Narrator These cooks are grilling
4,200 beef tenderloin steaks
at the US Air Force Academy's
225,000-square-foot dining hall
near Colorado Springs, Colorado.
And that's just for dinner.
Over the course of three meals, the staff at Mitchell Hall
will make 590 pounds of hash browns,
375 pounds of eggs,
and 90 pounds of bacon for breakfast.
Lunch will require an additional 127 pounds of bacon,
1,700 pounds of waffle fries,
and 5,400 burger patties.
On any given day, the cooks here are preparing 10,000 meals.
This is the biggest dining facility I've ever worked in.
You're looking at 430 tables, family style,
and you got a starch, a meat, and a vegetable.
You're looking at about 1,300 pans of food
that are going on the table on a daily basis for lunch here.
Narrator: But feeding 4,000 Air Force cadets
isn't the same as feeding your average college student.
Their energy needs are quite high
compared to the average person.
Where most people are trying to eat, like, 2,000 calories,
these kids, I want them eating much, much more than that,
and consistently throughout the day.
Narrator: And on top of the bigger calorie count,
lunch comes with a set of Air Force traditions
three days a week.
We got to see how one of the military's
largest dining facilities
cooks massive quantities of food
across three different meals.
Mitchell Hall has an annual budget of $20 million.
In 2022, the dining facility
purchased 546,000 pounds of meat,
1.2 million pounds of produce,
and 21,000 gallons of milk,
which were served across 3.5 million meals.
Today's dinner is not just any meal.
It's the cadet wing's Recognition Dinner.
Motaz Ahmed: Recognition is a three-day event
where the freshman class is put through
a many stressful event to test their
mental and physical stamina.
Once you make it to Recognition Dinner,
it's a sense of accomplishment.
The freshman class is recognized
as fully qualified members of the cadet wing.
Narrator: To celebrate, the staff is preparing 4,000 steaks,
1,600 pounds of tortellini,
and 788 pounds of orange-glazed carrots.
The first steak hits the grill at 1 o'clock
to ensure the meal is ready on time,
five hours before dinner is served.
The steaks move in an assembly-line fashion.
They're removed from their packaging,
then placed on the grill,
where they're seasoned and then cooked.
They're then moved into a pan, wrapped,
and wheeled away to be stored in hot carts
to keep them warm until dinner.
At the other end of the kitchen,
the premade pasta is poured into pans,
topped with pesto Parmesan Alfredo sauce,
and moved into a rotating oven to cook.
Preparing this much food
requires an incredible amount of organization.
But not just today;
a meal like this is planned out
more than a month in advance.
Maurer: We really want to work
six to eight weeks ahead and commit,
we call it committing our menu, for that far in advance.
And sometimes we'll find that in eight weeks,
there's a holiday meal, so we need to make
special preparations and changes to the menu
for any special events that might be coming up.
Narrator: And the Recognition Dinner
is one of the most special meals of the year.
In the front of the house,
the dining area is prepped for the cadets.
Back in the kitchen, onions, carrots, and mushrooms
are cooked with a medley of seasonings
for the vegetarian beef stew,
while the rest of the staff
strains 788 pounds of vegetables
and moves them into hot carts for dinner service.
As cadets begin filing into the dining hall,
freshmen, known as fourth-year cadets,
typically have to pass out plates and silverware
for the table.
After that, the fourth-years read and study
the Air Force Academy handbook, known as "Contrails,"
as they wait to be seated
while upperclassmen quiz them.
Tonight, the fourth-years
become fully recognized members of the cadet wing
and will no longer have to perform these duties.
River Ferrari: So, during the year of freshman year,
we're required to come in here,
and after everything's set up,
we have to hold our "Contrails"
at the position of attention and study them.
So, they make us do this, A, to form discipline
because we're standing at attention holding our arms up.
So, on Saturday night, it's a fun tradition to come in
and have your upperclassmen do that with random objects.
Potassium, 160 milligrams, 4%, sir!
Ferrari: And then you can ask them questions
like they would with us with our knowledge.
We're, like, yelling at them in a fun manner,
and it's just a really cool experience,
tradition that we do.
Sir, the answer is the bunny!
Narrator: Before dinner ends,
the wait staff brings out Mitch's mountains,
a dessert made earlier in the week by upperclassmen
just for today's occasion.
Ferrari: The Mitch's workers came in,
and they brought us these boxes,
and we're like, "Oh, what's that?"
Then they opened them,
and it's just this pile of dessert.
And so it's pound cake on the bottom,
topped with a bunch of scoops of ice creams
and whipped cream and cherries
and American flags on top to celebrate our country.
And so that was one of the cool experiences
for us as freshmen.
Narrator: After the meal,
the staff in charge of the Recognition Dinner head home.
In just eight hours, a fresh team of cooks will arrive
to prepare the next meal.
Kenny McElroy: Good morning. Cooks: Good morning.
Our headcount for today has gone back down.
We had to increase because of the weekend for Recognition.
So, breakfast,
we have scrambled eggs, bacon,
and the roundabout hash browns.
Let's have a good shift.
Narrator: This morning, the cooks only have 2 ½ hours
to prepare breakfast for 1,500 students.
It's a smaller meal
because unlike most lunches during the week,
cadets aren't required to attend.
But it's still a challenge to finish on time.
Oscar Haliby: The biggest challenge that we have right now
is making sure that we have enough staff on hand
to make sure that the job gets done on a daily basis.
