ESCANABA – Escanaba cafeterias have provided over 340,000 meals to students this school year.

At Monday’s Escanaba Board of Education meeting, the board heard a presentation from Food Service Director Nancy LaFave, who shared that between breakfast (150,123) and lunch (190,930), Escanaba has provided 341,053 meals since July 2024.

“That’s pretty impressive. All at the same time of being short staffed all year. These people, these ladies in the kitchen, wear two or three hats at a time. They’re doing two or three jobs at a time, and we still can put out impressive meals like this,” LaFave said.

She shared the most popular items, which include breadsticks, pizza, and more.

According to her presentation, the school district has provided 66,744 breadsticks, 231,500 lunch trays, 24,400 slices of pizza, and 27,216 marinara cups.

“Numbers like that, until you see them in front of you; you can’t really realize or understand the volume of what goes in and out of our kitchens,” she said.

LaFave broke down each school, what they consume, and what is popular.

In the high school example, LaFave shared that the chicken sandwich was the most consumed, totaling 11,442 sandwiches.

She said one number that shocked her was the amount of salt and vinegar chips, totaling 1,267 bags eaten.

The a la carte room at the high school experienced some struggles this year, closing for several days throughout the school year.

“In the 25 years that we’ve had a la carte room open, we’ve never had a year like this. We have never had a year that we’ve had to close at numerous days in a row,” LaFave said.

“And the reason we do that is because all the other meals and food that we serve are free, and the other cart is an extra that kids pay for. So, we wouldn’t want to close down the line that the kids get a free meal to have the other cart open. Even though it does provide us with money.”

LaFave called this school year the ‘year of reviews’, as she and staff were visited by different organizations to review the district’s food service.

The department received procurement, resource management, and an administrative review.

LaFave said she has not heard back on the status of the procurement or resource management reviews, but the schools did complete the administrative review.

“They went to Lemmer School and saw breakfast and lunch, and they did awesome. Teachers were great,” she said.

Lunch was nearly perfect except for one thing, or three orange things.

LaFave provided lunch sacks for the board members and asked them to take out a bag of roughly half a cup of carrots.

“I have half a cup of carrots and half a cup of apple slices. Everything was great, I thought it was all great, (but) the little kids, first and second graders are supposed three quarters of a cup. So, we got marked down for only having that one bag of carrots and not offering out, like three more,” LaFave said.

Fletcher asked if she was being serious about the only three carrots, and she confirmed that to be the amount that would have met the three-quarters of a cup standard.

If three reviews weren’t enough, LaFave was greeted with a fourth review by the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP).

Like the administrative review, the cafeteria did great, except for one minor mark.

The CACFP does not allow any item to be called a ‘bar.’

LaFave said she had a ‘benefit bar’ as an option, and received a mark for the name.

“She said if you would have put a different name to it, it would have been fine,” LaFave explained.

LaFave shared several photos of the work she and the rest of the food service staff do daily.

“This is what hard work looks like. These ladies, every day, put all this food out,” she said.

“I don’t know where you could eat anywhere and get the food and the attention that is done to this food, and they (food service staff) said it’s always me with love.”

LaFave shared messages from her staff, who said that the work will always get done no matter the workload or the amount of staff.

“I can attest to every single day that these ladies work as hard as they can to make sure no matter how many people are working in the kitchen that those students would never know that there might have been an issue or that we were short something or that something went wrong,” she said.

Escanaba Schools is currently working on its food service page on its website to better showcase some of the meals the school cafeterias serve.

Regardless of the minor marks from the various reviews, the board was very thankful and impressed with LaFave and all of the food service staff.

“I just want to say that we appreciate everything that you guys do. The cooks, you guys go above and beyond, and it’s a fantastic program,” said President Jim Beauchamp.