I worked at an outdoor ed place which catered to rich private schools and some wealthy public districts. They could seat 400 people for lunch service and had two separate kitchens for upstairs and downstairs dining rooms). I looked forward to meals there 3x a day.

Things that stand out:

1. Buffet style, all you can eat. Staff serving you the food from a serving line. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
2. Always had fresh food, prepared that day from scratch. Nice restaurant quality, but not like Michelin Star fine dining. Stuff kids like, bit also aduts would too. Usually some comfort foods and some things more interesting / unusual.
3. Menu on an 8 day rotation with some special changes thrown in, for example “chicken waffles” day about once a month. Great variety.
4. The head baker (separate from the head chef) would always be testing new recipes and handing out fruit bars, cookies, pastries, etc. to staff. These were typically only available to the teachers as a lowkey incentive to take their schools to our place for field trips. The teachers also had all kinds of booze in their rooms and had vacation while we took care of everything.

The kids tended to be super spoiled, but there were some nice ones. We bribed them all to drink water by getting them a pitcher of “Special Drink” for the table after they finished a first pitcher of water as a group. This was a pitcher of ice and soft drinks/ powerade made and layered in such a way that they made cool patterns. We had sunrise, “hulk drink”, various rainbows, etc. Staff would have their specialties and trade techniques.

I met some other educators who worked at a less fancy place nearby and they said their cafeteria was all fried foods and gross.