In the military there are three people you should always respect, the medic, the armorer/supply and the cooks. As long as you remain on their good side you will be taken care of very well.
I’m retired now. This was my career. This is a job that never ends. As soon as one meal is served, you’re already working on the next meal…. and the meal 3 days from then. I loved Food Service.
@@halfsni6804I thought the same thing but they explained why they have had to switch to already processed food items that just need to be heated. The fact that they have less staff still means that they are still having to work hard and fast.
its not only the quantity but the quality hast to be good as well, it needs to be tasty,nutritious and it needs to be enought....nothing wors thanill tempered airmen/soliders/sailors cuz the food sucks, so yah i belive that it is an insanely taxing job props to the kitchen
People who haven’t been in the military really don’t understand the vast difference in quality of everything that the air force enjoys compared to all the other branches.
It still all comes from the DLA. (Defence Logistics Agency) I found that the main difference with Air Force DFACs was in the optionals -- the food was pretty similar to Army. USAF had table service, an ala carte menu, a decent midnight menu and always had a SOLID dessert and salad offering. But in US training bases the food is usually contracted out and they use Sysco or similar products. On Fort Gordon there was ONE DFAC that was military run with DLA provisions, and the rest were civilian run for trainees. There were two permanent units on training side that were allowed to use training DFACs, the Band was the other one. :D
That's really interesting. As an example in the Swiss army, the budget per person is always the same regardless of where you're at, an equivalent of 10$ per day. The main difference you will find is if you're lucky with your cooks or not. But usually it's yummy and balanced. Our biggest army facitily in Thun is roughly a third of the size. And I do have to admit the food served is quite different. We rarely had fried food, common was pasta with some kind of sauce with meat in it. Stews are quite popular too. Otherwise potato based stuff was served very often, things like Rösti (preboiled, grated and fried potatoes) or pan fried. What I didn't quite get was the way the meals were served. Wouldn't it be more efficient if it would be organized like a canteen with a salad bar? Also with a facility this size I'd have expected a LOT more cooks. Looking at my past experience it was roughly one person in the kitchen per 50 soldiers. This repetition course I'll spend in the mountains and we're 400 people with 7 cooks. But to be fair, they are cheaper to pay than professionals because like I, they are conscrips too.
@@etuanno This is a fairly unique to the AF Academy feeding system. It allows them to feed the whole student body in a really short time, and more importantly instills comradery in that small group of cadets at each table. I think the number of cooks was far less than 50:1 because they were not doing any real cooking. The military does use a lot of canned and frozen food -- but not that much pre-cooked or pre-prepared.
the chefs at large events are not something people really think about. this just goes to show how hard people work. glad they get the recognition they deserve !
Not even a box of crayons. There was this one time I recall on a MEU a few days before we got re supplied all I got was rice with tiny chicken bones in a sweet sauce. Boy was I hungry.
Most I've done is work in a grocery store deli, and even that is busy and stressful. This is just...incredible. The organization required, the sheer VOLUME of food you're dealing with, the food safety measures you have to keep in place, etc. Anybody who's done any form of food service understands how much work this is. Respect.
As a USAF vet, I honestly believe that no other branch of service promotes or provides an equalivent balance of quality of life, training, education, and mission execution. Even 10 years after leaving the service, I still catch crap from my buddies who served in different branches because airmen are so well taken care of at home or deployed compared to other branches. The funny thing is those friends have all regularly told me that they would have gone Air Force if they could do it again. USAF culture is truly first-class in many regards.
I've recently had the pleasure of beginning a job preparing well-made & high quality food for hundreds of customers. It's hard work, no doubt. But seeing people eat and enjoy food that you have prepared is a very rewarding experience. I hope these cooks get to experience it every day like I do. Keep it up!
7:51 dude scooping food on to his plate has the Cookies Weed Company Sticker on his ID card badge 🪪 💀😂😭🤯😂😂🔥🔥💧💧. He’s been in the air ready for be Air Force. 💯💯💯. Better than a alcoholic. They wouldn’t discriminate.
As someone who's eaten at "Mitches" hundreds of times, I can say these employees work HARD, and many times their work goes unseen. That steak dinner at the end of Recognition was one of the best meals of my life😅
eh it’s the academy, so they’re buttering up the future officers. that being said i had friends who went to west point, naval, and air academy and the air guys ate the best
As a cadet at USAFA, the quality of the food has decreased since the staffing issues started. I understand that the Mitchell Hall workers are overworked due to the understaffing, but I wish we were fed less prepackaged food every day.
At some point, using so much prepackaged/precooked stuff has got to be increasing food costs significantly, and I have to wonder how much of that cost could be going toward increasing cook wages to attract more staff. I'm surprised they don't have their own in house butchery.
@@WJWeber I'm pretty sure at that scale buying everything fresh and preparing it themselves should be significantly cheaper compared to buying everything frozen? That factory supplying the frozen stuff also wants to make a profit.
