I have been very fortunate to have landed a job at the brand new Royal Bay Secondary School.  The mascot for the school is the Ravens, and the cafeteria has been christened Ravenous Café.  The Café will offer the students the possibility of working in a fully functional commercial kitchen, cooking the lunches for the cafeteria.  My role as the teacher, has given me the opportunity to help set up the kitchen.  I have been responsible for the ordering of all the smallwares (pots, pans, utensils, etc).  The school is scheduled to open in the fall of 2015.  The goal of Ravenous Café is to provide healthy and nutritious meals to the staff and students of RBSS.

Short Term Goals

The short term goals for Ravenous Café it to set up a program that entices students to learn about how to prepare healthy foods for themselves and others.  One of the goals in the first three years of the program is to set up a functional garden space that will provide students with the opportunity to get there hands dirty and to see where their food comes from.  Community ties are another piece that will take priority in the first two years.  Royal Bay Secondary is located in an area that has a large amount of agriculture, providing lots of opportunities for connections to be made.  Branding is another area that I want to develop in the first year.  I am hoping to find students who are willing to design a logo to go along with the name.  Branding is important for me in two ways.  First, it give us a unique identity within the school, and puts a name to the cafeteria.  The second, is that it opens up possibilities for future development of products that can be sold outside of the school.

Long Term Goals

The long term goals for the cafeteria are based around continuous growth and evolution.  Once the garden has been established I would like to add a greenhouse with hydroponic and aquaponic systems.  I would like to offer community dinners, where students from the class cook and serve meals that focus on local products.  Once connections have been made with regional  producers, I hope to use their excess produce to create value added products under the banner of Ravenous Café.  I see this as a way to both help farmers increase revenues, give students a more in-depth look at the food system, as well as earn money for the program.  A long term personal goal for me is to set up a farm that has ties with all the local culinary programs (both secondary and post-secondary), to give students a more hands-on appreciation of where food comes from.