Jill Riggs Awarded Food Director of The Year

Every day of the one-hundred-and-eighty-five academic year, three thousand students are fed a nutritious lunch. Many of those same students eat a nutritious breakfast served in the IMC in the morning. Ever wonder who is behind all that work? Look no further than PHM Director of Food Services, Jill Riggs.

“I’m always updating our menu, depending on what the greatest new trend is on out there. Talking to the students, asking what they want. So that we can continue to do that, as well as of course we have to meet all the USTA regulations,” says Riggs. Riggs dedication has only been to serve the students of Penn a healthy lunch and breakfast, ask the students what they prefer to eat, and do all of this while following the guidelines of what is healthy and what is not.

“A thousand breakfasts and about six thousand lunches per day. At the high school we do about two thousand transactions. Not all of those are lunches. About twelve hundred are actual full lunches,” states Riggs when asked how much food is prepared every day. It is a difficult job to make sure that each student is satisfied and eating healthy.

Riggs works hard every day to stay qualified as a School Nutrition Association member. Her dedication has paid off because Ms. Jill Riggs was named the 2017 Food Service Director of the year by the Indiana School Nutrition Association. She explains the qualifications to PNN reporters.”I do know you have to be [School Nutrition Association] member, you have to be active in the SNA… I happen to be Indiana school nutrition association vice president this year, and I have been active in SNA for the whole eighteen years I have been here, so I’m sure that was part of it, as well as what you do in your district,” she says. Eighteen years is definitely a huge dedication, and PHM would not be as healthy or as happy without Ms. Jill Riggs.
Ms. Riggs will be honored at the ISNA national conference in Atlanta in July. Congratulations, Ms. Riggs, and thank you for all of your hard work!

Also, be sure to check out https://www.phmschools.org/summer-food-service-program for the Summer Food Service schedule. All food is free to anyone 18 years and under at the times and locations listed. Be sure to stop by, and get some free food prepared by the hard-working PHM Food Service team, directed by Jill Riggs.