@@Duglum666 there are several reasons for this actually. first, it needs a lot of work and a lot of upfront cost to get it started. this puts a big portion on budgeting that military staff overlook because ther are more important things to focus. it also needs a lot of talent and manpower to get it started which is not easy to do and much more complicated than just buying from private suppliers. You need industry experts to build the whole thing from ground zero, all just to save costs? the cost to just start would be far more expensive. Also, the US already has a very good and cheap existing infrastructure network for raw materials. in short, in the long run you are right that it would be cheaper. but for how long? how long until it saves money til it pays back the initial investment? and what if the us military decides to downsize? the complicated production process of raw material can't just downsize with it like you would dismiss people and dismantle equipment. dealing with responsibilities in fast reforms work out a lot better when given to private companies for some of these things. raw material is just a whole different game and a much bigger industry that is incomparably complex compared to just cooking.
@@R32R38the cooks are not accessing or getting near classified information, the only clearance they’d need is one that allows them to access the base and their specific work area. The security investigations aren’t cheap but they’re also not expensive. Part of the issue is also how long the process can take, speaking from experience here.
Best military chow I ever had was the DFAC at Camp Bondsteel. The cafeterias at the NATO camps all throughout the Balkans were not that good, so during patrols (I was an MP) we found any excuse we could to go to Bondsteel or Camp Able Sentry for lunch. The facilities were run by KBR (Halliburton), so yes there was definitely lobster and crab....but only on certain days.
Good video. I spent 4 years in the Navy as enlisted on board ships and living on base. All the food was prepackaged and frozen and yes we had lobster. Trying to feed that many people fresh food every day would be cost and labor prohibitive.
I’ll be honest, I worked at Mitches for 8 years on the waiter floor. In regards to food, when I worked there it was more home cooked style and very little packed foods. This might get me fussed at but I will say this, yes understaffing is an issue. However, nobody has looked into the REAL reason why. Staff were leaving way before the pandemic.
The amount of pre-packaged plastic waste seen of them spending what is probably hours a week opening inadequately sized small packages of food is shocking. How are they not using large 10lb+ sacks for stuff as basic as salad or pasta kits? It looks like they drove down to a market and cleared the shelves of consumer foods just to build a dinner like any of us would rather than using a supplier. This looks like it equates to trashbags of plastic waste alone per meal service. Imagine cutting this into 1/10th the waste and the impact it would have?
Did you watch the video? It was to save time since they don’t have the same amount of staff prior to the pandemic to prep that food. They spend a majority of the time to set all the dishes out.
@@MorningWoood I saw; I wager that they spend an enormous amount of time opening tiny little baggies contrast to smaller quantities of larger ones. Just because a process has become efficient doesn't mean that it can't be even more efficient.
Just to explain, not excuse: it's cheaper to buy a common thing than an uncommon thing. For example, they opened tons of small bags of frozen veggies; but for the factory the packages those vegetables, it would be really expensive to stop the processing line, increase the volumes on each machine, order the different sized bags, keep track of which boxes were full of the 2 lbs bags vs the 20 lbs, and making sure they get shipped correctly, etc. It's just a lot more to do logistically. And if only one customer buys that different product, then that customer will have to eat the entire cost of those changes. And the customers usually choose just to buy the thing that's already available. Granted, for an operation this size, it probably wouldn't be super difficult to justify the cost. But just as a general rule, changing anything at the single, centralized processing facility will cost A TON of money, which you probably wouldn't be able to amortize quickly, because there aren't many customers.
It's sad to hear about understaffing, and the corresponding increase in the reliance on pre-prepared food. But good on all the chefs and cooks in the kitchen for making the most, given their difficult circumstances. That's a tough job which most people couldn't do. I hope the cadets appreciate all the hard work.
All thanks to the covid pandemic scare. The fear mongering, vaccination pushes, the lies, etc. It was all about control and now we see the harmful affects of our government pushing false narratives on us. People woke up.
As always; I recommend seeing the efficiency of a Large Cruise Ship ( specifically Norwegian Ships) of how they not only serve these large quantity of food , but serve 5 Star dinners. If you go on a ship I recommend the Kitchen Tour. It’s impressive…. You won’t be impressed by these military videos ( and I am retired) … but you’ll be amazed at the fine dining at these ships.
I work for a food truck company they had a Air Force academy golf event. That has to be one of the hardest gigs I have worked. over 300 people in 3 hours just me and someone else in the truck… they do not play around there I’ll tell you that right now.
I did 30yrs in the Air Force~Kudos to all the mess who gave their all~~Everyone of you fed us well, from breakfast, lunch, dinner, mid-rats...Thank You~~
I'd love to see the USDA or NIH put out official recommendations for how to practically serve that many people nutritionally balanced food that they'll actually like eating.
Amazing video of hard working cooks. I didn’t understand how much time, effort and discipline go into feeding service members. Thank you for all those cooks, I’m not a service member, but I respect what they and our service members do for our country.
Simply incredible so proud to see how your team or staff feed an incredible large group of military members. A huge humanitarian effort great performance. Glad to see our military being looked after so well as they are our defence. Thank you👏👏
Another great video highlighting our armed forces. Kudos to your entire production team. I love these videos. Jungle school is still my favorite! Thanks, for all of your hard work!
