menu that’s developed by Sodexo. We are also given flexibility to adapt to the community.
Ananya: How much time, on average, does it take for the lunch employees to make food for all of the students that day?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Wow, well, every school’s different because of the number of the students. In this school, we have seven employees in charge of making food for the students, on average they work around 49 hours between all of the employees, seven hours for each employee. Every employee comes here around 6:30-7:30 and leave at 2:30.
Cici: How much money does it take to buy all of the ingredients for a day’s worth of food?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Wow, let me see if I can do some math here. This is somewhat of a guesstimate… probably a little bit under $1,000.
Praneeta: How long have you been working at Grover? How has the school changed since you first got here?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: This is my 4th year in the district, its my 25th year with the company. The way the school changed since I came here is some of the offerings we have, like the breakfast, decorations, staff, and other stuff.
Ananya: What do you like the least about your job?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Staffing concerns, staffing issues, people being out, we have a lot of people being out and being sick, it makes the day harder.
Cici: Have you ever had to deal with a disrespectful student? If so, how did you deal with them?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Umm, I wouldn’t say that we had to deal with anyone in Grover but typically what we try to deal with is we try to stay calm and work with the administrators at the school and explain to them what we saw that happened.
Praneeta: Do you work well with the other lunch employees?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: I tend to think so. It’s always a challenge to get everyone on the same page.
Cici: What is the kitchen environment like?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: It’s typically hot because we have the ovens on. And it’s very fast paced; it’s not an easy job, my job is very hard. But it’s rewarding because we can see the same kids every day.
Praneeta: Did you come to Grover to become a lunch employee?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: I manage the whole district, so I come here to do what I can.
Ananya: How did you find about Grover when you became a lunch employee?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Well, I knew about it because I worked relatively close — nearby in Hopewell, New Jersey, and I knew the people who worked here before and I helped them out because we were all part of the same community.
Cici: What prompted you to apply for this job?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Well, I guess to work in schools — I used to work in colleges. When my son was born, I saw a challenge to help kids in schools eat more nutritiously, not just for all students but mainly just for my son.
Praneeta: Do you think the food that the lunch employees serve is the ideal meal for students to eat?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: I think it’s the best case. I think we do a really good job under the restrictions. The foods we serve are more like the food you eat at home. We have tighter restrictions.
Ananya: Compared to other school cafeterias in our district, do you think our food is better than others?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Well, I would say that everybody is pretty much similar, if I were to compare the two middle schools, the students in Community, they seem to like the pre-made sandwiches more and they also have less time to eat so the food preferences are basically the same, sometimes they’re different, but all of the food is really nice.
Cici: How many students do you think get served lunch every day?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: at this school, we are somewhere at the range of 50-250 students a day out 1200 students, on a good day, we reach 600 students that buy lunch.
Praneeta: How is the food prepared?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Depends. We try to make a lot of food from scratch, if possible. Many of the foods we prepare are made from scratch, like the pre-made sandwiches.
Ananya: What is the most rewarding thing about your job?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: I really love the challenge of trying to come up with new ways to innovate for the students, for example the Future Chef challenge where kids put in recipes and make them and we hold a competition to see which one’s the best.
Cici: What happens to all the extra food at the end of the day?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Well we have very good records that help us minimize all the waste at the end of the day. We pretty much know how much to make when we see the menu. Most food that is cooked we don’t save, but other foods, like the ones that can be used to make soup, will be saved and not thrown away.
Praneeta: What’s your favorite food item on the menu?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: I would just say pizza and pasta, that’s all. Pasta or pizza, either one.
Ananya: Have there been any incidents with students having an allergic reaction?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Not recently, there was one student that had an allergic reaction and they were just ill over the weekend, but it wasn’t from the food they ate, they just felt sick so they thought it was from the food they ate, but when they got it checked out it wasn’t. It is kind of difficult to accommodate to all of the different allergies, and we try and get food that is gluten free for some of our students and we don’t use seafood like crustaceans so there aren’t a lot of foods that gets students sick.
Cici: Do you think that our school’s cafeteria serves a wide variety of food?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: I would say definitely, we have a good selection of food.
Ananya: Do you use processed meat in the meat you serve here?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Some is processed and some is not.
Cici: Has there been any problems with the food that students have eaten?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Not that I’m aware of; I think we have pretty high quality food.
Praneeta: How do you feel about the amount of food the students throw away uneaten?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: That’s a challenge. That’s definitely one of the challenges we try to meet.
Ananya: How did you and the other faculty members come up with the new green policy in the lunchroom?
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Every school has a green team, and I have a lot of experience with being green. While we were meeting, we were discussing how we could reduce the amount of food being wasted and it has helped.
Ananya: Ok, that’s all the questions we have, thank you for your time.
Mr. Anthony Kowalak: Thanks!
Grover Middle School's Jagazine 