DAYTONA BEACH – It was “breakfast for dinner” for 7,000 students, leaders, support staff and volunteers at the NewSpring Church Youth Conference on Wednesday at the Ocean Center, a fun menu of pancakes, omelets and bacon.
If you’re thinking that’s a ton of bacon, well, you’re right.
That’s precisely the amount ordered by John Schmitz, executive chef for Spectra Food Services & Hospitality at the Ocean Center, to feed the young attendees at two religious youth conferences this month. Before NewSpring arrived on Sunday for a 6-day event that concludes Friday, the county-run convention center hosted more than 3,000 young people at Passion Camp Youth Conference July 17-22.
“Everything has to follow the timeline,” said Schmitz, who started cooking bacon this past weekend with a culinary staff that ranges from 11 to 17 workers. “If we’re on time with the prep, then we’re good. But even when the day’s going well, I spend a lot of time thinking about what might go wrong.”
When everything's cooking with precision in the Ocean Center's kitchen, it's more than good news for convention guests, such as the thousands of teens wolfing down the main course on Monday's "taco day" or their share of 1.5 tons of pork butt in barbecue sandwiches on Tuesday. It's also good news for the area's tourism-driven economy when the details come together to keep big convention groups coming back.
NewSpring, for instance, has been meeting at the Ocean Center since 2010. When they come to town, Schmitz, 44, plans his menus with military precision. He knows, for instance, that it’s 500 steps from the Ocean Center kitchen to the buffet lines in the 100,000-square-foot exhibit hall that has been transformed into a dining room for thousands.
Schmitz knows that each of the 14 buffet lines can serve 550 meals. He stocked 45,000 plastic trays to serve 41,000 meals over the two-week span, “so when they drop one, or take two, I have them.” He ordered 40,000 ranch dressing packets, one per kid, per day, “because everybody loves ranch.”
He obsesses over the diesel fuel level in the three refrigerated semi-trucks packed with food on the convention center loading dock, checking the gauge morning and night. If the engine stops, the cooling compressor stops and food spoils. He keeps a 30-gallon spare can of fuel inside the building.
“It’s the small things,” Schmitz said. “If a pair of tongs breaks (on the buffet line), I need an extra pair out here because it’s 500 steps back to the kitchen and you don’t want to waste time.”
At the same time, Schmitz emphasizes that food is only part of an overall operation that includes input from NewSpring leaders and hard work by the Ocean Center’s operations staff.
“All I do is put a plan together, but none of this gets done without all of us,” Schmitz said. “It’s not just about the food. It’s the synergy of the whole building. This is the best relationship I’ve ever had between food purveyors and the managers of a building.”