Lots of respect for the kitchen staff before modern technology who actually had to peel and cook the meals rather than rely on pre-packaged or prepared meals
idk how "understaffed" it would have been though...maybe it balances out because the chefs back in the day would have made their wives and kids get in and help lol. Just would have been straight up manpower. Now this system of businesses are always "understaffed" to save money on people and rely on motivating them to work extra hard. It costs less to just fire someone for being too slow and making everyone else handle the load till someone fast enough comes along. We are the machines now.
Was Army. One time was on a flight when we had to land in an emergency. We landed on an Air Force base. The chow hall was the bomb. No 2 starch rule. When I was done eating chow. We took our plates and treys to clean them up. A full bird Col stands up and yells. “ You stupid Army fucks. We have people to clean your trays” 😂
The amount of people who likely have absolutely zero experience with this scale of food preparation (or even cooking in general...), but decided to comment about how they are shocked/appalled/dismayed/angered by this video as if they were somehow experts in this subject, makes me laugh. Or cry. I'm not sure which. 😂
airman here it's amazing the amount of time the cadets get to eat! must be nice! served 2007 through 2010. Life support to my best friends who passed away down range or when they got back RIP.
I wondered how covid would impact these types of kitchens both the cost of food but also staffing issues. It's interesting to see that a lot of the breakfast items are processed and just need to be heated. It's still a lot of work for a relatively small staff.
I'm a little disheartened by how much food came prepackaged. I would have thought a premiere military academy could afford to feed these kids fresh food.
Marines: Here is your dinner **gets handed a warm sandwich, which then gets knock out of his hands and then gets spat in the face** Airforce: waahhhhhhhhhh my steak is medium, i wanted it to be medium rare!!!!!!
If the government has the capacity to provide meals for such a significant number of cadets each day, it raises the question: Could they also extend this capability to feed the homeless population? It's worth contemplating why there might be a reluctance to do so.
Well for one the homeless aren't working for the government and serving us. Two, many homeless are actually drug addicts/alcoholics/mentally ill. You can try feeding them all you want but they don't move forward in life. It's a fact. Should you keep paying more in your taxes to feed the people for the rest of your life when there is no improvement? I wouldn't.
@@pocketinfinity6733 Agree... what the government can do is fix the housing problem because minimum wage cant even equal to today's rent (Assuming that you rent a place in a very urbanized area). Need 2 to 3 jobs just to cover everything.
10k meals a day that's 3.65 million meals a year. Their budget is 20 million dollars that is $5.40 dollars per person per day for 3 meals. Not sure where the overspending is there.
I’m a cook. I graduated from USAFA in 82. In my service of 26 years of flying and 16 years as a cook, I recall the amazing food produced by the Army at fort Carson in a remote Quonset building during a brief summer training course. I would have never thought great food resided in a small steel corrugated building in the desert.. Great food is found in amazing places. You just have to challenge yourself to explore your passion.
It's absolutely amazing what these military cooks can accomplish in a short time. I just hope the food tastes as good as it looks for our service men and women ❤❤❤
They admit that the food quality has gone way down due to understaffing. Seems like they are honestly serving our troops a bunch of crap with about as many cooks as an average mcdonalds for thousands of people. I don't think a cadet would ever consider boil-in-bag eggs a "great opportunity" but maybe that executive chef likes crap food.
My father was a 30-year man in the Air Force. Some of my fondest memories of being a a little kid are eating with him at the base mess hall. My hands down favorite breakfast is the _Creamed Ground Beef on Toast with fried eggs._ It was supposed to be chipped beef (salted, very thin sliced) but it was early in the Vietnam war and they had an availability issue and subbed in ground beef. It was a hit.
I understand the scale of this, but not a big fun of the pre or partly pre cooked food/ processed food. Just thinking a comparison with asian countries when cooking for similar purpose. In one day they might have less food options but everything tends to be cooked from scratch
@@dennisp8520 Shortage of staffing because of the whole pandemic lies. The extreme fear mongering and lock downs. It hurt everyone and everything. People woke up to it. (Covid is real obviously but it was used as a method of control and fear mongering). 99% survival rate yet they had everyone screaming in fear wearing useless masks.
2:00 $20 million divided by 3.5 million meals gives them a budget of just about $5.71 per meal. Considering how good some of that food looked, that's a pretty amazing feat to pull off! I guess buying in bulk helps out with that though LMAO
Can confirm since being in the Army. Air Force def has the best facilities and the best food. Every time we would visit their bases and dfacs they operated out of in country, we could tell the food quality difference. Was fire every time 🔥lol
Looks like the USAF/DOD should be increasing pay for staff. Bet that would reduce the staffing issues. Trillions spent on defense, they can pay these people more and not buy pre-packaged crap food.
I guess they have to work with what they have, but all those pre-made stuff definitely does not look healthy. I'm grateful for living in a place with better food. 🙏🏻
I have no end of my respect for the people who make these meals happen. Aside from staffing, how can we get back to less processed and ultra-processed foods?
Stop allowing government to control and fear monger. 99% survival rate with covid yet they made the whole country suffer. Things got WORSE because of it. Lockdowns are extremely detrimental. The vaccination lies we were told...etc. Now the military suffer. F government.
In the military there are three people you should always respect, the medic, the armorer/supply and the cooks. As long as you remain on their good side you will be taken care of very well.
