Podcast

Transcript

Joshua Miller

Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of the 5 in 20 podcast by Remarkable Academic Foods. I'm your host Joshua Miller where we have at least another 5 questions in 20 something minutes today. And I'm super excited on this topic, school food service design. So I'm geeked out over here and super excited for our guest, Scott Reitano, of Reitano Design Group. Their home base is Indiana, however, they do projects all over the country and they do it for all schools, K -12, private, public and higher education. 

So a wide-based perspective coming in to deliver high value to all of you. So make sure you stay tuned for this episode.

Scott, thank you for joining in today to talk about design for us. And it's a pleasure to have you on. But to start off with that word, guilty pleasure, what is your guilty pleasure snack? Icebreaker question for you. 

Scott Reitano

Oh, yeah. Honestly, that's an easy one. Three days into my honeymoon, as we were pulling through the Dairy Queen drive -thru for the third day, my wife looked at me and said, honey, I knew you liked ice cream when I said I'd marry you. I didn't know that you thought it was its own food group.

Ice cream is my guilty pleasure, no doubt. And I'm not even guilty about it. Like, let's do this. So what's your favorite one? 

Joshua Miller

Is it Ben and Jerry's up there? 

Scott Reitano

Ben and Jerry's is up there. Manufacturers, whoever, but having a chip in it is a win. And if it's coffee ice cream with a chip in it, it's a big deal. Graeter's ice cream is out of Cincinnati, Ohio. I grew up in Ohio, but they're over here in Indianapolis now. They're not putting chips in, man. They're putting like big rocks in there and stuff like that. 

Joshua Miller

Love it. Love it. I'm glad to hear like more people are coming up with an episode and ice cream is up there with them. And I'm like, man, I thought it was alone. Like I love my ice cream. That's that's definitely up there. It is a guilty pleasure for me. 

Scott Reitano

Yes, and dark chocolate like I'm not a milk chocolate guy, but dark chocolate. I love very very much. 

Joshua Miller

Absolutely alright, so Scott so to get things started, let's talk about Reitano Design Group. So what let's talk about a little bit about the history of how it started, but more so what's the approach? What's the Reitano Design Group approach to design? 

Scott Reitano

Well, those go hand in hand. So thank you very much.

Our company started in December of 2004. So we're 19 going on 20 years old right now. It just so happens that my daughter is 19 going on 20 years old as well. Like first day in the door, December 1st of 04, she was born on December 2nd of 04. And Josh, none of that's by accident. I was the president of a six state manufacturers rep firm before that, doing great, having fun. I'm the one that actually told my wife that she was pregnant. I looked at her and said, honey, you're pregnant.

And she was after like 11 years of marriage. So our own little miracle, to be honest with you. And shortly thereafter, I said, I'm leaving the rep firm because I want to be home to watch what turned out to be my little girl. I'm going to keep bragging first girl in five generations. I wanted to watch her grow up. And so this was our opportunity. And so a dear friend of mine had passed away at a very young age. His widow had this design firm. It was basically a draftsman and a project or two. 

And so I bought it, so to speak. And so jumped in with both feet. The rarity of all of that, Josh, is you don't normally see someone go from being a manufacturer's rep or equipment dealer, what have you, and then say, hey, we're going to do this design thing. But the rock in that has always been for me K -12. When I was a manufacturer's rep, I looked around and I understood that, oh, wait a minute, Betty has 12 schools.

I think if that was a different environment, we would just call that a chain restaurant. Let's go. You know, and you see it too, the heart and passion of our school food service professionals. Like, how do you not buy into that and say, let's go, let's do this? 

And so Josh, I walk in on the first day and our draftsman is there, Dave, and I said, all right, Dave, what are you working on? He had an elementary school in front of him. And I looked at it and I nodded my head and I go, okay, I think we got this. Follow the food. And you literally, that's our, like, I just gave away our whole design secret right there, man. I'm sorry, but that's still today. Like we should all be able to make sense. You walk in the back door. What does your storage look like? I'm anti, I'm anti a few things, but I'm anti teen slasher movie looking your walk -ins. You know what I mean? Like one little light in the corner, Betty's going in, hold on, you know, no, it should be light and bright in there. It should be white, you know, all those kinds of things.

