Whitsons Culinary Group™ provides a wide range of diverse dining services to customers of all ages, from children to the elderly, in markets ranging from school nutrition, residential and healthcare dining, prepared meals, corporate dining and emergency dining. One thing that never wavers—whether we are serving a meal in a school or corporate cafeteria,  delivering a meal to a homebound senior, or providing relief services in response to a disaster situation—is our total commitment to ensuring the quality and wholesomeness of the meals we serve.

In multiple areas of this website, you can read about our mission of Enhancing Life One Meal at a Time™ and how this mission ties into our corporate culture, values and, ultimately, the services we provide to our customers.

A family-owned company, we operate our business with uncompromised integrity and an unwavering commitment to ensuring customer satisfaction in everything we do.

Local purchasing is an important part of our overall purchasing strategy and we partner with local farms and vendors whenever possible. We believe it is important to provide local produce, dairy and other meal components for increased quality and freshness, and to support our local economies.

We require all our vendors to adhere to the same strict quality guidelines as our regional and national suppliers. One requirement is that farms follow Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), including approved testing of their water quality and irrigation process. We also have safety and packaging expectations that must be in place to ensure that quality and integrity of all products are maintained, as well as HACCP plans, lot traceability, full ingredient and allergen disclosure and satisfactory third party audit results. Through our local sourcing efforts, we currently purchase an average of 52% of our products from local suppliers.

We prepare our food in small batches, with wholesome ingredients, just like our customers do for their own families. By cooking in small amounts throughout café serving times, our meals remain fresh and delicious, from the first minutes of service to the last customer through our doors. Our purchased items, including meat, produce and other ingredients, are delivered fresh or flash frozen, and often come from local vendors. Our culinary-trained executive chefs have tested and refined our standard recipes, which can be adapted to meet our clients’ specific needs and taste preferences. Wherever possible, we do “scratch cooking,” making our own sauces, soups, marinades and gravies. We add fresh herbs and spices for the best flavors. The result is wholesome foods made from simple, natural ingredients.

Promoting health and wellness is an important component of the services Whitsons provides to our customers. We have developed programs specifically geared toward the needs and interests of various customer groups.

• Nutrition Safari^® elementary nutrition education program. Our award-winning Nutrition Safari program educates elementary school-aged children about healthy eating through the use of loveable animal characters.
  
• Smart Choices™ secondary and adult nutrition education programs.
• Senior University classes for seniors in residential settings.