You forgot us at the ASP. Other Soldiers who gave me a hard time. We made them count every bullet and casing before they returned it. Ordnance
and the general and the janitor
idiotic young people trained to become killers wasting tax payer money and eating food that causes cancer ....@@mikethemechanic7395
you forgot about admin
nahhh, Finance
I’m retired now. This was my career.
This is a job that never ends. As soon as one meal is served, you’re already working on the next meal…. and the meal 3 days from then.
I loved Food Service.
@@OrbitalTrailsyou judge too much
Thank you for your service
As strenuous as it is, I think this is one of many jobs I would love to take on one day, or at least volunteer for
@JohndocsX.D ,
Occasionally.
That's how I cook in my house from Louisiana
One word: EXHAUSTING. This is an exhausting job to cook for over 4,000 people, but at the same time rewarding.
I don't really agree with the term cooking. i'm sure it's hard work! But what I've seen are lots of small plastic bags that have been cut open.
@@halfsni6804I thought the same thing but they explained why they have had to switch to already processed food items that just need to be heated. The fact that they have less staff still means that they are still having to work hard and fast.
its not only the quantity but the quality hast to be good as well, it needs to be tasty,nutritious and it needs to be enought....nothing wors thanill tempered airmen/soliders/sailors cuz the food sucks, so yah i belive that it is an insanely taxing job
props to the kitchen
@repentandbelieveinJesusChrist8 NO!
Nope, just a normal job..
People who haven’t been in the military really don’t understand the vast difference in quality of everything that the air force enjoys compared to all the other branches.
Army always fed me well.
@@matthewhardin1615 the Army fed me well for 21 years... but im still going to hand it to the Air Force DFAC for the win
It still all comes from the DLA. (Defence Logistics Agency) I found that the main difference with Air Force DFACs was in the optionals -- the food was pretty similar to Army.
USAF had table service, an ala carte menu, a decent midnight menu and always had a SOLID dessert and salad offering.
But in US training bases the food is usually contracted out and they use Sysco or similar products. On Fort Gordon there was ONE DFAC that was military run with DLA provisions, and the rest were civilian run for trainees. There were two permanent units on training side that were allowed to use training DFACs, the Band was the other one. :D
That's really interesting. As an example in the Swiss army, the budget per person is always the same regardless of where you're at, an equivalent of 10$ per day. The main difference you will find is if you're lucky with your cooks or not. But usually it's yummy and balanced.
Our biggest army facitily in Thun is roughly a third of the size. And I do have to admit the food served is quite different. We rarely had fried food, common was pasta with some kind of sauce with meat in it. Stews are quite popular too. Otherwise potato based stuff was served very often, things like Rösti (preboiled, grated and fried potatoes) or pan fried.
What I didn't quite get was the way the meals were served. Wouldn't it be more efficient if it would be organized like a canteen with a salad bar?
Also with a facility this size I'd have expected a LOT more cooks. Looking at my past experience it was roughly one person in the kitchen per 50 soldiers. This repetition course I'll spend in the mountains and we're 400 people with 7 cooks.
But to be fair, they are cheaper to pay than professionals because like I, they are conscrips too.
@@etuanno This is a fairly unique to the AF Academy feeding system. It allows them to feed the whole student body in a really short time, and more importantly instills comradery in that small group of cadets at each table.
I think the number of cooks was far less than 50:1 because they were not doing any real cooking.
The military does use a lot of canned and frozen food -- but not that much pre-cooked or pre-prepared.
As an army vet, may I just say…I am jealous. Those steaks at the beginning alone were better than anything I’d ever eaten in a dfac
i was thinking man they eating good .. lol
Hmm? We had steaks occasionally. Also had trout. That was a special occasion, too.
As Air Force enlisted, I'm jealous
Looks like real food compared to what we get at the dfac
@@redwolfexrSalmon and the occasional chicken parm
the chefs at large events are not something people really think about.
this just goes to show how hard people work. glad they get the recognition they deserve !
the majority of the food their "making" is already premade. they're literally just reheating packaged food. these arnt real chefs.
missed the part where the dude was putting meat on the grill?@@run-cnc
@@KaushNoKash this are not chefs just bag opener.
@@muratti72mucRight
extinguished flipper in chief more like, it could not have been easier for what it was @@KaushNoKash
Airforce "here is your steak."
Navy "here is your lobster."
Army "here is your MRE."
Marines "here is your box of crayons."
Only for the officers. Enlisted af "heres this piece of chicken fat and a piece of fruit. Enjoy"
Marines belong to the Navy
Marines: MRE: Box chow (sandwich wit 1 slice of meat 1 slice of cheese) rasins, egg, fruit,) pretty much crayons.
@@mynameisladder3481 But they are not officers.... yet. They are pretty pampered already all things considered.. tenderloin steak? stfu.
Not even a box of crayons. There was this one time I recall on a MEU a few days before we got re supplied all I got was rice with tiny chicken bones in a sweet sauce.
Boy was I hungry.
Most I've done is work in a grocery store deli, and even that is busy and stressful. This is just...incredible. The organization required, the sheer VOLUME of food you're dealing with, the food safety measures you have to keep in place, etc. Anybody who's done any form of food service understands how much work this is. Respect.
