Mark This! is a podcast in which we peel back the corporate curtain to reveal the cool and innovative people, programs, and projects that are happening all over Aramark’s varied lines of business. These remarkable initiatives happen because we have remarkable people behind them--building opportunity, building innovation, and building community.
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Mark This: Episode 42: Nourishing Students
Host: Heather Dotchel, Corporate Communications:
It's time to Mark This, a podcast in which we peel back the corporate curtain to reveal the cool and innovative people, programs, and projects that are happening all over Aramark's varied lines of business.
I'm Heather Dotchel. As a member of Aramark's communications team, I see and hear amazing things that are happening across our company every day. These remarkable initiatives happen because we have remarkable people behind them, building opportunity, building innovation, and building community. Brisbane Vaillancourt is the new president and CEO of Aramark Student Nutrition. And Beth Ann Engelland is the vice president of operational excellence and marketing for the same. We've asked them to join us today to talk about the importance of nutrition in the K-12 world, exploring our expertise to do just that, and our unique ability to meet ever-changing guidelines ahead of time.
Bris and Beth Ann, you have both been on the podcast before, so welcome back.
Bris, when you were last on, you were with Collegiate Hospitality. What brought you to student nutrition?
First, thanks for having me, Heather. But that's right, I was on a few years ago with Barbara Flanagan for a women's history month feature. Barbara has been an incredible mentor to me over the last few years, and she previously served as the president and CEO of student nutrition for about eight years. Last fall, I had the opportunity to step into her role as she transitioned to collegiate hospitality as the president and CEO. I've been in this role for about four months now, and I am truly having so much fun. This is the third business I've worked in at Aramark, and I have to say we have the best guests. Being out in schools, touring cafeterias, and watching students learn and connect and have fun is incredibly energizing. It brings me so much joy and has really affirmed why this work matters.
Beth Ann, can you reacquaint our audience at Mark This with what you do with student nutrition?
Thanks, Heather, and thanks for having me. I'm Beth Ann England, and I've been with Aramark for 13 years, all in Aramark student nutrition, and I lead opex and marketing for the line of business.
Beth Ann, this episode seems like a natural extension to your last appearance. When you were here last, you talked about being in a highly regulated industry. Today, we'll talk about how well-suited we are to meet the nutritional needs and guidance for the K-12 student space.
March is National Nutrition Month. And as we kick off the month, can you explain for us, Bris, how Nutrition Month resonates within student nutrition and why it's important for our team?
National Nutrition Month is meaningful for Aramark student nutrition because we get to celebrate what we do every day. We fuel student success through nutritious food, education, and fun. For our teams, it's really more than a campaign. It's a moment of pride and for us to educate students. It's an opportunity to highlight the work our dieticians, chefs, operators, and marketers do to meet evolving regulations while still making healthy choices appealing, and most importantly, fun for all students.
Beth Ann, Aramark has one of the largest networks of registered dieticians, chefs, and marketers in the K-12 space. How does this multidisciplinary structure set us apart for the deliverance of nutrition, education, compliance, et cetera?
I love this topic. We really do have an incredible network of dieticians, chefs, and marketers in our business. They're represented in local school districts as in-unit chefs and marketers, but we also have countless RDs and chefs that have grown in the business and are now leading as food service directors and district managers and even VPOs. What really sets us apart is the fact that our nutrition, culinary, and marketing teams aren't working in silos. We value the role each department plays, and it's this continuous loop with the end goal always being an incredible student experience. The structure is baked into how we operate. It's not an add-on. This means that the people designing the food are the same people thinking about the student experience, compliance, and how we continue to communicate all that we do to our stakeholders.
USDA standards, the new dietary guidelines, this is all a very evolving situation. What's actually changing? What remains uncertain? And how is Aramark preparing districts for what's ahead, Brisbane?