And you should be able to come in, but you go from storage to production, to transition with pastors and what have you to the frontline, which is where we're serving kids. So that progression still stays the same. And I got it from that. We've certainly grown. There are 11 of us now, Josh. We have people in Chicagoland, Grand Rapids, Michigan, over in Ohio and Toledo. We hang out at Studio One. Well, not today. I'm in the basement of my home today with. Bob, my co -host. But we are in downtown Indianapolis as our home headquarters. And our primary market, the number one market that we serve, not the only market, but the number one market is still what we call primary education or pre -K through 12. And you were dead on, we do it on a national basis. We actually, I can brag and say we're international. We've been projects in the Cayman Islands, two projects in Qatar, and even in Shenzhen, China, we've done a project. So I did not have to go there. That's all good news. 

Joshua Miller

Very impressive. Yeah. Absolutely. Tell all and tell all and anyone that if you're not watching this, his friend Bob behind them is very impressive to look at. So make sure you tune into the video. 

Scott Reitano

So out of all of that, my favorite part of that, Josh, is the fact that we're a design firm. Like we're paid to put lines on paper, to draw things out. I forgot to tell you when I started the design firm, I don't do Revit. I don't do CAD. I don't even sketch.

Like, you know, smiley faces and stick peoples as good as I get. I have the most talented team and wonderful people, but it's definitely not my tools. I feel like a designer and I am a designer based on vision and being able to see things and how we, but I'm a better editor than author man for sure. You know, no doubt. 

Joshua Miller

Hey, you can't be great at everything, right? We all have to have our weaknesses. It's a team. It does take a team.

Exactly right. So in terms of so you're a food service design group, right? And a lot of schools, you know, all of them K -12 and colleges, they all have traditional architectural firms that they work with on various projects throughout the building. So why should a school consider bringing in a food service focused design group when it comes to renovating their kitchen and dining spaces? 

Scott Reitano

So you. Dude, you keep hitting on my heart. Thanks. I appreciate that. First of all, we work with a lot of different architecture firms and really blessed to do it. Professionals doing their thing. There are a significant amount of them even on a national level that specialize in K -12. And they're talking about the changing educational model. They're talking about UNI's kids aren't going to learn the same way we did in terms of, okay, can we go four rows across, seven rows deep, and those kids aren't moving from those chairs?

So the architect is definitely involved. The issue in my mind has been, at least in the past, is how do you update the educational model and say things like, we're going to put educational stairs in and we want more collaboration space and things like that. And then you roll on over to the kitchen and the serving space and even the dining space and go, oh yeah, we're going to put that in the same square we've put it in for the last 40 years. We're not even paying attention. You're missing it.

Our voice, and we talk about being a regional force, Josh, and a national voice. A regional force is where we play and our size here and what have you. The national voice is the voice I always thought to food service or food service professionals, school food service sectors, it's not to them, it's for them. They should be involved in the design process early. We should be talking about, here's our big question, what role does food play in your facility? Because it plays a role. 

The numbers don't lie on this. If you want test scores to go up, what are we feeding our children? You want better attendance, what are we feeding our children? You want to fight food insecurity in and out of our classrooms, pay attention to your nutrition program. All of this matters. You want better attention in the afternoon, when are we doing lunch? In elementary school, you do that before? 

I mean, our big saying is, we want to entice children to eat healthier. So when we look at that, Mrs. Obama in 2011 and the USDA came out and they said, all right, we're going to serve healthier school lunches and completely and totally appreciate the emphasis on school nutrition. And by the way, let's pay attention. I would tell you our school nutrition friends would tell you they were already doing a good job. And I don't disagree with that, but good, give us a spotlight. No problem.

