Be Like a Duck: Lessons in Food Services

“Be like a duck.”

That phrase is posted on the walls of every camp at Pine Cove. But it’s not in skit closets, on theme night posters, or even in a game room. It’s in the kitchen. 

Along with “Preparation is Everything” and “Early is On Time,” “Be Like a Duck” is one of the Core Values of Pine Cove’s hospitality implemented by Associate Director of Food Services and Corporate Chef Emi “Pixie Kicks” Young. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, the kitchen isn’t where Emi initially thought she’d spend her career.

After spending a year studying engineering at Texas A&M University, she felt the Lord stirring her heart and encouraging her to consider a vocation that would better utilize her skills. A conversation with her dad in which he pointed out her natural gifts for hospitality had her debating a move to the culinary field—after all, she used to joke that maybe she’d be a chef after retiring from the engineering field—so she made a decision. “I decided to flip my script and go to culinary school.”

As a member of a family who isn’t strangers to working at Pine Cove (her sisters all served on summer staff, and her mom Dee, “Hice-Cream Chase,” is Director of Nursing), Emi had also spent time on summer staff as a cook. Before her final semester of culinary school, she served at Chimney Point, and casually mentioned to Austin “Homestar” Langemeier, Pine Cove’s Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives, that she was available to consult with Pine Cove on all things meals and menus. Before the summer was over, she’d received a phone call offering her a job—not as a consultant, but as the head of food services for Pine Cove. 

“And I said, ‘Are you for real right now?’” Emi recalls. “‘This is a joke.’ But he was like, ‘No, we really would love to formulate this job for you.’” She said yes, and spent her final semester at the Culinary Institute of America also working remotely for Pine Cove: developing new menus, connecting with suppliers, learning budgets, and documenting processes. 

Part of that documenting involved revamping a handbook for use across all of Pine Cove’s kitchens, laying out not only the rules and procedures needed for food services to thrive, but also those Core Values, a mission statement, and a “Flow of Food.”

“Way more goes into it than most people know,” Emi explains. “And now [the summer staffers] get to know, ‘Wow, I get to be this little step when I’m on work crew. I get to be a part of equipping these campers through serving and doing dishes.’ Everyone’s a vital part of the flow of food and making sure people are fed.”

The Core Values have had a similar impact on the hospitality teams, driving home the importance of cleaning along the way, staying a step ahead of the process, and yes, being “like a duck.”

“It’s a funny one for sure,” Emi acknowledges. “When I think of being in the kitchen or serving food out in the dining hall, it’s a chaotic thing. But a duck—you see a duck just going across the water very calmly, but underneath its feet are going super quick. And that’s what we like to do in hospitality: we’re always working, we’re always going a step above and getting it done, but that’s not what we present to our campers. They should feel the smooth service and the fun of camp, not the chaos of making sure we have everything we need and that we’re on time.”

The Flow of Food, the Core Values, and Pine Cove’s emphasis on hospitality under Emi’s leadership is all in service of caring for campers well. Meals at a summer camp might seem like a mundane task or just a means to an end, but Emi views it differently. 

“I want campers and staffers to feel like they had intentional conversation and community while at the table, and then nourished to go out and have fun,” she says. “We want to make sure that they walk away having the fuel to go out and experience the Gospel through activities and Bible study and Club and free time and all the things.”

Fueling up campers goes beyond serving up an easy menu of frozen foods or prepackaged meal components. It’s a balancing act of making sure picky eaters at elementary camps are getting not only nourishment from healthy options (which includes a 15-ingredient salad bar, fresh fruit at every meal, and allergy-friendly food alternatives), but also being offered foods they’ll actually eat—a struggle every parent understands. (One mom told us, “He loved all of the food, and for someone who is VERY picky, thank you for this! You understood what foods little kids eat.”) 

