All the other camps in the lakes region started to outsource their dining to the Aramark corporation. Kingly Pines didn't want to go that route. How does an institution like a summer camp provide three meals plus an afternoon snack a day for $5 per person? The camp has average 200 campers under the age of 15 and 100 staff. Also, everybody is very, very physically active so people are hungry. That's a food budget of $1500 a day. The decision was to make everything from scratch. There were only three of us in the kitchen
The food director who was in charge of the pizza station at U of Maine during the winter was awesome. I appreciate that he listened to me because I was coming from the best restaurants in Northern California. We created a salad bar with 5 different types of homemade salad dressing. We baked our own meats for cold cuts. It's not difficult to make home made roast beef and turkey breasts before using a slicer to cut them. The tiramisu caused a riot. Instead of Dinty Moore beef stew, we purchased two top rounds. It's one thing to make beef stew with carrots and potatoes but my recipe uses parsnips, celeriac, turnips, and potatoes. Why only make one type of lasagna if you can make three different types? I bet I could get your kids to eat roasted portobello mushroom goat cheese lasagna. Once a week we would make several different facaccia pizzas.
The camp's philosophy is to challenge children to do things they haven't done before whether to get up on water skis for the first time or get to the top of a rock climbing wall, to explore their world, and to learn to be independent. That philosophy was extended to eating too. By the end of every session many the kids even the most reluctant faced with peer pressure to try new things -- it works two ways -- had become gourmands. Turns out that we spent $4.25 a day per person well under budget. The last day of each session when the parents picked up their children we had a big lunch for everybody as the camp did activities that included all the campers and parents for the day. I would say things to the dinning director like buy me four sides of salmon, a couple bags of spinach, and a box of puff pastry. So we were making prime rib and salmon in croute. One of the parents was just amazed and asked if the campers eat like this and his daughter said yes, every day.
Children are curious and if they trust the cook to serve them something that isn't dull and bland,they are open to the experience of good and interesting food. If someone is serving me canned vegetables and overcooked broccoli that was engineered to have an extended shelf life not for flavor, I'm not going to want to eat veggies either!
If you have kids, have a look at Kingsly Pines camp. [1]