Our answer to that was what's the built environment around it? And Josh, that's what we bring that an architect doesn't bring is our laser focus on this area. So I can tell you about the back of the house and no dance floors in your kitchen and efficiency and all that. Man, where I live and where my passion is, is the research and the homework behind how do we entice our children to eat healthier? You know, if you put the fruits and vegetables first in elementary school and you slice the apples and you sectionize the oranges. Guess what? Consumption goes up about 68%. Dude, let's do that. 

You allow a child to put the serving, especially the cold food, on their plate themselves, consumption goes up. Less waste with that. I mean, all of it ties together. But why do you need a design firm that specializes in food services? Number one, we can be an ally right next to the food service director for our children and speaking the language that they speak. To get the appropriate facility in that says, hey, food and what we feed our kids is part of the educational model. It's not just a transaction. It's part of the educational model. And the food management companies, they're not like, oh, food management company. I'm a self -off fan because I see that passion. I also, Josh, we've been blessed to work with some really top quality food management companies as well. The ones that understand what the mission is and play into that. Out of all of that, the number one thing we'll always remember, and I teach my team is we work for the school district. 

Like we want input from operators, whether they're on staff or they're not, but don't forget we're working for the kids and we're working for that school district. We can't set them up that one food management company, yep, this is the way we've always wanted it. And when they leave in five or seven years or 10 years, whatever it is, the next guy's a hey, like we have to have some staying power in our design, regardless of who's operating it. 

Joshua Miller

For sure, for sure. So let's say that a school is, let's give an example of, you know, in 18 months, they want to do a renovation, right? And they think they're like, all right, today we're not ready to engage any, you know, design firms, but, you know, we want someone that's going to help us visualize a program moving forward into like the next stage, next era. So when should they engage a consultant like that in the process? Is it when the design starts? Is it before the design starts? When do you start to think about that? 

Scott Reitano

By the way, what I really appreciate about your line of questions, and we do kind of like, I'll speak in front of school nutrition associations on this topic. The number one thing is someone forgets to tell the school food service director, hey, we're going to need you help us out in the design process. Or they come in and they think they already know it. And that's not what they do every day. They feed children every day.

Like right, they run their staff every day. They do their thing. My stock answer has to be how early can you have us? Like how early, if you know there's a new school coming and Josh, we talk about working from a dirty sheet of paper or a clean sheet of paper. Not every day, okay, it's a brand new middle school. How much space do you need? Like nobody says that. First of all, we live in a world where square footage and budget restrictions. And that's one of the things that we will, we pick, priorities. 

We talk about like what matters to this particular food service program. And you want us in as early as possible. If it's a renovation, we're going to play with what we have. But we have a lot of imagination, brother. So I see what the walls look like now. We understand what the budget looks like there. Let's start with what role does food play? What are we trying to accomplish? What do you want this to look like for your kids? And we'll work from there and walk through whatever that is. But the number one thing, and you were touching on it, man, I want them on our design team from the word go. This is your program. Josh, our big three tenants that we think through on our design process are context, benchmarking, and trends. And context is, we have been blessed to do schools all over the country. The first thing we want to understand is your community. Like, guess what? Hays, Kansas and the North Shore of Chicago look a lot different in terms of what they want to do, what it means to them, but they all want to play at a high level, brother. You know what I mean? Like they still, and so, you know, we need to understand that. So that's the context. The benchmarking piece of it is quite frankly, how many children are we feeding and what's our timeframe for that? So is it the, I call it the church bus showing up at McDonald's at noon, three times in a row every day. Here's 300 fans, let's go you need a certain amount of infrastructure to push that through, you know, and to make sure that kid in third lunch isn't eating chicken nuggets that were done before the first lunch. Like there's a process to that. So we need to understand that. There's the metered approach, by the way, and we see this in elementary schools where, okay, Mrs. Smith's second grade class is coming down and then Mr. Jones's fourth grade class. 

But those are the kind of thing, that's the benchmarking piece of it is let's talk about the numbers. How much space do we need? Who are we feeding? How much are we feeding? 

