Tim Pirolli
Food Service Supervisor
Pemberton Township Schools, NJ

District Snapshot
Number of Schools: 8
PCS customer since: 1995
PCS Products: PayPAMS, Online & Scanned Apps, RIGHTrak, FASTrak, ALANAs and FREDs

Tim Pirolli has been with Pemberton Township Schools for nearly forty years. Beginning his tenure at the district as a Foods Teacher, eighteen years later Tim became the Food Service Supervisor for the district. With over 50 percent free and reduced participation, Tim’s department serves 3000 meals at lunch and 1000 at breakfast across 12 locations covering 62 square miles across central NJ. Meals are also provided at four sites over the summer. Pemberton was first district in New Jersey to begin using scanned apps!

As is the case with any district the goal of the program is to offer nutritious meals and to provide fast paced service and accountability. And Tim and his staff do just that. We asked Tim what he likes most about PCS, to which he responded, “There are many point of sale companies with many products but PCS has a proven track record of service. In fact, we have NEVER had an issue that PCS Support didn’t quickly resolve. They helped with every audit!”

Priscilla Urban
Food Service Specialist
Ferguson-Florissant School District

District Snapshot
PCS Products Used: RIGHTrak & FASTrak
Schools: 23
PCS customer since: Spring 2013

PCS: How long have you worked at the district?
Priscilla: It will be 16 years in October.

PCS: Tell us about some of the jobs you have had in the district.
Priscilla: I was originally hired as the Secretary to the Assistant Principal at one of the Middle Schools and started at the Food Service Department in July 2000.

PCS: What is your involvement with the PCS systems?
Priscilla: I put together all the specifications for the RFP, interviewed all the candidates and tried out the software before we made the decision to choose one. After we chose PCS for our district software, I worked with with the implementation team to get everything set up. We had some very specific requests for our district and PCS made it happen. The support team was very helpful, training me on the new system. I worked very closely with the Project Manager, Jose Romani, on the special items we requested. The sales representative, Aaron Subar was also wonderful to work with.

PCS: What accomplishments are you proud of?
Priscilla: I made several changes in the Food Service Department in regards to the cash procedures,creating different ways to make sure that each cashier is accountable for cash and meals. I provide hands-on training to all managers and cashiers each year before the school year starts, individualized to their experience level.

PCS: How have PCS products helped the district?
Priscilla: I save time with the PCS system. It has great features such as the Allergy Alerts, tracking each cashier on a daily basis, and detailed reporting. The system also allows us to stop bad checks and alert the cashiers to collect money from students or adults.

PCS: What do you like best about PCS?
Priscilla: The great support. I can always call PCS to get help very quickly and resolve all the technical issues.

PCS: Is there anything new and exciting coming up for you or the food service department?
Priscilla: This is the first year that our district is on CEP, which means we’re feeding students for Breakfast and Lunch at no cost to the students. We participated in the Healthy School Breakfast Challenge and the Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Program. Our district also received grants from Midwest Dairy Council, NFL Hometown, Rainbow Days, and H.E.L.P (Healthy Eating with Local Produce) through St. Louis University.

Debbie Middleton
Director, Child Nutrition
Pampa Independent School District

District Snapshot
PCS Products Used: TrakNOW, PayPAMS, POS
Number of Schools: 6
PCS customer since: 1994

Texas is a state that is passionate about its sports teams, professional, college and high school, whether it is the Cowboys, Rangers or Astros, or the Pampa High Harvesters. Back in 2006, the Pampa High School football team was featured on Dateline NBC. The story depicts how “Every Friday night, small town America shows its spirit on fields like Harvester. This is a story about football – intensely and passionately played. But it is also a story of family, friendship and faith.” It is that Harvester Spirit which pervades the cafeteria and food service staff of Pampa ISD as well, led by Food Service Director, Debbie Middleton.

Pampa is comprised of 6 schools with an enrollment of around 4,000 students and is located in Gray County and parts of Roberts County. For over 25 years the students and staff are fortunate to have such a loving and kind leader who takes a personal interest in everyone she works with. Becki Rogers, PCS’ Regional Sales Director has worked closely with Debbie for 5 years and appreciates the warm, personal connection that Debbie extends to everyone she works with. Becki said, “Debbie is always there to lend a helping hand, gives you her honest opinion, and is as concerned with helping others grow and improve as she is with getting things done efficiently.”

Betty Zimmerman, a TrakNOW Senior Implementation Specialist, says, “Debbie is one of the sweetest ladies I’ve ever met. She’s dedicated to her employees and wants to make sure that they are equipped to handle everything in the most efficient way.” Betty cites Pampa’s warehouse complex, which is the central depot for all receiving and distribution of food service shipments, saying, “It’s a big job and she makes sure that her entire team operates it smoothly.”

Assisting Debbie every step of the way and an instrumental part to her success is CN Assistant, Rebel Fulton. Debbie praises Rebel and her staff, “I have a wonderful group of people who are part of this” she says. Debbie, to her credit, continues to grow and cultivate her relationships. A customer of PCS for over 20 years, Betty attests that “She goes to every show and every user group and makes it a point to stop by our booth to see our reps and give them a hug”. Just like in the picture, above!

Congratulations to Debbie, Rebel and the entire Pampa ISD team on being our Customer of the Month!

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.”

Check out this video from CBS Miami!

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!

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!

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

Earlier this month, Clayton County Public Schools Superintendent, Luvenia Jackson honored several of the district’s school nutrition programs for their work in increasing participation in their respective school-level programs.

Nutrition Services Director, Audrey Hamilton awarded certificates of appreciation to several school nutrition managers. Hamilton said the nutrition managers were honored by the Georgia School Nutrition Association for having consistently high breakfast or lunch participation for at least three years straight and for increasing school meal program participation by at least 3 percent.

PCS’s Director of Marketing, CD Eichler, spoke with Audrey about her teams’ ability to achieve this boost in participation consistently over a three year period, and she shared with us how they accomplished this. Involving the students was was one key factor. They held taste tests, inviting vendors in to demonstrate new food items to be placed on the menu cycle based on acceptability to the students. Having the ability to be involved in the process and to make selections and choices for what they wanted to eat really created excitement and helped boost participation. Going CEP was another big factor.

“I’m elated,” said Audrey. “Our team works hard to get these results. This is not easy.”

Congratulations to Audrey and her team on this well deserved honor!