A Recipe for Success
What does it take to feed a community of hungry owls? For starters, approximately 80-100 lbs of meat per day. Add a team of rock stars who chop, mince, and sauté hot entrees, soups, sandwiches, salads, a daily special, and a plethora of breakfast offerings, and you begin to scratch the surface of the Overlake Food Services team.
Every day the team feeds 550-600 students and adults. That includes 250-300 hot entrees, 150 specials, and 30-40 custom made sandwiches and salads each and every day. Even more impressive is that 75% of all food served in the cafeteria is made-from-scratch food. When Director of Food Services, Travis Boyce joined Overlake back in 2019, he felt it was important to move away from prepackaged meals in the kitchen.
“That’s how I learned to cook, and that’s how I’ve always cooked. Also, believe it or not it actually saves money because the product is less expensive,” says Boyce. “In the long run it’s just the right thing to do. Whole fruits, whole meats, and whole vegetables are what kids need.”
Cooking from scratch allows the food to be healthier and of a higher quality than preserved reheated food. By having that control over the food, it also allows for greater care when meeting a wide variety of dietary restrictions.
Before coming to Overlake, Boyce ran the food service for Google in the Pacific Northwest where he oversaw food for about 12,000 Google employees. He recalls that there were 19 different allergens that they had to be aware of when cooking and had to make sure signs called out any of those ingredients. Now at Overlake, Boyce and his team are masters at making sure there are a wide variety of options for students and adults with dietary needs. “There’s always going to be something. No one is going to go hungry because of a dietary restriction,” he says.
But the food is not the only thing that’s special about this team, it’s the people that take it to the next level. Boyce takes great care to build a team that exemplifies Overlake’s values. “I take pride in building teams and putting people in the right places and setting them up for success and encouraging them to get better at what they do,” he says. Having worked in a kitchen since he was 17 years old, Boyce has found that the majority of his learning came from on-the-job experience and now he wants to foster that environment for his team.
“I appreciate and value that. Working a job like this you really get to learn,” he says. When hiring, he always makes sure team members are not only ready to learn but also willing to teach their peers. By creating this team atmosphere everyone can learn from each other and grow in their skills.
The kitchen is a diverse team with people from China, Malaysia, Colombia, Great Britain, Duvall, Seattle, and Bainbridge Island. Boyce loves to draw on the strengths of his team. For example, during the Lunar New Year celebrations, he leaned on the knowledge and input from Line Cook Sophia Zhang, who is from China, and Cook Jennifer Che, who grew up in Malaysia, to help plan those menus. “It’s interesting to see all those experiences, cultures, and attitudes come together. We’re learning from each other and having a good time. Everybody’s got a really good sense of humor and that’s one of the things I enjoy,” Boyce comments.
To get an even better idea of the work that the kitchen does, check out the amount of food the team has made since the first day of school:
- 21,769 Hot Lunch Entrees
- 8,234 Lunch Specials
- 4,741 Custom Sandwiches
- 2,414 Custom Salads
- 3,843 Bowls of Soup
- 5,909 Orders of Breakfast Potatoes/Hashbrowns
- 6,795 Slices of Bacon
And of course, this only includes the day-to-day food needs. The kitchen also provides catering for more than 100 events each school year. These include the all school barbecue, admission open houses, and parent coffees, just to name a few.
So be sure to high five our amazing kitchen crew next time you are enjoying a hot breakfast or lunch!