Lori Drenth
Director of Food & Nutrition
Hernando County School District , FL

District Snapshot

PCS Products Used: FASTrak, RightNOW, TrakNOW, ReportNOW
Number of Schools: 26

In 2013-14 Hernando moved to PCS as a part of efforts to introduce evolving technologies into all aspects of their food services. At the helm of this transition is 2013 FAME-Silver Leadership Award winner, Lori Drenth. One word to describe Lori’s impact on Hernando’s Food service program would be transformative.

Lori points to the advancement in food service software as being instrumental to the process. This included the use of online meal applications, computerized production records, touchscreens, and wireless point of sale stations. With these programs in place, “Food service can move quickly in the direction of automating many of the daily data entry tasks done by managers and assistants at the school level and by employees in the district office.”

Lori also credits her staff and attests that, “No transformation can have any amount of success without great vendor partners, school district administrative support, and most importantly, great Food Service staff at the district and school levels to implement the transformation!

PCS: How has PCS Back of the House specifically helped the food service program?

Lori: TrakNOW has helped tremendously with better management of inventory.
Before this system, we were using Excel spreadsheets for monthly physical inventories. Now, by using the production records to generate orders to our vendors, it has reduced the amount of inventory carried by the schools. Additionally, daily we are able to see the actual inventory that a particular school has on hand. Managers have found TrakNOW to be very user friendly and an invaluable tool in reducing their workload.

PCS: On the front end (POS) side of things, how has FASTrak and RightNOW been helpful?

Lori: One helpful part of FASTrak is the ability to serve and track students using their student number and eligibility when visiting other school sites. RightNOW provides access to student information and reports at the district level. Another helpful aspect of the program is the ability to ensure that all Direct Certification students are identified, as well as all other students in those households.

PCS: What’s New and What’s Next?

Lori: I am always looking for exciting opportunities to serve students, including opening coffee shops/serving areas in the high schools, offering summer meals in the Crusin Café (A school bus that was converted into a mobile feeding bus), hot suppers in many elementary schools, and Breakfast carts at the bus loop and student parking lots at our high schools to encourage more students to participate in breakfast.

Many of the reports and the information PCS has introduced to us will assist us in looking at trends and data in schools to ensure that we are implementing new programs or ideas in schools we’ve identified as having the most opportunity for success. For example, we are planning to pilot inputting certain data into FASTrak over the next few months at two schools to explore the reporting capabilities not only in FASTrak, but in ReportNow as well. We are looking forward to working with PCS to fully explore the functionality and capabilities of its programs!

PCS: Lori, we feel the same way and feel privileged to have you as a customer. We look forward to working with you and wish you much continued success in your role with Hernando County SD and as President-Elect for the Florida School Nutrition Association where we know you’ll be looking forward to the opportunity to serve and represent its members both in Florida and at the National level.

We would like to congratulate Bryan ISD for receiving the Cream of the Crop Award, as a result of their performance at the annual challenge from the Texas Department of Agriculture. The challenge was to use more Texas products in meals served during National School Lunch Week (NSLW), with the Local Products Challenge. Bryan ISD was able to incorporate a weekly average of three or more local menu items each day. Way to go Bryan ISD!