Blog
Mar
Miami-Dade County Department of Food and Nutrition is providing a new service via a food truck. The theme is “Eating Healthy Every Day” with a special menu only served on the food truck, like wraps, veggie burgers, fajita tacos, turkey burgers, Asian chicken wraps, meatball on hoagie, fresh fruit, juice and milk.
The food truck visits selected schools, rotating locations on a daily basis. A choice of two or three reimbursable meal offerings is provided, changing when the truck returns to the same school. Payment is “cashless”, via accessing the student’s account balance on their FASTrak NetPOS tablet with a NED or FRED keypad attached.
Olga Botero, Executive Director of Food and Nutrition at Miami-Dade, said, “the wireless connectivity at the schools was not consistent and the OFF-LINE mode on a daily basis is not a convenient option for our staff.” So Tony Diers, our Director of Operations, suggested to Olga that a MIFI device connected to the school via the VPN could be the answer, and it works like a charm. When there is no signal, OFF-LINE mode is still there as a back up.
When asked about the future of the Eating Healthy Every Day program, Olga said that, “the food truck is very well received in the schools and may be expanded in the future. It is popular with the students and the administration.”
Mar
Donna Martino Fuhrman, MS, RD
TrakNOW Project Manager
Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Day was March 11, and in honor of this day and National Nutrition Month, we are featuring Donna Martino Fuhrman as Employee of the Month! As a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, Donna applies her special knowledge and skills everyday as Project Manager for TrakNOW, our Nutrition and Inventory software, and as PCS’ liaison with USDA Food and Nutrition Service.
Donna has been with PCS for over 6 years and previously worked as a supervisor at Cherry Creek School District, a long time PCS customer. In 2009 Donna moved to New York City, and began her new career in software development. Donna received her Master’s Degree from Colorado State University in Human Nutrition.
Software development at PCS is partly a science involving creating the logic that embodies the complex business rules of school food and nutrition and partly the art of creating a user experience hiding this complexity behind simple and easy to use screens and reports.
This is the challenge that Donna is faced with as each year she receives an update from USDA Food and Nutrition Service with new requirements for the “approved” software. She must interpret these requirements within the TrakNOW framework in order to incorporate the new or modified regulations, compliance requirements, and “guidance”. Not an easy task!
Donna works closely with her counterparts at USDA to make sure that every function and report provides the results that are intended in the USDA requirements and specifications. Often this can be a matter of interpretation, and the process of updating approved software can require a lot of interaction with USDA. At the end of the day, Donna and her TrakNOW team of specialists, test the updated software for on-time release to customers each June or July.
When asked about the PCS approach, Donna said:
“We endeavor to make the software as user friendly as possible while at the same time providing options to match each customer’s needs. For example, we worked very hard designing our USDA approved food based compliance reports to look very similar to the USDA certification worksheets, so that our customers and state reviewers would feel very comfortable with it during the 6 Cent Certification and Administrative Reviews processes. Our new multi-browser platform which will support Internet Explorer 11, Chrome and Safari on an upgraded SQL 2014 server. Our annual Child Nutrition Database update will be released shortly after the multi-browser version. And we plan to have at least one more release this year, with more improvements and new features.”
Feb
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.
Feb
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!
Feb
Eric Garcia
Support Supervisor
Congratulations to Eric Garcia, PCS’s Support Tech of the Month on his promotion to Supervisor, for the Support Department. This marks the second time in a 12 month period Eric has received this accolade and it is well deserved. Knowledgeable in Hardware, Software and Networking, Eric has been a key player in several large accounts that require his expertise. No matter how large or small, it is Eric’s unwavering commitment and devotion to every customer that sets him apart. But don’t take our word for it, here is just one example of what our customers are saying about Eric!
“I was having communication problems using Student Universal Pin #, and was in the process of addressing the issue with PCS when our phone line went down. Two days later, the phone started working and the first person to call that morning was Tech Eric Garcia! He immediately fixed my issue and was so helpful!!!!! Thank you PCS for not dropping the ball on me!!!! Had your Company and Employees not been so dedicated, I would still be struggling to enter these student meals manually. If we were located nearby, I would invite the whole crew for lunch!!”