We are open seven days a week,
and we do serve three meals per day.
So the work never stops.
Narrator: Like many other kitchens,
Mitchell Hall is still recovering from a staffing shortage
caused by the pandemic.
The eight cooks on staff for this meal
boil 375 pounds of precooked scrambled eggs,
heat up 90 pounds of bacon,
and cook 560 pounds of hash browns
in an industrial-sized fryer known as "the monster."
Kuzio: As our staffing dwindled,
we've had to go to a lot of predone convenience items.
For instance, boil-in-bag mashed potatoes,
boil-in-bag mac and cheese.
It's a very time-saving opportunity for us
with the short staff that we have.
Narrator: It's a proven method for serving large quantities
of nutritious food with only a handful of cooks.
The staff will spend the majority of their time
transferring breakfast items into pans,
where they will be set on the serving line
for cadets to grab and go or dine in.
But just as breakfast is being served,
lunch prep is already underway.
Kuzio: So, lunch today,
the cadets are getting what we call the California burger.
They're getting waffle fries today.
Again, they get run through our monster deep-fryer as well.
Then we got the lettuce, tomato, onion kits
that come in fresh,
and those get placed onto the table as well.
Narrator: On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,
there's no room for error in preparing the lunch meal.
All 4,000 cadets are required to dine in at Mitchell Hall,
and they're only given 20 minutes to eat.
There's only about a 30-minute window
that they have between classes.
Then right after that, they're going to another class
or military training.
So there's only a small window built in
for them to eat in Mitchell Hall.
Maurer: That limits their options.
We can't provide endless options in a meal like that,
so they do get their one main option.
We usually have a lean-protein option for them,
and we have a vegetarian option, and that's it.
Where at a traditional college,
you're going to go in and you're going to have
different types of cuisines available.
We don't have that necessarily here.
I think it's just the scale that we serve on
is the biggest difference in
how we provide food to our cadets.
Narrator: Prepping the burger patties for 4,000 cadets
takes about four hours.
Cooks start by laying out the precooked patties on a tray
before moving them into the oven to heat up.
In another part of the kitchen,
cooks work together to feed 1,700 pounds of waffle fries
into the deep-fryer conveyor belt.
As the fries exit, they're immediately put into pans
that are later loaded into hot carts.
Meanwhile, vegetables are boiled and seasoned
in two 100-gallon kettles.
McElroy: So, what we have here is our 100-gallon
steam-jacketed kettles.
We cook a very diverse amount of product through here.
Right now, we're doing Italian vegetables.
That's one of the vegetables for lunch service today.
Typically on veg, we'll do about
200 pounds' worth of vegetables for a lunch service.
Narrator: On the lower level of the kitchen,
staff works to wash, chop, and pack fruits and vegetables
for meals planned later in the week.
Prepping food days in advance allows staff
to seamlessly serve thousands of required meals.
Kuzio: Thursday, Buffalo chicken wrap,
Buffalo chicken tenders for vegetarians, waffle fries.
Narrator: But even more crucial to their efficiency
is planning the menu weeks in advance
and storing the meals in the dining facility's
20,000-square-foot warehouse.
Maurer: When we are ordering foods,
that order goes in all at the same time for the whole week.
They get put into a category,
and depending on that category is the day that they arrive.
Once everything comes up the elevator,
we'll separate it and take it to wherever it needs to be.
We have four storage departments,
the warehouse, the freezer, meat, and dairy.
Narrator: While the warehouse staff takes inventory
and stocks next week's food,
the kitchen staff is wrapping up lunch,
moving the last few batches of food onto warming trays.
Outside, cadets get into formation for the dine-in lunch,
which is mandatory three days a week.
The Air Force Academy band begins playing
as the cadet wing marches toward Mitchell Hall.
Newsreel: 2,500 men in the making
march en masse to mess for meals like mother never made.
Narrator: Since the Air Force Academy
was established, in 1954,
cadets have been required to march into lunch.
Once inside, fourth-years set the table and serve the food.
Ferrari: We set out all the plates.
We set out forks, knives, and spoons if they're needed.
I was at the position called the cold pilot.
I pour the waters and set that all for the table.
And then the person next to him is called the hot pilot,
which, he would get all the food ready,
everything, the meat, the vegetables, and the carbs.
He would set that for each freshman and every upperclassman.
Narrator: Today is the freshman class' first lunch
since Recognition,
where those responsibilities no longer fall on them.
They dine like the rest of the cadet wing.
Maurer: It is impossible to meet 4,000 cadets'
nutritional needs and food likes and dislikes,
and so really it's working on them on an individual basis,
just emphasizing the importance of regular eating
and how that affects not only their academic performance,
but their physical performance as well.
Narrator: The Air Force Academy
follows the nutrition standards outlined by the US military,
which requires its most active members
to eat up to 4,700 calories a day for men
and 3,000 a day for women.
Mitchell Hall provides as much as 5,000 calories in a day,
not including food from Falcon Express,
the grab-and-go station inside the dining hall.
Maurer: I order every single item that goes into there.
So I try to balance it out too
with things that are good and healthy for them
that provide a lot of energy and nutrition
with some fun things as well,
like Cracker Jacks and potato chips and stuff like that.
Narrator: At 12:15, lunch comes to an end.
Cadets clear their tables and head to their next class.
The wait staff begins cleaning the tables
and resetting the dining area.
Back in the kitchen,
the cooking staff starts prepping for dinner,
which will be served in five hours.