And then last but not least is trends. And when we talk about trends and we talk a lot about trends, it's not even necessarily, ooh, what's the school in the next district doing? Or no, no, no. Where are kids eating when they're not with us? And number two, and we have a complete presentation on this, what is the generational impact on food trends?

In other words, like you ask a kid today, Josh, they're not eating breakfast, lunch and dinner and calling it even, you know, a focus group at a high school. So how late are you guys in this building? And one little girl goes, oh, sometimes till nine or 10 o 'clock at night. You're like, what? And it kind of came down to the fact that if you have show choir practice or there's a musical or things like that, maybe that's that late. But day in and day out after school practice for athletes, you know, a chess club could be gone coming before school.

We're putting cafes in on a regular basis because of one superintendent said, he goes, I'm just kind of sick of seeing Starbucks cups. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yes. But sort of played of their generation. That's the trends part of it is not bleeding edge or anything like that, but paying attention. There are customer, if we're not paying attention to those guys, what are we even doing here? For goodness sake.

Joshua Miller

So true and I keep hearing that coming up with like so many people I've been speaking with over the past several months is the cafe is going into K12 schools like obviously always been in colleges, but I never would imagine that that would be such a hot topic in K12, but it is because exactly what you said. 

Scott Reitano

They're seeing the Starbucks cups coming in and they're like, let's keep them on campus. Let's keep them here instead of having them go out because they're going to get it either way. So let's keep them safe here. 

Convenience audience versus captive audience. Captive audience, the last one left is prisons, dude. If you want to serve peas out of a 60 gallon kettle, those dudes aren't going anywhere. Okay, thank you. You know what I mean? But a convenience audience says, wait a minute, we have cafe style coffee drinks on our school campus. Why wouldn't I just come there? You know, that kind of mentality. Now here's what we're seeing, and this is really interesting. Number one, the two fastest growing categories in food are beverages and handheld. And dude, that has everything to do with these guys (phones). You know what I mean? Like, oh, I can look at this while I'm eating, you know, that kind of thing. But the other part of that, Starbucks now says that 73 % of their beverages are cold. So our kids aren't like doing the hot coffee scenario that I grew up on. You know what I mean? And I'm in the minority when I just order a medium and then I have to correct myself a grande, you know, cup of coffee.

I was waiting for a food service director and I was meeting her at a Starbucks because she wanted to get out of her office. And I'm watching like teenage girls roll in one by one, mobile order, pick up pink drinks. They were all the venti. But that's the deal. Like the norm has changed and you know, oh, are you allowed to have food and drink in the classroom? More often than not at a high school level, they're kind of saying yes. But here's the other kicker and I'm loving this.

Let's skip the cafe for a second and call it a, even a fresh food bar, but we have those. I was going to call it a fitness bar, like smoothies and stables in some places, but think more, what are our kids want to eat kind of scenario. And when I say smoothies, Josh, 80% of them want something like a strawberry banana. Like, you know what your popular ones are. Have those ready to go. You know, those are the kinds of things that we're learning from, but they're not going away.

Joshua Miller

That's their generation. That's the trend for Gen Z and Gen Alpha behind them, like seventh grade on down. That's it, man. You nailed it. That's exactly what we're seeing. So true. And before I go into the next question, everyone, if you haven't heard or seen of it, there's McDonald's is doing this new beverage focused concept, which is kind of mind blowing that McDonald's would branch out of their food focus. 

Scott Reitano

Oh, yeah. CosMc or something along those lines. 

Joshua Miller

Yeah, yeah. It's crazy. So I, you know. Not that I'm expecting high hopes on the quality, but I'm super excited for the experience. And apparently when the doors opened, they blew it away. Like there were lines. People were waiting over an hour to get your drink at McDonald's. Yeah, that's crazy. 

Scott Reitano

Amen. That speaks to the trend though, for sure, man. Yeah, for sure. All right. So let's talk about front of the house and back of the house. So there is, we have both and they have one budget to deal with.

So how can decision makers strike a balance between the two? Because I, you know, at times there can be too much focus on the front of the house. Meanwhile, the equipment is on its last leg in the back. So how can you strike a balance with that? 

