‘Not chicken nuggets.’ Myrtle Beach Boys & Girls Club builds kitchen to teach healthy eating

The Boys and Girls Club of the Grand Strand was full of excitement Wednesday afternoon — but most of it was coming from adults, not children.

The excitement stemmed from the reveal of the new “commercial kitchen” the club had built inside of a room tucked away in the back of the two-year-old building.

The kitchen, club CEO Tracey Bailey said, was a major milestone because it would allow the club to teach students cooking skills and healthy eating habits. And, only in its infancy, the kitchen is already doing just that.

“A lot of the kids that have come in actually want to learn to cook,” Kitchen Coordinator Kendra McCray said. Many of them watch cooking shows with famous chefs like Gordon Ramsey, “But they don’t have a place to do that, and I give them a place to do it.”

McCray has worked in the restaurant and food service industry for decades, though she has primarily focused on working at colleges. This is her first foray into working with K-12 children. However, she’s already done well with them.

One day recently, she helped the students make “bread in a bag,” giving them the chance to knead the dough before she put it in the oven. And one day, she taught them how to make butter, which she said the students loved.

Sometimes, yes, the children will get the chance to make sweet treats. McCray is planning an ice cream making session for later this summer. But, most of the time, McCray says she’s impressed by how most of them are really invested in eating healthy food.

“They do like to eat a lot healthier and I enjoy offering it to them,” she said. “They blow my mind. They don’t eat the candy bars like you think they eat when they come here. They’re asking me for vegetables with ranch. And I’m like, ‘Really?’ It’s not chicken nuggets when they come here.”

The kitchen was always part of the plan for the Boys and Girls Club when its current building was constructed in 2019 and 2020, but the funding wasn’t quite there yet to pay for all of the equipment. For awhile, all the “kitchen” had was a fume hood.

“We try to offer lots of opportunities for young people to engage. Art might be the avenue for one, music might be the avenue for another,” Bailey said. “But we know that there are some kids who really would be engaged by being in our kitchen, and so we do everything we can to help all of our members become productive citizens.”

Now, a vision planned for years has finally arrived, thanks to donations from community members and foundations, particularly the Newman’s Own Foundation, which spearheaded the donation drive to pay for the kitchen.

“It is incredibly important to ensure that people have the right fuel in them to be able to achieve the kinds of things we want them to be,” said Rob Dumanois, who led the announcement of the kitchen at the Boys and Girls Club.

The amount and types of instruction the children at the Boys and Girls Club receive will be age appropriate, Bailey said, with the older students getting more of a chance to actually utilize the kitchen equipment.

One of the biggest benefits, McCray said, is how having these cooking skills taught in a classroom setting makes it less intimidating than “mom is doing it” at home.

“I love to have fun and they don’t have to worry about cleaning up because I clean it up,” she said, noting that she’s let students “throw flour in the air,” something that would be a chaotic mess at home but can make the learning experience more enjoyable for the younger kids.

It might seem odd, putting a commercial kitchen in a space where children are running around, but Bailey said the club frequently focuses on teaching its students life skills. On a bookshelf in the crowded entryway of the club, binders labeled “Money Matters Age 13-17” and “Lyricism — Teens” abounded.

Cooking, and all of the potential career and personal uses of it, fall into the same vein.

“You can’t take ten steps in Myrtle Beach without running into another restaurant,” Dumanois said. “So anybody who finds a passion for cooking or anything associated with restaurants, maybe this ends up being a vehicle to help explore that opportunity.”

The Boys and Girls Club has a capacity of about 135 students and has already reached that for this summer and has a waiting list. Bailey still encourages interested parents to call them in case there is an opening. The club can be reached at (843) 839-3616 or go to their website bgclubgs.org.