Time For Tea with Rachel: Your Story is the Content
L ast time, we talked about getting your team on board — turning social media from a solo burden into a shared effort. Hopefully your team is starting to see themselves in the content, one tray photo and behind-the-scenes moment at a time. But there’s a piece we haven’t talked about yet, and it might be the most important one: the story being told is yours. Not “yours” as in your program’s marketing angle. Yours as in — this is your career, your community, your years of showing up before dawn to make sure kids eat. That’s not just content. That’s a harvest of everything you’ve built, and it deserves to be seen. The harvest metaphor isn’t just seasonal — it’s earned Fall is harvest season for a reason: you don’t get to reap without first planting, tending, and showing up through every unglamorous stretch in between. The same is true for your program. Every relationship
with a vendor, every recipe reworked for a picky cafeteria crowd, every new leader you’ve mentored into the role — that’s all been building toward something. Social media is simply where that “something” finally gets to be visible. So many school nutrition professionals treat their online presence like a chore to check off, when really it’s an opportunity to say: look what we built. Look what this has become. That shift — from obligation to ownership — changes everything about how a post feels to make. Your voice is part of the content, not separate from it contributing. Now take that a step further: encourage the individual in each of those contributions. A tray photo from your prep cook looks different from one taken by your ops We talked last time about getting your whole team manager — and that’s a good thing. The industry doesn’t need another polished, faceless
account. It needs to see the real humans behind the meals, with their own personalities and their own reasons for loving this work. That includes you. If you’ve been in this field for years, you have instincts, opinions, and stories that newer folks stepping into leadership haven’t developed yet. Sharing that isn’t self-promotion — it’s mentorship in public. It’s exactly the kind of alignment this season’s theme is asking of all of us: carrying forward what’s been earned so the next generation of leaders can stand on it. Posting can be restorative, not just another task You’re busy. We said that last time, and it’s still true. But here’s a reframe worth sitting with: posting doesn’t have to be one more thing pulled from an already full plate. It can be a moment to actually notice the good stuff — the tray that came out exactly right, the student who said thank you, the quiet pride of a job well done.
Rachel Dreslinski | Social Media Manager Rachel is a social media manager for NxtGen Network, dedicated to helping brands scale their online presence and convert followers into loyal customers. Focused on high-performing content and strategic distribution, Rachel works to simplify the social landscape for clients while driving measurable community growth and sales.
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