Scott Reitano

Josh, recently, one of our project leaders, Bronson, the Penske and I were walking through a school because the high school, like I'm clearly older than you. This kitchen was maybe older than me, brother. I mean, it was that old. It was crazy. And in the midst of that, we walk through the rest of the high school and it's beautiful. Like, how do you, wait a second, you know, how do you, um, but the balance and you ask the question front of the house, back of the house, front of the house, back of the house, back of the house, even today with the labor market, the way it is now, we are asking people to work in this environment every single day. You have to pay attention to that. Um, so again, that's your operational hub. 

However, if you want to make money to be able to afford a better back of the house. Sometimes you start with that glitz and glamor. Okay, it's still schools by the way, but the glitz and glamor, the front of the house, because the two places a school makes money after the doors open are athletics and food and theater and music. You know what I mean? So at the end of the day, the food component, yes, we want to feed our children. At a high school level, I'm thinking of additional revenue coming out of that. So it is hard to strike that balance, but it has to start the engine that drives it all is participation I'm gonna get participation numbers to go up if I do the front of the house properly if I do the front of the house properly I'm gonna have the money to afford the back of the house so to speak So that that would be it But again when we roll into hey, we're doing all at once. How do you strike that balance? My favorite part of that Josh is the older the kids get from elementary to middle to high school, the more the back of the house is just merging with the front of the house. Yes. Our kids want to see that, that we call it the perception of fresh. They want to see more of that. So some of the back of the house is actually happening on the front line more and more than it has in the past for sure. 

Joshua Miller

Yes. And, you know, and you said your team members in the back, they spent a lot of time there. I mean, touching on that a little bit, they are there throughout the day, right? And they go home maybe, but maybe they have things where they're not at home, but what are they doing at home most of the time when they're there? When you compare it to, they're doing a lot of sleeping too. So it's not even like they're enjoying them. So in their wake hours, they're spending a lot of time in the school food service. 

Scott Reitano

And the things that we're paying it, sometimes like we talk about the push or pull between those two, but -

When we're talking about the back of the house, we're not actually talking about spending more money. We're talking about how open is your kitchen. Not just from the managers watching everybody. You know what I mean? That kind of control thing isn't there as much anymore. It's a team effort. So if I can look across the kitchen and there's not, oh, I'm just working in my tiny space between here and here, or we put double wide tables in so you could be working on one side. I'm working on the other side. 

Like life is happening in this space. Yes. So we cheer when we get natural light in the space like that's asked. Oh my goodness. Yes. Very least if we get properly illuminated spaces, could we, you know, pay attention to the walls, those kinds of things. 

Joshua Miller

Yeah. I've seen some too dark kitchens. So yeah, I know what you mean. 

Scott Reitano

But nothing in that said, let's double the budget. You know what I mean? And we're also in an era now again. There must have been a time where they had more real estate than they ever knew of or food service consultants got paid by how much stainless steel and how much square footage they took. Like you could lose some kids and some of like how many people live in dry storage? You know, I mean, we actually want a little bit more compact space. Like you don't want seven steps between here and here. You want three steps between here and here. So we're not asking for more space. We are asking for the right shape a lot of times. You know what I mean? Those are the kinds of things we think about.

Joshua Miller

Yep. And so in design, more and more, there's so many ways to implement technology. So just a quick, on a scale of one to 10, where do you place the importance of new technology in designs? 

Scott Reitano

It's got to be, it's not off the chart. I'd put it at like a seven. And the reason I say that is it's not about how much technology, it's about appropriate technology.

Um, one of the things that, and I alluded to earlier, I'm not the target audience. So I might tell you, ah, what are all those bells and whistles? Wait a minute. Who's working the ovens on the back of the house and they're okay with an iPhone on the front of their combi oven kind of approach. Oh, I got that. Okay. It's, it's much more second nature there. So let's pay attention and there has to be a payoff, like not technology for technology sake, but if technology is using an exhaust hood, you and I are never going to see that.