As a USAF vet, I honestly believe that no other branch of service promotes or provides an equalivent balance of quality of life, training, education, and mission execution. Even 10 years after leaving the service, I still catch crap from my buddies who served in different branches because airmen are so well taken care of at home or deployed compared to other branches. The funny thing is those friends have all regularly told me that they would have gone Air Force if they could do it again. USAF culture is truly first-class in many regards.
As a tax paying citizen I don’t want my money being wasted on feeding these guys. They can pay for their own food!!
Being attached to a SFG is the equivalent on the Army side
@@zazasnruntz7505then you be sent to the next war and use your own guns and ammo. Goofy
they are rather privileged yes ?
LET THEM HAVE K.P. AND THE UGLY MESS HALL = CHOW HALL'S
My Grandpa and my Dad served in the USAF. It was tough. I respect the crap out of anyone who served. Thank you.
I've recently had the pleasure of beginning a job preparing well-made & high quality food for hundreds of customers. It's hard work, no doubt. But seeing people eat and enjoy food that you have prepared is a very rewarding experience. I hope these cooks get to experience it every day like I do. Keep it up!
@@disguiseddv8ant486You didn’t have to be rude about it bruh-
@@disguiseddv8ant486bros a hater just to hate
7:51 dude scooping food on to his plate has the Cookies Weed Company Sticker on his ID card badge 🪪 💀😂😭🤯😂😂🔥🔥💧💧. He’s been in the air ready for be Air Force. 💯💯💯. Better than a alcoholic. They wouldn’t discriminate.
That is honestly SO impressive and I hope they’re appreciated. Hard ass workers!
The amount of pre cooked food is expected when they have more manager than actual staff working in the kitchen
Precooked scrambled eggs sound absolutely horrible
@@tawan5753😂 you get used to them
Too many chiefs not enough Indians.
@@tossmesalad old binch
they taste like plastic@@tawan5753
To the staff that make this daily miracle happen. Thank you! You make our Nation strong.
and they make the rich even richer. well done nation
As someone who's eaten at "Mitches" hundreds of times, I can say these employees work HARD, and many times their work goes unseen. That steak dinner at the end of Recognition was one of the best meals of my life😅
Sounds to me like these kitchen staff and cooks are unsung heroes well done to them i hope they are given appreciation days and meals too
Man, Insider really loves this genre lol
Well food does go inside your stomach and I'm guessing they get to eat when they go visit the facilities lol.
If only they could get a new narrator. This one sucks.
@@AllenHanPRdefinetly making these videos for the free food 😂
Military pays them to make these videos because it counts as recruiting.
Damn even the Airforce cadets eat better than us Active Duty Army personnel 😂
eh it’s the academy, so they’re buttering up the future officers. that being said i had friends who went to west point, naval, and air academy and the air guys ate the best
Not the Airmen lol I was enlisted we had no time to eat lol must be nice! Rick did you ever get moldy food? I sadly did yuck!
As a cadet at USAFA, the quality of the food has decreased since the staffing issues started. I understand that the Mitchell Hall workers are overworked due to the understaffing, but I wish we were fed less prepackaged food every day.
Hello! I am applying this year. What were your SAT scores? WHat made you stand out in the nomination process.
Cry about it somewhere else. Fuck’n could be worse, could be eating MREs
@@ayyjayy2583 My brothers SAT scores were 1490 and he got in this year
Good luck, I hope you get in!
I just don't understand is why they couldn't employ the military cooks
That's incredible. I have a lot of respect for these people. They're very dedicated and do a good job.
Wow, lobster dinner (& with such big tails too!) at the USAF chow hall, they're off to a good start!
At some point, using so much prepackaged/precooked stuff has got to be increasing food costs significantly, and I have to wonder how much of that cost could be going toward increasing cook wages to attract more staff. I'm surprised they don't have their own in house butchery.
I can assure you it doesn’t. Raw ingredients would require significant costs.
@@WJWeber I'm pretty sure at that scale buying everything fresh and preparing it themselves should be significantly cheaper compared to buying everything frozen? That factory supplying the frozen stuff also wants to make a profit.
Hiring more staff is complicated because I would imagine they would need security clearances as it's a military facility.
@@Duglum666 there are several reasons for this actually. first, it needs a lot of work and a lot of upfront cost to get it started. this puts a big portion on budgeting that military staff overlook because ther are more important things to focus. it also needs a lot of talent and manpower to get it started which is not easy to do and much more complicated than just buying from private suppliers. You need industry experts to build the whole thing from ground zero, all just to save costs? the cost to just start would be far more expensive. Also, the US already has a very good and cheap existing infrastructure network for raw materials.
in short, in the long run you are right that it would be cheaper. but for how long? how long until it saves money til it pays back the initial investment? and what if the us military decides to downsize? the complicated production process of raw material can't just downsize with it like you would dismiss people and dismantle equipment. dealing with responsibilities in fast reforms work out a lot better when given to private companies for some of these things. raw material is just a whole different game and a much bigger industry that is incomparably complex compared to just cooking.
@@R32R38the cooks are not accessing or getting near classified information, the only clearance they’d need is one that allows them to access the base and their specific work area. The security investigations aren’t cheap but they’re also not expensive. Part of the issue is also how long the process can take, speaking from experience here.