I think this is a question Beth Ann and I are answering on a regular basis, both with our teams and with our partners, and even people that aren't currently our partners now. Everyone really wants to know what's coming and how we can all be prepared. What we do know is that the USDA standards and the dietary guidelines are continuing to move towards lower sodium, reduced added sugar, and greater alignment with whole grain and nutrient-dense foods. What we are doing now is we're not waiting for these mandates. We're getting ahead so that as these regulations come to market, we already have recipes that we know students will like. We're already tasting them in focus groups and getting the feedback directly right back from them. So our dieticians, our chefs, and our operational teams are ready to implement these as these changes come out.
Our goal is really to make evolving regulations feel manageable for our partners, to make sure that it's sustainable financially for our partners as well, and to make sure that everything is student-friendly. Our goal is to serve as many students as possible, and we want them to leave the cafeteria fueled and ready to learn the rest of their day.
So when we look at that prep work that we can do for districts, let's talk a little bit about self-op districts though, Bris. Why is it becoming more and more challenging for self-operated districts to keep up? What is that biggest value that we can offer a self-operated district?
As regulations become more complex, it's becoming even more difficult for these self-operated districts to keep pace because compliant isn't just about reading regulations. It's about interpreting, implementing, and sustaining them. We have a lot of great technology. We're really leaning into the AI space, and so we feel like we can be a great partner for all of these self-op districts. Districts are juggling evolving USDA rules, supply chain constraints, staffing challenges, and student acceptance, often without dedicated infrastructure to stay ahead. That's really where we can provide the most value. We bring scale, specialization, registered dieticians monitoring regulatory change, chefs adapting menus in real time, and systems that ensure compliance without disruption. Our role is really to take the complexity and the challenges off the district's plate so that they can stay focused on students while we deliver consistency, confidence, and long-term stability, while also having a lot of fun.
I'm going to put you on the spot. You mentioned AI. When you say that, are you referring to Culinary Co-Pilot? And if so, how does Culinary Co-Pilot make keeping up with these regulations that much easier?
Heather, you got it. And Beth Ann is right here. I mean, Sheep is in Culinary Co-Pilot on a regular basis with our dieticians and our chefs, so I'm going to turn that question over to her.
We have a really strong systems' backbone that keeps us not just compliant, but ahead of the curve. So specifically in PRIMA, our proprietary menu system that helps us build and monitor menus and cost and compliance, last year, we partnered with our incredible IT team to expand capabilities and leverage AI in PRIMA. And that's, Heather, what you described as Culinary Co-Pilot. This feature in PRIMA is designed to support operators with purchasing and menu planning decisions to help them optimize and stay compliant all in real time. So it gives our operators the ability to shift fast without sacrificing accuracy or creativity. And honestly, it's become a huge advantage for us.
We clearly can offer strong support to districts. How do we support the students themselves?
We support our students, not only with food on the plate and exceptional service, but also, we continuously innovate around nutrition education. So from posters to our limited time offers. We've also received USDA recognition for that work. We're really proud of that. We have a number of incredible examples across the business. I'll just pick a couple to highlight.
Bentonville Public School in Arkansas was recognized for its collaborative hands-on approach to nutrition education that integrates culinary learning with physical education and classroom instruction. So shout out to Chef Dave for his interactive guacamole making lessons.
Another example is in Greater Clark County in Indiana. That district was recognized for its student-centered experience-based approach to nutrition education that brings not only culinary learning, but also menu exploration and wellness engagement directly into the school environment. So have to give a shout-out to Chef Christine and her team for their amazing work on that.
And then I'll also just share New Brunswick Public School that New Jersey was also recognized for family-centered nutrition education, connecting classroom learning, school meals, and community engagement. So through the Federal Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program at a few schools, about 1,500 students participated in a hands-on cooking demonstration, they did competitions and garden-based lessons. So I have to give a shout-out to Rachel, our dietician in New Brunswick.
Well, a big haza to all of them. We do a lot of work with students in the community, with taste testing. I love when Chef Laura is sitting down with the students and they're taking bites of new things and giving their feedback.
Beth Ann, can you talk a little bit more about how our dieticians, chefs, marketers collaborate to bring nutrition to life in ways that students truly understand and engage with?
