RPS Brigaid District Chef John Thompson (left) trains kitchen staff. (Photo courtesy RPS Brigaid)
Daniel Giusti was chef de cuisine at what is considered one of the greatest and most famous restaurants in the world, the Michelin-starred gastronomic playground Noma in Copenhagen. But after half a lifetime in the culinary field, Giusti was no longer content with serving elaborate meals in an intimate dining room for the upper echelon. He wanted to do more. He wanted to feed more people.
“I didn’t want to stay in fine dining or open a restaurant, I wanted to find a way to cook for a lot of people and, most importantly, a lot of people more often,” Giusti says.
He toyed with the idea of a fast food concept that provided wholesome meals, but then asked himself, why not feed people who are already in need?
In the beginning of 2016, Giusti left behind multicourse dining to refocus his energy on one of the country's most important institutions: the public school system. That same year, he officially founded Brigaid, a program that places chefs in school kitchens across the U.S. and introduces scratch cooking to kitchen staffs.
And this school year, the pilot program, which aims to incorporate local produce in school lunches and provide more nutritious and flavorful meals to students, launched in Richmond at Armstrong High school on Sept. 3. The 10-week program will then move forward to Blackwell Elementary school, followed by Boushall Middle school. The goal is to eventually introduce Brigaid to the entire school system.
“It’s a pilot to see how we can develop it so it becomes a standard,” explains Susan Roberson, director of school nutrition services for Richmond Public Schools. “We are looking at how we can expand it and get it out there to more schools and perfect it. This is not a here today, gone tomorrow concept.”
When Roberson recently asked a group of students to pick out a piece of fruit during a lesson, most stood in front of her, uncertain. Some pointed to a carrot, one student grabbed a yogurt.
“I was floored,” Roberson says. “It happened multiple times with multiple students. It concerned me.”
The concern is not one that is unfamiliar to Roberson, but for the first time in her 10-year tenure with RPS, groundbreaking initiatives are being implemented in the school lunch system.
“I’m looking at value. We were already going to buy food, right? We were already going to pay the staff, right? What we're doing is still buying food, but changing the food and having better trained staff. For me, it was a no-brainer that we can do this,” Roberson says of Brigaid.
The 30-year public school system veteran had discovered Brigaid years ago and reached out to founder Giusti. The two remained in contact.
“When we started moving towards this [training] model in January, she was the first person I reached out to,” Giusti says. “She was on board. … It takes someone who is willing to go a little outside the box.”
Roberson says although it has been in the back of her mind and evident that reform is necessary within the current system, timing is everything.
“You can only make changes where you have changes moving with you, and I spent some years working to get ... key people to understand that we do need to do things differently,” she says.
Many public schools lack the resources to properly train staff or invest in and implement change. The majority of school lunch workers are not required to have a background in the kitchen, and many do not.
“The more I researched the idea of school food, I realized there are challenges and hurdles, but also chefs that are perfectly suited to tackle them,” Giusti says, noting chefs' familiarity with purchasing inventory, determining food costs and creating recipes.
The key for Brigaid is to find chefs who are motivated, can leave their egos behind, think unconventionally and develop recipes that fit within schools’ cost and nutrition guidelines.
“In a restaurant, you are cooking the food you want to cook. For [Brigaid] it’s the opposite; we are truly cooking for the kids, and we need to listen to them and work with them. It’s not about us,” Giusti says.
He points out that while the conversation surrounding school food is typically focused on nutritional guidelines and addressing childhood obesity, there is another side to the story.
“Unfortunately, something more imminent and grave is [that] literally a lot of kids don’t eat, and it gets lost in the conversation,” he says. “That’s what we [at Brigaid] do all the time with our food, make sure we are toeing this line and push them to eat healthy and try new things, but we also want to make sure they’re eating.”
To be successful, chefs and staff must understand the importance of balance between the two schools of thinking.
“If it looks appealing or like something they want to eat, they’ll eat it; otherwise they’re not, and kids will go hungry,” Giusti adds.
John Thompson, who will serve as the district chef for RPS, joined the Brigaid team in 2018 to work in the New London, Connecticut, Public School System, where the program initially debuted.
Prior to that, he worked under the former chef de cuisine at Charlie Trotter’s — the namesake restaurant of the late restaurateur that earned multiple James Beard Awards before shuttering in 2012 — and served as sous chef at Blue Duck Tavern, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Washington, D.C. But for Thompson, like Giusti, culinary accolades and satisfied diners weren’t enough.
“I felt the need to do more and put these skills I’ve learned over the years and use them in a different way that’s more rewarding,” he says.
Before improving the food and kick-starting the training, Thompson was responsible for assessing the kitchen to determine what small kitchen items such as pots, pans and knives were needed, as well as implementing safety and sanitation standards.
Kitchen training is done on site and during normal school hours so staff learn in a familiar environment. Thompson will teach them basic kitchen skills such as cutting squash, which some have never done before; how to prepare food on a stovetop; and how to execute recipes.
“In my short amount of time I’ve been with the staff, they have been very receptive,” says Thompson, who recognizes it is an eye-opening experience for staff as well as students “The idea is to work with the staff and not work against them.”
Menu tweaks will roll out slowly in order to ensure that students and staff are not overwhelmed. One week, fresh fruit may be added; the next, a sandwich made differently; and eventually new from-scratch entrees and other items will be introduced.
According to Brigaid, the National School Lunch Program is the largest food service provider in the country and serves a total of 5 billion meals each year, with schools required to meet strict nutritional guidelines established by the USDA. Because Richmond is a Community Eligibility Provision district, a federal designation for school systems with a high-need student population, students eat free of charge, and the funds for the food are later reimbursed to the school. The Brigaid program will be self-funded and self-sustaining through the reimbursement.
“I believe everyone can see we are moving in the right direction," Roberson says, "and Jason [Kamras, RPS superintendent,] and the team are the perfect fit to move forward with the changes we want to implement with school nutrition.”
During the upcoming Fire, Flour & Fork festival from Oct. 31-Nov. 2, Giusti will join Jeff Gordinier, food and drinks editor of Esquire magazine, to discuss Gordinier's latest book, "Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping and Risking It All With the Greatest Chef in the World," along with hosting a $1.25 school lunch throwdown where chefs will prepare meals based around the National School Lunch Program nutritional guidelines and budget. (Note: Richmond magazine Associate Publisher Susan Winiecki is a co-founder of Fire, Flour & Fork.)