But my energy bill is going down if we do it right. You know, that's the kind of thing. To me, it's part of a sustainability statement. Like where are we using it to use less energy to allow us to use money in other places? In the front of the house, the technology piece of it comes down to anything from TV screens, so to speak, or video screens and things like that to, let's put it this way, two things that I thought, oh, those will come someday that are here, mobile ordering. Even at a high school level, which helps from production, by the way. That's a whole different story. And we've done some cool stuff there. And then the other part of that is that whole Amazon Go technology. If I walk in and I walk out, it's here, you guys, it's not coming. It's here. And if I tell you it's here at a high school level, you and I have this conversation a year from now, we'll be talking about which high schools are using it.

And it's not the honor system. Like there's 63 cameras through there for gosh sakes. No one's getting away. You know what I mean? Yeah. You're watching not only from a room technology standpoint, but even from a there are manufacturers now that you pick up the Gatorade off of the third level of that air curtain merchandiser or glass door merchandiser. Yep. It knows what the weight of that was. It knows you have one in your hand. I mean, that helps from an inventory standpoint.

So definitely a seven and kind of on a really cool rise as to how we're gonna use it moving forward Yeah, everyone has their different needs. So it's not like you said don't just put it in just to put it in And in the midst of that, it's still about blocking and tackling It's still about talented cooks doing a good job and giving them the tools to do that, you know, it really is.

Joshua Miller

Yeah, and and so technology we talked about. What about robotics? Do you see that coming into the scene and being a main player anytime soon? 

Scott Reitano

Man, yeah, again, your time is great. That's a tough one. Yeah, I was on a college campus earlier this week and really fortunate that these two awesome people gave me their time for like three hours and it was spring break. So we're walking across a Big Ten campus, right? And we're in four different dining spaces. But our comp, we're like, it's equipment geeks just geeking out at this point in time. And the conversation about robotics was there because they really have to look into it. We all do in terms of labor and things like that. Yep. And Josh, the Chipotle's of the world, Sweet Greens of the world. Yep. They're using robotics and they're paying attention to how they're using it. Yep. It's not here yet for us like that big arm that does the frying and that kind of stuff. If you're putting a fryer in a school, we have another conversation coming in, not just from a health standpoint, but it's how many linear feet are you putting under that hood? That's a whole different discussion. 

So robotics will be here. They got to shrink a little bit and they got to fit what we need. But they're next. They are. There's no doubt about it. 

Joshua Miller

I couldn't agree more. They're just not a main player yet. It'll get there..

Awesome. Well, Scott, how can people connect with you if they want to continue the conversation on anything that we talked about or anything else? 

Scott Reitano

Oh, yeah. Well, certainly Scott Reitano, I'm on LinkedIn. Shoot me a message there and I'd be more than willing to jump back. And then ScottR@reitanodesigngroup.com. That's our website. Or just Google us and you'll find us. But however we can support the mission. One of the last things I'd say is I try to tell people that I'm anti five compartment beige tray and I'm anti got milk poster. Nothing against the milk industry, nothing against five compartment trays. But in my mindset, how we present the food, how we, we look at the whole factor. You know, I was in a high school recently, Josh, and I was not only like looking at the, the, uh, servery thinking, okay, that looks like a maze, but then you look at it in the dining space.

When was the last time a 16 year old said, Hey, Josh, do you think I could sit at a stool attached to the table? Like we need to be thinking, why would you only use this space three hours a day? How is that a commons area? How? So those are, uh, I'm sorry, I'm rambling on. That's the deal. Reach out to me. I'd love to talk and help support in any way we can.

Joshua Miller

And it would be totally worth it. I can talk with Scott all day and we're going to continue after this conversation. So, thank you for tuning in for yet another episode and thank you, Scott, for everything you're doing. I acknowledge you and everyone on the Reitano Design Group team, ambassadors of remarkable academic foods. It has nothing to do with my brand, it's just remarkable people doing remarkable things in school food service. So thank you for everything you're doing and everyone until next time, I'm your host signing off.