Interview with Chef Andy

1. What made you pursue being a chef?

Andy: I was attending Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, studying natural resource management. To pay for the expenses of college I worked in the kitchen. The chef in the kitchen at my school was attending a nearby culinary school. I got side tracked and ended up going there.

2. Did you go to school for cooking? If so what credentials do you have?

Andy: I went to Grand Rapids Community College and earned a Culinary Arts Degree. Most of what I learned was outside of school. The actual experience of working in the kitchen is where I learned skills and mastered them.

3. What are your favorite parts of working as a chef/ in the dining hall?

Andy: My favorite part of working as a chef would definitely be the creativity. Working with all of the different products in raw form and being able to create them into something pretty unique. My favorite part of working in the dining hall is being able to work with students. Many people don’t realize that their eating habits right now will affect them later. I want them to know what exactly food is and what food is healthy.

4. Is it hard to come up with new dishes?

Andy: We have the month to month menus so I don’t have to make it up that day. The challenging part is coming up with dishes that I can prepare for such a large amount of people coming through the dining hall each day. At restaurants the menu can be longer with many different meals because everybody is getting something different.

5. What is your least favorite part of your job?

Andy: My least favorite part of working in the kitchen would have to be waking up early. I have to get here in time to start preparing breakfast dishes. Sometimes I wake up as early as 4:30, but not always. I do prep work the night before to take off some time in the morning.

6. Do you enjoy working with everyone in the kitchen?

Andy: Yes! We have a great crew working in the kitchen. It is really important to have good connections and have reliable co-workers. Working in the kitchen is fast paced. Especially if you’re working in a restaurant, there are many different meals being prepared at one given time. Here in the dining hall, we are only preparing one meal for the entire school. There are such big quantities of food being prepared that everyone is busy. Everyone has to be working together.

7. What is your most preferable dish to make? Easy/best

Andy: Pasta dishes are the easiest dish that we have, that is usually why we make them on Mondays and students love them. My favorite dish to make would have to be the soup dishes. I really enjoy making different soups. Sandwiches are easy as well, and the ham and cheese ones are pretty good.

8. What is the hardest dish you prepare, if any?

Andy: I would have to say pizza takes the longest so I guess you can say it’s the hardest one to prepare. I have to make the dough by hand and weigh out all the flour and roll it out onto trays. We make homemade sauce and lastly we have to pre-bake the dough. It comes out to about two days to prepare it but it is the most popular dish that we have.

9. Is our lunch count in the morning accurate for preparing a good amount?

Andy: It isn’t very accurate. However, I have come to find out that it is typically off about 80 to 100 students short each day, not only for the high school but the middle school as well.

10. If we were to pay full price how much would a meal really cost?

Andy: It depends on what dish we are making. However, if this food were for a restaurant you would have to pay three times as much as we pay right now. Though, we are not trying to make money we are just trying to get an even price. Sometimes we make a little, sometimes we lose a little and sometimes it’s about equal. There are also the students who get the free and reduced lunches; we get a portion of it reimbursed from the government.



Chef Andy is a very outgoing, friendly guy. We are lucky to have someone that is knowledgeable about food and cares about teaching and helping us learn the importance of a healthy diet. Hopefully, our schools will be able to sustain this outstanding lunch program provided for us.


By Christine GrosJacques and Meaghan McCormick