SUN PRAIRIE WEST HIGH SCHOOL: CREATING AN EFFICIENT FOODSERVICE SYSTEM
Location:
Sun Prairie, WI
Scope:
Foodservice Design, Equipment Specification, Sourcing and Installation
At Sun Prairie West High School in Sun Prairie, Wisc., more than 1,000 students a day depend on the school for their lunch. And in addition to the students on campus, the school also produces meals for the district’s nine elementary schools. Feeding that many kids requires an efficient foodservice program.
During planning for the new school, the foodservice director teamed up with the experts at Boelter and Bray Architects, knowing she could depend on their knowledge of the K-12 segment and longstanding relationships within the foodservice industry to design and equip a facility that would not only meet but exceed the expectations for the program.
The project included:
- Central commissary kitchen to support the high school and nine elementary schools (with the ability to expand as more schools come into the area)
- Main servery
- Two distributed dining areas
- Pro Start Kitchen
Keeping Efficiency Top of Mind in the Kitchen
Setting up the kitchen to serve not just the students at the high school but also to prepare meals to be transported off-site took careful attention to workflow, prep space and storage. “We knew the kitchen needed direct access to the receiving dock, and plenty of space for preparation and temporary storage,” says Chris Eger of Bray Architects. With that in mind they designed a hallway near the loading area large enough to house the multiple walk-in refrigeration units and holding cabinets needed to hold everything until loaded onto trucks for delivery.
The kitchen itself was designed with a lot of space for production and staging. Brett Kroening, project manager, Boelter, brought his knowledge of the K-12 foodservice segment to the design, helping specify prep tables and cooking equipment that would increase productivity for the staff. Five combi ovens and three tilt skillets handle the bulk of production, providing a variety of cooking methods from steam to convection to accommodate the varied menu items produced each day. Prep tables were positioned to give staff plenty of space to work efficiently while cooking food and packing boxes to be shipped to other schools.
Multiple pass-through refrigeration units and cabinets were also included in this design. They provide an efficient way for staff to prep meals, load the cart from the back, transport it to the servery and serve from the front.
An Eye on Traffic Flow
Efficiency in a school foodservice program doesn’t end with the kitchen production. Being able to serve hundreds of students a meal within a short period of time is one of the primary challenges of any school servery. The Sun Prairie dining facility made use of a horseshoe-shaped serving line to take students coming from many different directions and direct the flow to where they pick up their meal and then proceed to the POS station. Maria Welch, a designer at Bray Architects, used colors and segmentation in the flooring and ceiling to help designate different sections within the servery, and Kroening specified equipment designed for efficient serving to help improve the flow of traffic.
"Brett’s understanding of the way school lunch serving works and the types of equipment that facilitate that process was invaluable to the project"
– CHRIS EGER, ARCHITECT, BRAY ARCHITECTS
Providing Students More Options
One of the unique aspects of the Sun Prairie West project was the two distributed dining facilities. “The two pods were a real highlight of the project because it was the first time I’d gotten to design something like this for a school, and have distributed dining on a larger scale like this,” Kroening says.
One of the challenges in these two areas was designing them to be functional and efficient. The space was small, without a lot of room for multiple staff. With that in mind, most of the food is produced in the main kitchen and transported down. However, each area has its own prep area with a sink so that some work can be done at the site, such as prepping fruit and vegetables. Having grab-and-go merchandisers in the two distributed dining areas helps keep the flow of traffic moving through the small space, while giving students the ability to get food quickly near their learning center without having to always go to the main cafeteria.
Teamwork for the Win
Creating a successful program at Sun Prairie West was the end result of a true collaboration between all three teams, Boelter, Bray Architects and the school’s foodservice director.
"Boelter's expertise in K-12 was invalauable to the project. Not only were they able to budget correctly because they're the ones providing the equipment, they understand how to help the operator work with all the different funding sources that apply to school projects, including the referendum budget, the school budget, and future money."
– CHRIS EGER, ARCHITECT, BRAY ARCHITECTS
