Picture this: A major Hollywood motion picture production company decides to produce a new action/adventure movie. The first and most important decision the producers make is who to hire as director. The director is given clearance to create the picture based on his or her skills as an idea person, his or her ability to envision the end product, and his or her ability to lead and guide each and every player, participant, observer and contributor in the quest for an unforgettable, life-altering experience.

Such is the role of the camp director and food service director. Though the pay may not be in the same league as a movie director, the camp directors play an equally significant part in the making of a life-altering experience for those under their leadership. With this unique status, the director also has a somber responsibility to put everything he or she has into the current project, be it a 10- week summer camp session, a specific lease group, board and volunteer development, fund-raising campaigns, a simple sewer line replacement project, or a barbecue in mass proportions.

In the book by John C. Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, it states “The main difference between leading and managing is that leadership is about influencing people to follow, while management focuses on maintaining systems and processes.” It also says “the best way to test whether a person can lead rather than just manage is to ask him to create positive change. Managers can maintain direction, but they can’t change it. To move people in a new direction, you need influence.”

This concept of leading versus just managing is the entire focus of changing the way food service at camp is approached, and the camp director and the food service director are in the true leader positions to make good changes come about. Leadership experts, as quoted in Maxwell’s book, made a discovery about the relationship between growth and leadership: “It is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from their followers.”

Camp and food service directors fill a unique role in the ever-changing camp world, and, if they choose to accept their mission of leading and guiding hundreds of campers and staff through a powerful, life-altering experience, they can see their dreams come
true. Good food and service go hand in hand, and with a great leader paving the way, success is inevitable.

A leading nutrition textbook for college-level nutrition courses titled Nutrition: Concepts and Controversies suggests that food and nutrition are much more than eating. Food satisfies many more things than just hunger, and with color, variety, texture, presentation and quantity at play, a camp food service operation has an important task in preparing and presenting tasty, nutritious, colorful food that appeals to the customer.

Remember this: Camp food not only feeds the stomach but it can also feed the soul of a camper through service, love, attention, activity, and positive experiences.

So, hopefully this manual will help you select quality kitchen staff, know what to expect from the kitchen and its employees, how to conduct a kitchen staff orientation, how to offer staff training options, cover the essentials of communication in the kitchen, discuss risk management, health department issues, money issues and how to achieve financial success in the kitchen, menu planning, environmental concerns, and we’ll include sample job descriptions, sample menus, sample food cost reports and an overview of what the kitchen expects from the director.

Welcome to the changing world of camp food service, and with you at the helm of this powerful experience, it is no surprise that camping truly does provide a child a world of good.