After what Salisbury Township School Board President Frank Frankenfield referred to as a “long process,” board members voted unanimously 8-0 to approve Southwest Foodservice Excellence as the food service management for the district at the July 10 meeting.

Arizona-based SFE partners with school districts with a focus on feeding students nutritional meals derived from chef- based recipes. Salisbury will be its inaugural school district in Pennsylvania.

According to Monty Staggs, former Salisbury graduate, chef and president of SFE, who received his culinary arts degree from Johnson and Wales University, the company utilizes recipes primarily made from scratch and “is the fastest growing management company in the country.”

“We are honored and proud to be here and it is personal. We are not going to just make this the SFE program, but make this your program, based on your needs.”

Amber Minchella, director of business at SFE echoed Staggs’ thoughts and said, “I am a mother with children and I know how important it is to have the nutrition at a school match a parent’s expectations.”

Salisbury Middle School Head Cook Mark Hendricks said he and the “lunch ladies” at the school stood behind the board’s decision to hire SFE and would support its efforts.

“I am a chef and a father and we care about the kids at Salisbury and want to feed them a nutritional meal every day,” Hendricks said.

The board thanked Hendricks for the lunch staff’s support.

Director Carol Klinger asked the members of the board who took part in the request for proposal to find a food service management company what it was about SFE that made them stand out from the others who submitted bids.

“The RFP process was very complicated..., and we started the process in January, worked through some problems and then recreated the RFP,” Business Administrator and Board Secretary Robert Bruchak said.

“The companies who submitted proposals were brought in for taste testing, we visited every company that was feasible and the two companies who introduced the better presentation, participation with students and staff, with better tasting food were Whitsons and SFE,” Bruchak said. “SFE took it a step further with fresher food, culinary expertise and a love for feeding nutritious food to students.”

“The person directly in charge is a chef; no other place was going to do that, so they know how to work in a kitchen,” Director Joseph Gnall said. “Another big part was that [Scaggs] is an alumni of Salisbury, but even above all that is that I trusted their numbers the most out of all the submissions.”

Director George Gatanis agreed with Gnall and said the SFE food he sampled was “great” and he had “good feelings about Monty’s honesty” and, “the numbers that SFE projected were believable.”

“People keep saying that the food is nutritious, but isn’t the food coming from the same source we are using now and are you just going to do something different with it?” Director Mary Ziegler asked. “Also, if you are not in the area how can it be different?”

“We will be buying from the same food vendor but not buying the same product,” Staggs said.

The majority of the food being purchased by the district was pre-packaged according to Staggs and rather than the cafeteria staff opening and heating processed meals, the staff will be preparing meals from scratch under the direction of an SFE chef who will be relocating to the area to assist them.

“Everything we do is a culinary innovation. Most companies have a cyclical menu that is continually rotated on a six-week cycle, creating boredom. We take a different approach using fresh ingredients in many base recipes allowing the cafeteria staff to gradually increase their culinary skills,” Staggs said. “We have more than 50 concepts and if you are not satisfied we change the menu to suit your needs. We embrace the feedback we get from the students; we listen to what they want.”

Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning Lynn Fuini-Hetton asked Staggs to explain SFE’s approach on fresh fruits and vegetables at salad bars.

“We strive for participation of the students in choosing fresh fruits and vegetables and children love the independence of picking what they want. They can choose what they want, as much as they want and we can start filling kids up with good food,” Staggs said. He said the food choices made during school lunches will translate to the student’s eating habits at home.

SFE will be on site in the following weeks to meet with the staff to discuss their plans in-depth and a chef-director from SFE will be transitioning to the area in August to begin training before the school year begins.

“When we made the decision to try to locate a food management service again, it was important to us that our staff remained our staff and they be included,” Ziegler said.

“I think too that the language for our existing staff in the SFE contract was the best, cut and dry and the assumptions were believable, with room for improvement,” Frankenfield added.

SFE indicated the financial improvement for the lunch program will not be immediate; but rather, the improvement will be realized over a period of years.

In other business, the board approved agreements between Wilson Language Corporation and the district, as well as Seton Hall University.

The board also approved operations committee agenda items 3.1 through 3.3 regarding a bid for fuel, a tax refund on a district owned parcel and a Kids Peace compensation agreement.

Motions to approve personnel changes were approved including the resignation of social studies department chair and gifted high school teacher Jennifer Brinson.

Ziegler has been voted vice president of the Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit Board.

The next board meeting will be held at the administration building 7:30 p.m. Aug. 16.