Best military chow I ever had was the DFAC at Camp Bondsteel. The cafeterias at the NATO camps all throughout the Balkans were not that good, so during patrols (I was an MP) we found any excuse we could to go to Bondsteel or Camp Able Sentry for lunch. The facilities were run by KBR (Halliburton), so yes there was definitely lobster and crab....but only on certain days.
Good video. I spent 4 years in the Navy as enlisted on board ships and living on base. All the food was prepackaged and frozen and yes we had lobster.
Trying to feed that many people fresh food every day would be cost and labor prohibitive.
I’ll be honest, I worked at Mitches for 8 years on the waiter floor. In regards to food, when I worked there it was more home cooked style and very little packed foods. This might get me fussed at but I will say this, yes understaffing is an issue. However, nobody has looked into the REAL reason why. Staff were leaving way before the pandemic.
I hope all those cadets appreciate those chefs!
The word "nutritious" keeps being thrown around but I don't see much of it! "Calorie dense" is about as generous as that food can be described.
Ahh right, that food has no "nutrients" at all. Holy silly of them.
Right, looks like they'll be the first one's knocking on the hospital doors when the next wave comes.
The only problem is if those calories aren't burned by the end of the day.
The amount of pre-packaged plastic waste seen of them spending what is probably hours a week opening inadequately sized small packages of food is shocking. How are they not using large 10lb+ sacks for stuff as basic as salad or pasta kits? It looks like they drove down to a market and cleared the shelves of consumer foods just to build a dinner like any of us would rather than using a supplier. This looks like it equates to trashbags of plastic waste alone per meal service. Imagine cutting this into 1/10th the waste and the impact it would have?
Did you watch the video? It was to save time since they don’t have the same amount of staff prior to the pandemic to prep that food. They spend a majority of the time to set all the dishes out.
@@MorningWoood I saw; I wager that they spend an enormous amount of time opening tiny little baggies contrast to smaller quantities of larger ones. Just because a process has become efficient doesn't mean that it can't be even more efficient.
idiotic young people trained to become killers wasting tax payer money and eating food that causes cancer ....
@@MorningWoood prepackaged/precooked food comes with increased costs that could be going to increasing wages to attract more staff
Just to explain, not excuse: it's cheaper to buy a common thing than an uncommon thing. For example, they opened tons of small bags of frozen veggies; but for the factory the packages those vegetables, it would be really expensive to stop the processing line, increase the volumes on each machine, order the different sized bags, keep track of which boxes were full of the 2 lbs bags vs the 20 lbs, and making sure they get shipped correctly, etc. It's just a lot more to do logistically. And if only one customer buys that different product, then that customer will have to eat the entire cost of those changes. And the customers usually choose just to buy the thing that's already available. Granted, for an operation this size, it probably wouldn't be super difficult to justify the cost. But just as a general rule, changing anything at the single, centralized processing facility will cost A TON of money, which you probably wouldn't be able to amortize quickly, because there aren't many customers.
Short of staff: 4 managers planning the menu and 8 cooks 😂
Wish I joined the air force when I was a young man. It's a great learning experience.
“Buffalo chicken tenders for vegetarians?” You’ll eat what you’re given - and like it!!
😄
It's sad to hear about understaffing, and the corresponding increase in the reliance on pre-prepared food. But good on all the chefs and cooks in the kitchen for making the most, given their difficult circumstances. That's a tough job which most people couldn't do. I hope the cadets appreciate all the hard work.
All thanks to the covid pandemic scare. The fear mongering, vaccination pushes, the lies, etc. It was all about control and now we see the harmful affects of our government pushing false narratives on us. People woke up.
As always; I recommend seeing the efficiency of a Large Cruise Ship ( specifically Norwegian Ships) of how they not only serve these large quantity of food , but serve 5 Star dinners. If you go on a ship I recommend the Kitchen Tour. It’s impressive…. You won’t be impressed by these military videos ( and I am retired) … but you’ll be amazed at the fine dining at these ships.
I work for a food truck company they had a Air Force academy golf event. That has to be one of the hardest gigs I have worked. over 300 people in 3 hours just me and someone else in the truck… they do not play around there I’ll tell you that right now.
Gotta love the cooks. Always support your cooks. Cpt William Mount
I did 30yrs in the Air Force~Kudos to all the mess who gave their all~~Everyone of you fed us well, from breakfast, lunch, dinner, mid-rats...Thank You~~
I'd love to see the USDA or NIH put out official recommendations for how to practically serve that many people nutritionally balanced food that they'll actually like eating.
They did. It's really small and easily missed. it says:
*SEE DoD*
Amazing video of hard working cooks. I didn’t understand how much time, effort and discipline go into feeding service members. Thank you for all those cooks, I’m not a service member, but I respect what they and our service members do for our country.
Mad respect for the people prepping and making these meals!
Simply incredible so proud to see how your team or staff feed an incredible large group of military members. A huge humanitarian effort great performance. Glad to see our military being looked after so well as they are our defence. Thank you👏👏
Another great video highlighting our armed forces. Kudos to your entire production team. I love these videos. Jungle school is still my favorite! Thanks, for all of your hard work!
