“POULSBO – A food-service worker in North Kitsap must also be a nutrition expert, a customer service expert, and a fortune teller. Chris Cofer, the head cook at North Kitsap High School, fills all these roles. Cofer comes to work at 6:30 a.m. every morning to keep the high school students fed a before-school breakfast, a snack at 9:05, and lunch. Cofer got involved in schools by volunteering when her daughter was in second grade. That was ten years ago. In the meantime, Cofer said, I just worked my way up. Cofer did indeed; next year she will be the president-elect of the Washington School Food Service Association, which has 2400 members across the state. Monday afternoon found her getting ready for lunch, sliding food into trays and trays onto racks; pulling bags out of freezers, and maneuvering her way through the high school’s kitchen, ducking out of the way of other staff members. What do kids like these days? Just about everything, Cofer said. Chicken, she said, then paused and continued: French fries, curly fries, cheeseburgers – there’s not much they don’t like at this level. High schoolers, she explained, have gotten over that picky stage they hit, often in junior high. They know what they like, and they want lots of it, Cofer said. Another thing they want in large quantities: coffee. Monday mornings are the worst, Cofer said, because she often doesn’t have time to set up the coffee machines. They get irritated when they don’t get their lattés and mochas, she said. Decaf won’t do either, Cofer noted. When you go through a day filled with trig and lit, only the caffeinated stuff will do. Cofer provides the coffee, along with five to eight lunch choices a day. We try to treat the kids like customers, she said. Another person trying to help those customers is Kay McManus, who is North Kitsap School District’s Food and Nutrition Director. It is McManus who helps make sure that food gets out not only to North Kitsap High School, but all the elementary schools as well. She works next to the district’s main storage area, behind Poulsbo Junior High. Employees there arrive at 5:30 a.m., even before Cofer has begun her day, to prepare cold and hot boxes for each school. The boxes are taller than a man and thicker, too. They contain either the cold or hot meals or meal item each school needs for the day. Even though they usually don’t work in the school buildings, these employees know what the younger kids like, too. Ranch dressing, said one, pushing a cart onto a truck. If we ran out of ranch dressing, there’d be a riot. McManus said the amount of food requested is up to the people in the schools. The cooks, she said. The cooks do the estimation. McManus added that the district, under state law, must provide certain amounts and proportions of nutriients. For example, if a child orders a lunch, it will contain a fruit or vegetable item – that’s state law. It’s also common sense, said McManus, who said the district is careful to include nutrition information in all its food services. We can be their source for nutrition information, said McManus. We need to focus on young students so they can have the knowledge about eating habits. Beside the basic requirements, she said, each school has flexibility in what kind of food they ask for. And they use it. One school may say, send us apricots, we love them. Another may say, don’t send us any apricots, our kids aren’t touching them, McManus said. The food preferences may be different, but kids in every school get breakfast and lunch. Last year in North Kitsap that added up to 3300 lunch meals a day. Including a la carte meals, meals for teacher and administrators, and breakfast, that added up to more than 4000 meals a day. That’s a lot of lettuce, chicken, and hamburger. A lot of cans of fruit and bags of bread. And that’s why the North Kitsap Food Services employs 40 people and has a budget of $1 million. Food service money doesn’t come from a different budget than general education funds. The money that food services make from selling food and doing catering makes up more than half their budget. The other half comes from reimbursments from the federal and state government for every meal they serve. That money, said Janet Norem, the operations specialist for food and nutrition services, is used to give kids choices. We just have such good choices now, Norem said. If they bring their bologna sandwich and their friends get something else (from us), they’ll go home to mom, and want what their friends got, Noreen said. McManus said serving the students is the priority. We’re the biggest restaurant in the county, McManus said. We’re in the restaurant business. And business is booming. Cofer, working Monday afternoon for the lunch rush, put it best. She told another employee that they could talk to her, but they’d have to follow her around the kitchen to do so. Crouching to remove a tray, she said, I’m a working cook. “