CUPBOARD'S FULL; PROFITS RETURN TO CAFETERIA AGENCY.

Byline: Patricia Farrell Aidem Daily News Staff Writer

There are two things you learn when you're in charge of feeding lunch to 9,000 kids a day.

If it looks nutritious, they won't eat it.

If there's anything green in the nacho cheese sauce, they won't eat it.

``The kids are our customers. We have to please them. Within reason, of course,'' said Pavel Matustik, chief administrative officer of the one-of-a-kind Santa Clarita Valley School Food Services Agency.

The trick in providing cafeteria food to the valley's 29 elementary schools is to make nutritionally balanced food appealing. On occasion, Matustik uses his own daughters, Meghan, 9, and Alexandra, 7, as taste testers.

After a rocky start nine years ago, the agency has declared victory over a dismal financial start, the resulting flood of public criticism and, most importantly, the picky pallets of 9,000 little kids who think the four food groups are chicken nuggets, french fries, ketchup and Gummi Worms.

The agency is the nation's only central kitchen run by a joint-powers authority representing four separate public school districts. Three of those districts - Newhall, Sulphur Springs and Castaic Union - financed its creation and only this summer received the first repayment on the 1989 investment. The Saugus Union School District came on board last year and the agency also contracts with three local preschools.

In June, the agency paid $30,000 to the three districts and expects the entire $5 million start-up cost to be repaid by 2011, Matustik said.

Matustik came to the agency five years ago, the former director of food services for the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District.

``It was a huge challenge,'' he said. ``Even though I did research on the agency before I took the job, you never see or know all the challenges you'll face. It was worse than I thought it would be.''

Sales were low, morale was crashing and the financial reserve was a meager $15,000.

``We were in trouble,'' he said. ``We were barely able to pay the employee salaries. We had difficulty paying bills to the vendors.''

With some reshuffling, and with the help of an improved economy, the number of youngsters at member schools buying lunches rose from 35 percent to 43 percent. Breakfast is also served, mostly to children from needy families.

The budget has nearly tripled, from $1.5 million to $4.3 million. The agency employs 120.

Agency headquarters is a mix of offices, huge stainless steel kitchens, a 1,000-square-foot freezer and a warehouse that looks like a miniature Costco.

``The kids love going inside the freezer or the refrigerator when they have field trips here,'' explains Anne Grandjean, director of food services.

Field trips are one way the agency has tapped kids for their ideas on what they want in their school cafeterias.

``Pizza and hamburgers are the favorites,'' Matustik said. ``Once in a while someone will ask for meatloaf, but all the other kids groan. Nobody's ever requested lobster.''

The agency prepares meals a day in advance, freezing portions, then trucking them the following morning to school cafeterias where employees there take over final preparation and service.

Bakers such as Cheryl Nava cook pizza, muffins and cookies. The aroma of that breakfast favorite, cinnamon toast, wafts through the two-story kitchen.

Spaghetti sauce, cheese sauce and taco meat are cooked 200 gallons at a time.

``There're no jalapeno peppers in our cheese sauce,'' Matustik notes. ``Everyone knows as soon as elementary school kids see something green, they won't eat it.''

While diet-conscious moms might cringe at menus of spaghetti, pizza, nachos and chicken nuggets, the kids seem happy.

``If you give them only nutritional stuff, they won't eat it,'' Matustik said. ``And besides, kids need a certain amount of fats. And cookies? Don't you feel good when you eat a cookie?''

Still, the agency does have a manager whose duties include checking the nutritional analysis of each cafeteria meal. A second manager focuses on safety operations and sanitation.

During the 1997-98 school year the agency served 1.5 million lunches, 578,343 more than the previous year. Breakfasts rose from 74,650 in '96-97 to 254,449 last school year. And profits - the agency was $163,919 in the red in 1989-90 - were $210,136 last year. In 1991-92, the darkest days of Southern California's recession, the agency ended the year $245,100 in the red.

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Photo

PHOTO (Color) Ana Bunney, right, and Cheryl Nava fill preschool lunch trays at the Santa Clarita Food Services Agency, which serves 9,000 children.

Shaun Dyer/Special to the Daily News