Tom Beckmann joined Crescent City Schools as its Director of Food Services in April 2025 with a straightforward goal: serve students quality meals made from scratch to fuel them in their academics and lives. After decades of culinary experience in hotel kitchens and university dining services, Beckmann is now focused on bringing fresh, Louisiana-inspired cooking to nearly 2,600 students across CCS’s four campuses.
“One major reason CCS decided to take food services in-house is so that we can have more freedom and creativity regarding the food that we serve our students,” shared Chief Operating Officer Christopher Hines. “Under Tom’s leadership, we’ve been able to make a lot of changes quickly because now each of our campuses has the in-house staff to execute a new, fresh vision for food services.”
Some examples of new dishes from the lunch menu include crunchy turkey tacos with seasoned pinto beans, chicken étouffée with brown rice and steamed green beans, and chicken tenders with sweet potato fries.
Because CCS had – prior to August 2025 – always utilized external food vendors, Beckmann began from square one in terms of in-house food preparation at the network. That blank slate, combined with a lot of attention and resources from CCS, is allowing Beckmann to build something special, moving from a convenience heating style of food production, common in most schools, to “speed scratch” cooking, which gives him the ability to use fresher food by taking quality ingredients and making them unique.
One of the significant improvements overseen by Beckmann includes bringing a long-dormant kitchen at Tubman Park campus back into working order. A functional kitchen at the Tubman Park campus eliminates the need to transport 400 meals daily from nearby Harriet Tubman Charter School, which is improving both food quality and staff morale.
Beckmann’s vision extends beyond basic nutrition to creating memorable dining experiences that connect students to Louisiana’s rich culinary heritage. He has some exciting plans to connect students with their food, too.
“One thing that we’re going to implement this year is a Louisiana test kitchen,” he shared. “Once a month – at each school – we’ll do a little cooking demonstration, and we’ll talk about different dishes, whether it’s jambalaya, étouffée, sauce piquante, mirlitons…so that they know what happens in Louisiana.”
Beckmann emphasized the state’s agricultural abundance: “We have huge bell pepper farms. We have a huge mushroom farm just outside of New Orleans, and Ponchatoula is the strawberry capital of the world. I want to make sure that students are educated about the food grown here. Students come to school to learn academics, but food is so critical for what it means to be a Louisianan. It’s important that students also learn about the significance of their local cuisine.”
Beckmann also understands that for some students, school meals may be their primary nutrition source, an additional reason that CCS wanted to increase the quality and appeal of school meals.
“It starts their day, and it gets them through the day,” Beckmann noted. “It’s fuel.”
The menus reflect this commitment to providing students with nourishing food.
“When students look at the breakfast menu, they’re not going to see a bag of pre-made, packaged pastries. Depending on the day, there will be grits plates with eggs, sausage, and biscuits; breakfast burritos; and yogurt parfaits.”
Beckmann emphasized that this is not a job he can do alone. There are a total of 36 food service staff members across the network who have made it possible to prepare food at each campus.
So far, two weeks into the school year, there are many indicators that Beckmann and his team’s efforts are already successful. Compared to last year, student participation in both breakfast and launch has increased on every campus, with the largest jump occurring on Osborne’s campus where, student participation in breakfast increased from 73% (August 2024) to 92%. Student participation in lunch experienced a similar jump, increasing from 76% (August 2024) to 94% (August 2025).
The positive feedback that staff have been receiving directly from students is also worth noting.
Dara Coleman, Director of Content for CCS, shared that a former student reached out to her after the student tried the new food being served at Height.
“This student told me that ‘They changed the lunch at school! The food is actually seasoned, and now I’m actually eating it. I ate the vegetables today, and the vegetables were good, too!’ Those were her actual words,” shared Coleman, who then added:
“It was so funny but also encouraging to see how happy the new menu options are making our students.”