Who gets the lobster tails? No way they have enough time to prep that for 4,000, unless they're also bought pre-made.
lobster tails are given to the people are being sent out, enlisted, so they get the best food
@@lennon9364I like that. Very decent of them
@@einzelganger2939 nah fear grips your heart when you see steak and lobster.
@@lightesthour fr
Do you not see, their facilities are industrial sized, & the people there know what they are doing.
Lots of respect for the kitchen staff before modern technology who actually had to peel and cook the meals rather than rely on pre-packaged or prepared meals
idk how "understaffed" it would have been though...maybe it balances out because the chefs back in the day would have made their wives and kids get in and help lol. Just would have been straight up manpower. Now this system of businesses are always "understaffed" to save money on people and rely on motivating them to work extra hard. It costs less to just fire someone for being too slow and making everyone else handle the load till someone fast enough comes along. We are the machines now.
Cool video, I hope they can get more staff and go back to cooking from scratch.
Wow, check you guys out, heating up pre - cooked and pre - prepared ingredients. Amazing.
From a random 61 year old guy in Canada I’d like express my thanks for everyone at the Air Force Academy for their service!
From a handsome 21 year old guy in PH I'd like to express my gratitude at the Air Force Academy for their service!
I absolutely love learning about the armed forces and how they train and keep things operating. Amazing series of videos.
Go play Arma 3
@@F-I-N-E-R Lol
idiotic young people trained to become killers wasting tax payer money and eating food that causes cancer ....
@@F-I-N-E-RI'll never understand weird people like yourself
join
Imagine dreaming of being a Chef in a nice restaurant, then getting this job where you basically just open up small plastic bags all day
That's the difference between a cook and chef.
nah you know how much these government contractors make?
Airforce: Beef tender loins, Steak, crabs etc.
MaRiNeS: MRE... this is most gourmet food I've ever had.
These cooks are building our future in the Air Force. All those men and women who have become great soldiers are because of these cooks.
Airmen*
THANK FOR YOUR SERVICE
Was Army. One time was on a flight when we had to land in an emergency. We landed on an Air Force base. The chow hall was the bomb. No 2 starch rule. When I was done eating chow. We took our plates and treys to clean them up. A full bird Col stands up and yells. “ You stupid Army fucks. We have people to clean your trays” 😂
It really sounds like you’re stretching the truth
@@FancySeeingYouHere maybe the chewing out but the food sure as hell beats any other bases..
The amount of people who likely have absolutely zero experience with this scale of food preparation (or even cooking in general...), but decided to comment about how they are shocked/appalled/dismayed/angered by this video as if they were somehow experts in this subject, makes me laugh.
Or cry.
I'm not sure which. 😂
so everything frozen, premade, eggs from plastic bag, potatoes and bacon all day and hamericans get excited 😂
Its better than african militaries being fed worms and dirt
airman here it's amazing the amount of time the cadets get to eat! must be nice! served 2007 through 2010. Life support to my best friends who passed away down range or when they got back RIP.
I’m a Navy veteran… And miss my deployment food! Shrimp, crab legs, lobster tail, and steak everyday at sea.
I have never had three meals a day in my entire life..
Honestly I am amazed at how skilled these chefs are to cook so much food so quickly
I wondered how covid would impact these types of kitchens both the cost of food but also staffing issues. It's interesting to see that a lot of the breakfast items are processed and just need to be heated. It's still a lot of work for a relatively small staff.
A fascinating amount of excellent work to keep everything operating smoothly. *3:33* This ladies eye color is really beautiful.
Thank you so much for your service. Thank you to all food/mess staff everywhere in the United States.
I'm a little disheartened by how much food came prepackaged. I would have thought a premiere military academy could afford to feed these kids fresh food.
“How long ‘till lunch?”
“Back of the package says ‘fully cooked, heat and serve’ so I’ll say 30 minutes at 350?”
“Sounds good.”
I love these series of military food and how they feed them! 🔥🙌
yes for US lol imagine what food chaynAaa and n.kOREA has for their cadets. maybe fed with propaganda video and mango juice, HAHAHA
Marines: Here is your dinner **gets handed a warm sandwich, which then gets knock out of his hands and then gets spat in the face**
Airforce: waahhhhhhhhhh my steak is medium, i wanted it to be medium rare!!!!!!
cooks are very intelligent
I swear food tastes better at our school based area (bmt, tech school) compared to our main bases
I know them steaks were tougher then a tire 5 hours later
If the government has the capacity to provide meals for such a significant number of cadets each day, it raises the question: Could they also extend this capability to feed the homeless population? It's worth contemplating why there might be a reluctance to do so.
Well for one the homeless aren't working for the government and serving us. Two, many homeless are actually drug addicts/alcoholics/mentally ill. You can try feeding them all you want but they don't move forward in life. It's a fact. Should you keep paying more in your taxes to feed the people for the rest of your life when there is no improvement? I wouldn't.
Money!
"why invest money into people who arent contributing to society?"
homeless don't want food they want drugs
@@pocketinfinity6733 Agree... what the government can do is fix the housing problem because minimum wage cant even equal to today's rent (Assuming that you rent a place in a very urbanized area). Need 2 to 3 jobs just to cover everything.
