Florence 1 Culinary Services Receives National Recognition

Florence 1 Schools’ Culinary Services Department has been named the Chartwells 2024 National Account of the Year. Department representatives Angela Price and Rivers Byrd received the award during Chartwells’ yearly conference. Florence 1 was chosen to receive this award out of over 700 accounts from across the United States.

According to Chartwells, the Chartwells K12's National Account of the Year recognizes an unwavering commitment to innovation in school dining, food and nutrition education, student engagement, operational excellence, promoting diversity, equity & inclusion, and outstanding community partnership while exemplifying the Chartwells K12 values - responsibility, learning, resilience, connection, and fun.

Resident District Manager Angela Price said it was an absolute shock to be chosen for this award because she and her team were just “doing our job.”

“There is an old African proverb that it takes a village to raise a child,” Price said. “It also takes a village to do what we do. We have an amazing team in Florence 1 and we have worked extremely hard over the last year to create a wonderful dining experience for our students.”

Price said that despite some adversities her team experienced personally, they pushed through and ended up serving nearly one million breakfasts and 1.8 million lunches.

“It was emotional receiving this award,” Price said. “I think it shows the resilience of our team. Many of us are products of this district and we take pride in what we do every day in Florence 1 Schools.”

Last school year alone, Florence 1’s Culinary Services served students through:

28 Discovery Kitchens

7 Global Eats

19 Mood Boosts

8 Student Choices

24 Food Truck Events

Florence 1’s team will be going to Orlando, Florida in October for the Compass Group's annual Compass Night of Stars celebration and awards gala. This event recognizes the best of the best in operational excellence and in providing exceptional service to clients and customers across Compass' education, healthcare, business & industry, and sports and leisure partnerships. Over 300,000 associates will be in attendance.

Rivers Byrd, Director of Dining Services said his team appreciates this award because it shows them that others can see the difference being made in Florence 1.

“For us, nothing we do is ever to get recognition,” Byrd said. “It is always about the kids. They are why we are in the schools. We show up early, we stay late; we want to make sure our students get fed. The recognition is nice, especially with it coming from the national level. But we appreciate the recognition from the kids, the smiles on their faces when we see them in the cafeteria, just as much.”