SO What is Brigaid?
Brigaid was founded by Dan Giusti, the former head chef of one of the world’s top restaurants, Noma, in Copenhagen. After our first year of operations, we are now a growing Brigaid of people dedicated to transforming school food.
You can learn more about our team here.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH SCHOOL MEALS RIGHT NOW?
There are three big challenges to school food currently.
First, and most importantly, the food does not taste good.
Second, kitchen staff are under-resourced and under-trained, which negatively impacts the experience for both staff and students.
Third, the current federal reimbursement model of $3.31 (including labor and equipment expenses) per meal makes the entire endeavor nearly impossible for those without a culinary background.
HOW WILL BRIGAID ADDRESS THESE CHALLENGES AND ACTUALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
All over the country, school food service directors are doing everything they can to provide what is best for students. They are hardworking, well-intentioned people who are overburdened and plainly not getting the resources they need.
This is where we come in. We focus on the kitchen and the overall dining experience. By bringing in a professionally trained Chef whose entire career has been focused on making sure the food is delicious while leading kitchens and maintaining costs, food service directors and schools will finally have the resources they need to provide delicious, scratch-made food to students.
Chefs will train and lead the existing kitchen staff to execute a delicious and scratch-cooked menu, all within the $3.31 budget.
But Brigaid isn’t just about bringing in something new and being set in our ways. We’re dedicated to listening and working with the staff who are already there — and who know the schools, communities and students better than anyone. We’ll invest in their professional training, and forge a new kind of team that draws on the best of restaurants, schools, and more.
Most of all, we’re determined. If the model doesn’t work, we won’t quit. We’ll learn. We’ll try something new. And we’ll continue working to bring our students the best experience possible.
HOW WILL YOU MAKE IT WORK FINANCIALLY?
Brigaid’s model is to make a school district’s new scratch-cooking food service program financially self-sustaining. It may sound impossible at first, but it all has to do with the natural idea of putting a Chef in a kitchen. From this, the Brigaid program increases participation rates, generates revenue, and finds efficiencies in the kitchen to decrease costs.
With more delicious food and greater variety come higher student participation rates. By increasing the number of students eating school meals, school districts receive more federal reimbursement dollars that go directly back to their food service programs.
Second, we take advantage of school kitchen spaces that are too often neglected. Nationwide, these spaces are untouched after 1PM, all the while test kitchens are being built to try to satisfy the outside demand for kitchen space. Instead of shutting off the lights at 1PM, we put a professional chef in that space to generate revenue for the school district. Currently, this has been mainly through internal and external catering. But the possibilities are endless. Simply, we put a professionally trained Chef in a space with the knowhow to take advantage of it.
The last major part is finding efficiencies. As a consumer, we all know it is cheaper to buy a raw chicken thigh compared to chicken nuggets. So, to start, the transition to scratch-cooking has significantly lowered our food costs while dramatically increased the quality of the food. More, with a Chef, schools have a person leading the kitchen who is trained to find efficiencies in a kitchen — from what to look out for during equipment repairs to minimizing food waste — and those efficiencies have led to cost savings.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE EXISTING KITCHEN STAFF?
We are dedicated to retaining all existing kitchen staff. The Chef will train and lead the staff to execute a fully scratch-cooked menu.
HOW DOES BRIGAID PICK WHERE TO WORK?
We chose New London, Connecticut as our first pilot program, and we’re now looking to expand.
We are targeting high-need school districts with six or more schools, and we are looking for districts with administrators, community leaders, and local stakeholders who are ready to embrace the change Brigaid will bring.
We are also looking to work with districts that have food service directors already in place and have large, self-operating kitchens that can serve a large number of students.
If this fits your district and community, fill out our form here and we'll be in touch!
CAN I BE A CHEF FOR BRIGAID?
If you are interested in becoming a Brigaid chef, fill out our form.
CAN I BECOME AN INVESTOR IN BRIGAID? CAN I MAKE A GRANT OR DONATION TO SUPPORT YOUR MISSION?
Thank you for your interest. We welcome the opportunity to speak with investors and foundations about our current model and vision for Brigaid. Please send us an email here.