There's a lot of studies that say that the school meals are the healthiest meals that children receive in a given day, and that's because we're monitoring the sodium levels and they're not jammed full with added sugars, and everything is whole grain and it's lower sodium. And our challenge is to make it still fun and exciting and get these kids wanting to dine with us and to consume the food. But we love that challenge. It's the best challenge. It's what gets me out of bed in the morning.
One of my favorite ways that we engage with our students is through sampling events and our limited time offers. Our limited time offers are developed by our culinary alliance team of chefs that are around the country, working in units, in schools every day, coming up with these ideas that are really student-focused. And all of these limited time offers, we have a number of different marketing assets and collateral that we develop to support and really drum up excitement to get students engaged in our menu planning process.
Our LTOs also have a health and wellness poster. So they're not always nutrition messages, but sometimes they're just fun facts about the menu items we serve. A recent one that I had a lot of fun with was our gochujang chicken sandwich, and it was a really popular student favorite. And I didn't know that gochu means chili pepper, and jang means paste or sauce. And gochujang is a Korean sauce that's made from peppers. I didn't know that until we started researching and put the pieces together. Now that's a fun fact that students can take away, and that's a little piece of nutrition education that they can take with them.
What are your goals for National Nutrition Month? What do you want students to take away?
This is the month we get to highlight our culinarians and our dieticians and our marketers that are engaged and dedicated to this work. It's the month to celebrate them, but we'd love to celebrate them year round if we could. We have a lot of really dedicated dieticians and chefs and marketers in this business. And myself being a registered dietician, I've been in this business for 13 years and I'll probably never leave. I love this business and feeding the babies, feeding these students is what gets me out of bed in the morning. I love leading a team that not only is building the menus, but is crafting these student experiences that are just so special. And really, we have such a valuable part of our students' days when they go to school and everyone looks forward to lunch, and I love being a part of that. I love this work. I love being a part of every student's day who chooses to dine with us. I think it's really valuable. Honestly, it just really fills my cup.
Heather, as you heard, I've been in the role for four months and you just heard Beth Ann talk a little bit how it fills her cup. This past week, we were all at headquarters in Philadelphia as a team working on some things. And during lunch, we got to spend a little bit of time with Chef Laura, who's fantastic and develops all of our LTOs. It was just so fun seeing the excitement around the table about the menus that our team is developing and just the ideas and the spark that was created with everyone in the room. And so it's a really fun place to be. We're really excited to continue to raise the bar and be ahead of all of these USDA regulations and really educate students.
Well, I'm going to chime in here too, because I know being selected to sample Chef Laura's and the team's LTOs is quite a coveted spot, which I managed to warm in on a time or two, and they are spectacular.
So looking ahead, what do you see as the biggest shift coming in K-12 nutrition over the next few years, and how is Aramark preparing now to lead through it?
I think the biggest shift is the move towards more personalized menus that at the same time offer transparent nutrition, meaning ingredient and allergen transparency. Our schools expect partners who can adapt quickly as guidelines evolve, but really, that's entrance to the game. We have that locked in. What schools really want is a partner who can flex when student and parent expectations change. We're already preparing for this in a few ways. We prioritize student voice, right? So from soliciting menu feedback to those engagement programs I was referencing, to studying popularity data from our menus and shifting accordingly. Our menu data is clean and transparent, and we've worked to eliminate many of the common food dyes from our breakfast and lunch menus, which we're really proud of to get ahead of. And then finally, we've invested in our teams by investing in the technology. And as Brisbane was talking about earlier, AI, right? We're staying compliant. We adapt our menus faster than any manual process ever could. Ultimately, with our scale and our approach, we're positioned to not just keep up, but to lead the industry as it shifts.
Explore Aramark student nutrition and its ability to nimbly meet every changing school need by visiting our newsroom on aramark.com to access more information.
Bris and Beth Ann, thanks for joining us. Mark This listeners, we are always grateful for your company.
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