How Parkhurst Feeds the Penguins During the New Normal

One of the greatest perks for Pittsburgh Penguins' players at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex is the spacious lounge area where the club can meet to bond with one another before and after practices each day. As the guys enjoy a morning veggie omelet or a post-practice flank steak, you can always find them clustered together in this area, engaged in a friendly game of ping-pong, watching the previous night's NHL highlights or simply sitting at tables conversing with one another.
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has kept the lights turned off in the lounge. When players around the league were allowed to re-enter their respective practice facilities on June 8 to begin Phase 2 of the Return to Play plan, one of the many changes in protocol was no food was allowed to be consumed on-site. Any meals provided to the players had to be individually packaged in to-go containers for out-of-facility consumption.
If you ask anyone in the Pens' organization, they will tell you the nutritious meals prepared daily by chef Geoff Straub of Parkhurst Dining and his sous chefs, Bob Schiffhauer and Chris Culp, go a long way towards keeping the players in peak physical condition. This is one of the many ways the Penguins try to build a competitive advantage on the ice, so finding a solution to ensure the players continued to enjoy such quality food stood high on the priority list.

It's been said before where there is a will to get something done, there is a way. That's exactly how Straub and his crew, which includes Parkhurst Director of Dining Amanda Figurski, attacked the situation. By the time players reported for their first workout, the Parkhurst team had a robust plan in place that has kept the Pens well fed as the team now engages in Phase 3 Training Camp, the final phase before the club departs to Toronto on July 26 to face the Montreal Canadiens in the Qualifying Round of the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs on August 1.
"Considering the situation, I think it's working out well," Straub said recently while taking a well-deserved, mid-day break from the kitchen. "Obviously it's not ideal, however, the final products are still quality. And I think it's been fine considering what's going on (with the pandemic). I'm glad we were able to find an outlet and a source to maintain what we're doing."
Weekly Meal Menu
In a pre-pandemic world, the Penguins would enjoy daily breakfast and lunch buffets cooked and served on site in the lounge by Straub and his staff. These days, players have to think ahead about what they want to eat during the upcoming week.
At the beginning of each week, the players are text a menu that includes three breakfast and two lunch options per day. All of the chefs work together to produce the menu, which Figurski then types to make sure it looks good when it's delivered to the players' phones.

"The menu is based on availability, for the most part," Straub described. Obviously, we follow the restrictions and the guidelines that have been set forth by the strength and conditioning team. But it's just us being creative as chefs and knowing the guys' tendencies of what they like over years past."
Shortly after receiving the menu, players are then sent an electronic order form where they make their choices via an app. In an effort to help keep the players - especially the rookies living in hotels - from having to dine out, they're offered the opportunity to purchase additional meals for themselves and their families.
One thing that Straub has noticed about sending out a weeklong menu is that, "the guys like it because they actually know what they're eating that day." During the old "normal" players would only occasionally know their options days in advance.
Meal Prep
In a pre-pandemic world, the chefs would prepare the meals as the players were wrapping up practice and conducting media interviews in the locker room. Now, all meals are done in advance, in large part because of all of the post-cooking work that goes into getting the food into the players' hands, which you'll read more about below.

Over the past several months, Straub does the cooking a day ahead of time, while Figurski can bake several days ahead. They've actually enjoyed not having to always take things day-to-day, which is sometimes a necessity during the hustle-and-bustle of a grueling 82-game schedule that can feature three or four meals per day. In fact, it's allowed them to sprinkle in more creativity than usual.
"We're doing some different things that we typically wouldn't have done because we have time to think of the menu," Figurski said. "We've been able to add in a lot more baking, like the very popular banana bread, which I've been able to help with. We don't ever do that much baking for the team."

One area where made-to-order meal prep has been a small challenge from time-to-time is making sure that the crew has the exact amounts of food in the pantry. During normal times, extra food can be sold to the general public during public skates or youth hockey games. But with none of that on the schedule right now, excess food could equal dreaded wasted food.
"You don't want to produce too much because you don't have any way to get rid of it," Straub said. "But there have been times where we've run short. I think for us that's been the hardest part. It's really making sure you have enough, because you can think 12 heads of cauliflower might be enough to feed 50 guys until you actually break it down and see it, and you're like 'wow that's enough for like 25 guys.' So just kind of learning that and dealing with that so you're not wasting your time heading to the store for needless runs."
Packaging
While no part of the process is as time consuming as actually cooking and baking the food, the Parkhurst team is really putting in the overtime when it comes time to package the meals. To ensure contactless pickup, the crew has to go through a multi-step packaging process daily.
Each meal, whether it's breakfast or lunch, is packaged in tin containers that have each player's name, and during Phase 2, his group's color. Because most players ordered both breakfast and lunch, all meals were then placed into bags that, you guessed it, had the same labels on them so players knew which ones to grab.
You might think that having to partake in boring, behind-the-scenes computer work would be what the chefs enjoy the least about the current setup, but that's not true. They're more disappointed by knowing their food isn't being consumed in real time.
"It's painful as a chef preparing such high-quality food and then having to squeeze it into pre-packaged containers," Schiffhauer said. "But we do our best to make sure the presentation is as close to how we normally would display it as possible."
"I'm just glad to hear from the players that they don't really notice a difference," Culp added. "That makes you feel better about doing things this way."
Distribution
Unfortunately for the talented chefs at Parkhurst, pre-packaging the meals isn't the only step added to their daily routine. The NHL protocol for both Phases 2 and 3 states that team chefs cannot have contact with the players or "player access personnel." This means that once again, Straub's crew, like all team chefs around the NHL, has had to get creative to distribute its food.

Every day, not long before players leave, but before they exit the building, Straub or someone from his staff must first load all the bags with meals into coolers, then lift those heavy coolers into their company van. They then circle the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex, dropping off the coolers in the rear of the facility at each player's respective exit. It's a ton of extra work, but at the end of the day, it's the culmination of a longer process that results in the players getting the right foods to keep them ready for the upcoming playoffs.

Appreciation for the Parkhurst Chefs
The Pittsburgh Penguins could not be more appreciative of the efforts of Geoff Straub, Bob Schiffhauer, Chris Culp and Amanda Figurski over the past several months. During a time of uncertainty unlike any other during our lifetimes, that quartet has selflessly done whatever it's been asked to do to ensure the players and staff have continued to be well taken care of.
Training camp was supposed to bring stability to the daily schedule, but as we all know five months into dealing with the COVID-19 crisis, there is no such thing as stability in these uncertain times. As schedules and needs have continued to evolve on a daily basis, the Parkhurst team has willingly adapted to any and every request thrown its way in an effort to get the team prepared for playoff competition. The Penguins cannot stress enough how appreciative they are to have such a great team on its side. Thank you chefs!