Emi also has to meet the appetites of high school boy campers head on, ensuring these growing teenagers are consistently able to get—and stay—full every day. Add in the complex challenges that come with feeding the wide variety of ages and palettes at our four family camps, and Emi and her team definitely have their hands full! It’s a challenge that she’s more than equipped to meet. 

“When I talk with other people who are in the food service world and I share that we have a chef from the CIA, they are floored,” says Austin, who originally hired Emi back in 2023. “They’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, what a blessing. No wonder your food’s so amazing.’ Because Emi is truly trained at the highest level. It would be like a high school football team having Tom Brady as your head coach. You’re like, ‘Well, duh, you’re going to play well because you have someone from the highest level of the sport that’s working with your kids.’ That’s what we’ve got with Emi.”

Emi’s extreme level of care, professionalism, and intentionality in the kitchen is driven not only by her love of food and desire to equip campers for their days at Pine Cove, but also by her hunger to invest in the college students serving on her teams. Inspired by Tim Chester’s book ‘A Meal With Jesus,’ Emi has focused on the example Jesus set of conducting much of His ministry at mealtimes, listening, talking, and sharing Gospel truth. She knew intentional community could be fostered at the table—and in the kitchens.

“That’s what we wanted to steward in our kitchens and in the dining hall,” Emi shares. “So our kitchen crew who are behind scenes feeling like they’re intentionally being poured into, they’re being heard, they’re a part of a community in the kitchen, in the serving line, in the dirty side. That’s why we call it a ‘dishco pit.’ It’s like we’re intentionally having fun and getting to know each other while doing dishes, which isn’t always a fun job, but we want to make it fun and intentional. So that’s really where that stemmed—my desire to make sure that everyone who stepped foot in a kitchen felt like they were a part of intentional community, not just community. We’re intentionally here to be in community together.”

What some might consider a grunt position at camp is actually a carefully considered role deliberately designed to show summer staffers how their work is ultimately done for the Kingdom. Work crew members can see the integral role they play in the Flow of Food. The whole kitchen team can take part in a Bible study that’s rooted in the Gospel. And all of the hospitality staffers can be poured into by Pine Cove’s corporate chef.

“I have actually had the time and the margin to intentionally get to know my leadership staff and kitchen crew this summer. I got to cook random things with them like chocolate chip cookies or make homemade pasta or curry to surprise a team,” Emi says. “It’s been cool to see the joy that comes from staff wanting to come back and do the same job and seeing that retention of the kitchen crew. A summer staffer can come in and spend all of their summers on the hospitality side of things. And getting to see them grow in that and be a part of that story is really, really sweet.”

All told, Emi’s teams cooked and served a combined 899,498 meals during the summer of 2025. They eagerly prepared, joyfully served, and devotedly prayed over each one. That intersection of food and faith is exactly what Austin identified in Emi years ago, and what convinced him that she was the right person for the job. 

“I wanted someone who had not just a passion for God’s word and God’s people,” Austin explains, “But also for cooking and for food. That was what was incredible about Emi, and still is. That was a huge win for us.”

The food that’s served at camp matters. The care that goes into meal prep matters. And every hand that’s involved in the preparation and cleanup process is integral to Pine Cove’s mission. That’s why Emi sees to it that her teams feel known, loved, and invested in every day. Camp ministry doesn’t just happen out at activities or in hang times. And campers aren’t the only ones being poured into.

“My hope is that every single summer staffer who comes into a kitchen feels the presence of Jesus through both action and word through the way that our leadership lead them and steward that intentional community, so they feel like their action of cutting a strawberry or frying some fries is meant to be for a purpose,” Emi emphasizes. And it’s a big, weighty purpose. “Every single thing they’re doing is serving Christ’s Kingdom and serving campers to be a part of Gospel work at camp.”

So the hospitality teams will press on. They’ll order, receive, and cook food for campers all summer long. They’ll set hundreds of tables in the dining halls 17 times a week. They’ll sing and dance while doing dishes in the dischco pit. For His glory. 

And if they get wet in the process, that’s okay. 

They’ll be like a duck.