Ever Wonder How Your School Lunch Gets Made?

In celebration of National School Lunch Week, the Department of Food and Nutrition Services (DFNS) prepared Curtido, a tangy, lightly fermented cabbage slaw from El Salvador that’s typically served with pupusas. 

In this video, we’re taking you inside the Central Kitchen to see how it’s made. 

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🍽️ Did You Know?!

In honor of National School Lunch Week, Nick Geer, Wellness Supervisor, DFNS, shared some fun facts about how they are serving the community. 

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• DFNS serves over 18 million meals annually.
• The Central Kitchen is the 4th largest “restaurant” by volume in Montgomery County.
• In just one month, 33 trucks and vans drove more than 19,000 miles—the equivalent of traveling from Gaithersburg to the Grand Canyon nine times.
  During the 2023–24 school year, the Central Production Facility made 3.2 million hot packs for elementary students—enough for one meal for every resident of Arkansas.
• The Ingredient Control Room uses standardized recipes to ensure every large-batch item meets nutritional and taste standards. This careful process produced 69,792 gallons of foods like dressings, cheese sauce, soups, and taco meat—about four backyard swimming pools worth!
• The large soup kettles in the Central Production Facility make 200 gallons at a time—that’s 2,380 cans of supermarket soup in a single batch.