Jamie Bigford – Okeechobee County School District, FL
Jan
This year got off to a great start with Judi Dugan and Gabe Aiello attending the SNIC (School Nutrition Industry Conference) in Phoenix, AZ. As always the conference was both inspirational and informative. There was also plenty of time to network with customers, old friends, and new acquaintances. Kate Cole, president, Cinnabon Inc., was one of many dynamic speakers and provided several examples of how to create and capitalize on small “wins” and how to get the word out to others in order to accomplish larger goals.
In breakout sessions, directors from several districts shared their successes. Each had their own personal story about how they implemented a variety of creative ideas; from planting gardens with students and finding how easy it was to get them to taste and eat their harvests, turning fruits and vegetables into smoothies to get middle school kids to try them out, to reaching out into the community to provide salad bars donated by funds raised in area restaurants. These are just a few of the great ideas that were shared.
See some success stories from our Customer of the Month, Patty Page, Director of Nutrition Services at Manteca USD. Patty was recently named Director of the Year by CASNA.
Jan
Patty Page
Director of Nutrition Services
Manteca Unified School District, CA
Patty has been using PCS products in Manteca since the fall of 2011 and is currently using RIGHTrak, FASTrak, NetPOS, Rocketscan F&R integration, and PayPAMS. She is now implementing PCS’ TrakNOW Nutrition and Inventory, which will be rolled out to all school cafeterias this year.
With Patty at the helm, Manteca USD is one of only 24 districts in California to achieve honors in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Healthier US School Challenge, with 30 schools in the district earning either silver or bronze awards. The program’s goals are to foster good health among schoolchildren through nutrition and physical exercise, activity and education.
Patty has taken the concept of “Farm to School” to a whole new level. Just outside her office window, the school district’s farm provides a place for students to cultivate and harvest fresh produce for sale to the nutrition program. Farm fresh specialties include everything from pumpkins to baby bok choy, herbs, potatoes, spinach and every kind of lettuce. On top of that, parents and staff can also buy freshly harvested vegetables, boxed weekly. This subscription services is called “Veggie Express”.
Stats: A year-round operation for the 23,000-students, Nutrition Services prepared just shy of 5 million meals in the 12 months ending June 30, a little more than half of which were school lunches. The remaining meals included 1.7 million breakfasts, 210,000 snacks, 93,000 summer meals and, starting in January, just over 12,000 suppers.
PCS: So what’s new and what’s next?
Patty: We just recently hired a farm-to-school supervisor and are getting ready to plant produce in the next month. We will still have to subsidize our produce with purchased produce, but a lot of it will be coming from our school garden. We will hire “ag” students to help harvest it. What they harvest on Monday will be in the garden bar on Tuesday. You can’t get more “farm to fork” than that! The farm will provide spinach and lettuce, bok choy, different types of peppers, watermelons, and squash. We also have a greenhouse so we can start growing herbs for seasoning.
PCS: Talk to us about your famous “Garden Bars”!
Patty: We really work hard on providing healthy choices that the children enjoy. One of our big things is our garden bars. We don’t just offer the children things like apples, bananas, pears, and oranges. They get things like jicama sticks, blueberries, strawberries, white peaches, spinach and romaine. Next year we’ll start offering a kale salad with diced apples and pears. Plus we are going to do some different spinach salads and a faro salad.
PCS: How has PCS made a difference for you at Manteca?
Patty: Support is the biggest contributing factor, in particular their responsiveness and attention to detail. Whenever there is an issue, I can count on it being remedied effectively and efficiently, which is appreciated by our IT staff, as well.
We at PCS are proud of Patty, her staff, and her wonderfully creative programs. We appreciate having Manteca USD as a customer!
Check out the article from Who’s Cooking School Lunch? featuring Patty Page!
Jan
I’ve used PCS for over 25 years and have consistently found that whenever I needed assistance, the response from support was very quick and on target to resolve any issues. The company has made it their business to put their customers’ needs first, rather than just trying to sell their “latest and greatest” to make a buck. Everyone, from the company General Manager, David Yaniv, to the support techs (too numerous to name), make their best efforts to be available when we need them and are patient with us “non-techies!”
I honestly believe that the main reason for our district’s successes in surviving audits can be attributable to the unfailing quality of PCS products and the service provided by the people representing the company.This certainly adds to our ability to provide rapid service to our students through quick serving lines and virtually seamless data integration with our central office and systems.
Thanks for the opportunity to say, “Well done, folks!!”
Michelle Perkins, SNS – Okeechobee County School District, FL
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