Ron Swanson would be happy with that amount of eggs and bacon 😅😂😂
USAF gets lobster and the marines get crayons lmao
Teamwork and organization 🧡
Lobster tails? Does the Navy even get to enjoy that? lol Chair Force!!!
The amount of waste produced on daily basis is sick and stupid.
@@praetorxianthey're smarter than marines bozo
It’s absolutely insane how much money a military base or facility can utilize. The Military Industrial complex is alive and well 😂
10k meals a day that's 3.65 million meals a year. Their budget is 20 million dollars that is $5.40 dollars per person per day for 3 meals. Not sure where the overspending is there.
And that's a good thing
yeah bro its the food that blows out the costs of the airforce not the billions speny on state of the art aircraft and electronic warfare systems
I’m a cook. I graduated from USAFA in 82. In my service of 26 years of flying and 16 years as a cook, I recall the amazing food produced by the Army at fort Carson in a remote Quonset building during a brief summer training course. I would have never thought great food resided in a small steel corrugated building in the desert.. Great food is found in amazing places. You just have to challenge yourself to explore your passion.
Thank you for cooking
This was so fun to watch while eating lunch
It's absolutely amazing what these military cooks can accomplish in a short time. I just hope the food tastes as good as it looks for our service men and women ❤❤❤
How is reheating frozen stuff now creating and cooking? Airforce always does have the better DFACs though...
They admit that the food quality has gone way down due to understaffing. Seems like they are honestly serving our troops a bunch of crap with about as many cooks as an average mcdonalds for thousands of people. I don't think a cadet would ever consider boil-in-bag eggs a "great opportunity" but maybe that executive chef likes crap food.
They should be aight. At least they’re aren’t Marines 😂this would be paradise for Marines.
But McDonald’s customers are spread out over the entire day and not everyone at once
The bagged eggs are unfortunately standard across the branches from what I've seen and experienced I like to smother mine in salt and pepper
Love your boldness, friend.
i love these videos. so much respect to these workers
Interesting; can you do the other service academies?
they did one at the USMA.
@@jumpingjeffflash9946 Yep, they did. Good video.
Theirs was much more impressing than this.
@@jumpingjeffflash9946
That pasta needs more sauce dawg.
DROWN IN IT
My father was a 30-year man in the Air Force. Some of my fondest memories of being a a little kid are eating with him at the base mess hall. My hands down favorite breakfast is the _Creamed Ground Beef on Toast with fried eggs._ It was supposed to be chipped beef (salted, very thin sliced) but it was early in the Vietnam war and they had an availability issue and subbed in ground beef. It was a hit.
meanwhile the marines will get gourmet crayons lmao 😭 Semper Fi 🫡🫂
god bless the workers!
Never in my four years there have I seen a lobster tail lmfao
Fun fact: you may have noticed a cadet in blues helping with the cleaning. Thats a punishment
Really fun traditions.
Amazing job to all the kitchen staff. Thank you for your hard work ❤
I understand the scale of this, but not a big fun of the pre or partly pre cooked food/ processed food. Just thinking a comparison with asian countries when cooking for similar purpose. In one day they might have less food options but everything tends to be cooked from scratch
Thats what I thought as well but if you heard it was due to short staffing for cooks
Exactly! Watch some similar indian videos for example, they cook everything from fresh
@@dennisp8520 Shortage of staffing because of the whole pandemic lies. The extreme fear mongering and lock downs. It hurt everyone and everything. People woke up to it. (Covid is real obviously but it was used as a method of control and fear mongering). 99% survival rate yet they had everyone screaming in fear wearing useless masks.
1:10 "I want them eating much much more than that." Thats the kinda of woman I want to marry.
2:00 $20 million divided by 3.5 million meals gives them a budget of just about $5.71 per meal. Considering how good some of that food looked, that's a pretty amazing feat to pull off! I guess buying in bulk helps out with that though LMAO
My Plebe year at The Citadel we were being fed on a $1.85 a day
Can confirm since being in the Army. Air Force def has the best facilities and the best food. Every time we would visit their bases and dfacs they operated out of in country, we could tell the food quality difference. Was fire every time 🔥lol
every single thing i see after being in the Marines reminds me that i should have joined the Air Force instead lol
Looks like the USAF/DOD should be increasing pay for staff. Bet that would reduce the staffing issues. Trillions spent on defense, they can pay these people more and not buy pre-packaged crap food.
Gosh. Seeing how much food is needed just for this. My mind is blown at how much is actually needed to feed the world. Wtf. 😮😮😮
I guess they have to work with what they have, but all those pre-made stuff definitely does not look healthy.
I'm grateful for living in a place with better food. 🙏🏻
Excelente presentación!
so much preserved and packed stuff, not entirely appetizing at all
This is 90% just heating up stuff...
I have no end of my respect for the people who make these meals happen.
Aside from staffing, how can we get back to less processed and ultra-processed foods?
More automation definitely would help, but it'll probably further reduce food options as some just can't or are hard to automate with machine
Stop allowing government to control and fear monger. 99% survival rate with covid yet they made the whole country suffer. Things got WORSE because of it. Lockdowns are extremely detrimental. The vaccination lies we were told...etc. Now the military suffer. F government.