Terry Bumper redeems his story—and finds his calling—feeding kids better food, and paying it forward
PHOTOGRAPHY BY HANIF PANNI AND MARK C. ANDERSON
An hour after Terry Bumper arrived at The Bridge Restoration Ministry, the staff took his phone.
“I felt like I was turning myself in to jail again,” he says.
He’d come to Monterey, a place he’d barely heard of, for a substance abuse recovery program that included culinary training. He was already a pro: He had attended a cooking school and worked at restaurants on and off for years.
As Bumper settled into the program, the Bridge’s staff were wowed by his Southern cuisine: fried chicken, po’boys, sliders. But his personality made an even bigger impression.
“It was his enthusiasm, his love of food, his love of people and his confidence,” says Mike Casey, director of The Bridge. “If he didn’t know how to do something, he could get creative.”
Soon Bumper was leading culinary classes, writing menus for The Bridge’s catering operation, and running the kitchen at Calvary Monterey church.
“It was definitely a God thing,” he says.
Four years later, Bumper is now the food services director at International School of Monterey, a public charter school in Seaside. Only two years into the job, he’s transformed an unpopular heat-and-serve lunch program into a from-scratch operation featuring international dishes, like birria and kuku paka, that kids are actually eating. He also runs a catering company, Flava 2 You, and still finds time to volunteer.
When the school celebrated him on Food Hero Day, Bumper was mortified. “I think praise is out of his comfort zone,” says his boss, Lisa Wichael Loomis.
But there’s one thing that Bumper owns with no hesitation.
“I hate to sound bougie,” he says, “but I have no flaws in cooking.”
When Bumper was a junior in college, a torn knee ligament derailed his football career and hooked him on painkillers. Through his 20s and 30s he swung between addiction and sobriety, falling into opiates or alcohol for months at a time, then climbing out and building his career and a family.
He worked in restaurants in Los Angeles and Napa; he served time for writing bad checks. He got married, became a dad—then relapsed and went back to prison, again for fraud.
Toward the end of that sentence, his wife gave him an ultimatum: If he wanted to keep his family, he had to get clean and stay out of trouble. So in 2021, a week out of prison, he headed to The Bridge in Monterey. After completing the 12-month recovery and culinary program, Bumper worked at a few local restaurants. Then he answered a Craigslist job posting for food service director at the International School. Wichael Loomis, the school’s head of operations and human resources, was impressed by more than his culinary training.
“He had this really big heart,” she says. “He was someone who was going to connect well with people.”
Initially, Bumper’s job was to manage school meals supplied by a longtime vendor, which he reheated from frozen in the school’s TurboChef oven. Kids complained, and Bumper didn’t blame them.
“When Terry was serving these meals, he was, like, ‘No bueno,’” Wichael Loomis says.
Bumper filled out the USDA compliance paperwork, becoming familiar with the federal food safety and nutrition standards. He also kept a journal tracking what the kids ate (mostly pizza and burritos) and what they threw away (which was a lot).
The cooked-from-frozen broccoli and green beans came out soggy, Bumper says; the salads were limp, too. The hamburgers featured stale buns and patties like hockey pucks.
So after his first year, he presented a proposal to replace the vendor himself.
His bosses gave him the shot. They’d gotten a state grant for kitchen upgrades, and they let him select the equipment. (He chose two convection ovens, a new exhaust system, stainless countertops, a freezer and a buffet station.)
In just one school year he’s doubled student participation in meals. That brings in more state and federal school lunch funding, which is based on the number of meals served (tracked by student IDs) rather than prepared. When the school was ordering from a vendor, it had to absorb the cost of the many lunches kids didn’t take.
Bumper’s bulk cooking—featuring fresh local produce from Serendipity Farms and Russo’s Wholesale—yielded an additional savings of about $1 per meal, compared with the vendor’s individually packaged lunches.
All told, Bumper cut the cost of the school’s meal program in half, says Wichael Loomis, who crunches the numbers along with the school’s head of finance. That freed up funding to hire a part-time kitchen assistant, who now helps Bumper with meal prep.
On school days he serves around 200 breakfasts, including “secondchance breakfast” at recess, and 390 lunches for 440 students. Hits from his regular menu include chicken pot pie and chicken and waffles. Vegetarian options like Soyrizo and Impossible Burgers ensure more kids with dietary restrictions can enjoy Bumper’s lunches.
“Plant-based options are new to me,” he admits. “I’m coming at them with a different kind of love, because I want every kid to eat.” His standouts are the multicultural specials. Every month, Bumper invites one grade to vote on four options; the winner is featured on international lunch day. Specials have included croque monsieur, chicken tikka masala and sushi.
My own kids attend the school, and I look forward to Bumper’s ParentSquare posts about the monthly specials. He says he writes them to honor both the heritage of each dish and the diverse school community, in which 19 primary languages are spoken at home.
To introduce the first special, Bumper posted: “It’s fascinating to see how the Lebanese diaspora continues to keep the cuisine alive and evolving, bringing new influences and interpretations to traditional dishes. Have you tried any specific Lebanese dishes or have any favorites? Well, our students will have their chance this month. We will be serving a chicken and potatoes dish known as djej wa batata.”
He announced another special—creamy chicken with butternut squash and pasta—as an example of Italian “cucina provera, the food of peasants that exemplifies the frugal genius of the Tuscans.”
For National Hispanic Heritage Month: “Birria is a regional variation of barbacoa, originating from western Mexico. It is a savory meat dish that has been marinated in an adobo sauce and subsequently cooked in a flavorful broth.”
And for an East African special: “Kuku paka is an African-Indian coconut chicken curry that’s popular with Indian communities in countries such as Kenya and Tanzania. Kuku means chicken in Swahili and paka means delicious in Punjabi. Fun to say. Delicious to eat!”
The posts give me FOMO, but student participation tends to dip, initially, on international lunch days. Kids are reluctant to try unfamiliar foods, Bumper says, until word gets around on the playground:
“Sometimes down on the benches a kid will see someone else’s plate. They’ll run over to get some before we close up.”
Wichael Loomis is struck by the school community’s consensus. “Everyone loves what Terry’s doing, hands down,” she says. “We haven’t heard a single complaint.”
As we chat in her office, Bumper walks in with a box of wilted lettuce for the kindergarten’s chickens. He takes other leftovers to The Bridge and the Veterans Affairs office in Marina. When the school needed money for computers, Bumper donated his labor to their fundraiser, cooking family-sized to-go meals featuring his tender, smoky brisket.
“He’s passionate about giving back to this community,” Wichael Loomis says.
“He had this really big heart. He was someone who was going to connect well with people.”
In 2023 Bumper started his catering company, Flava 2 You. A dozen five-star Yelp reviews extol his food, mostly in the Southern comfort category: spicy greens, cornbread, stuffed potatoes, fried chicken. His clients describe Bumper as a perfectionist— an attentive chef who checks in often before the event, arrives early to prep and cook, and leaves the kitchen spotless.
“The food is like your grandma cooked it,” reviewer Austin K. writes. “The owner Terry is one-of-a-kind and has a gentle soul.” “The food was absolutely delicious! Presentation was excellent!” notes client Diane C. “He and his team were respectful, helpful, friendly, and eager to make the occasion perfect.”
Though he’s known for soul food, Bumper prides himself on catering to client requests. “I don’t have a set menu,” he says. “That’s the game with Flava.”
He recalls a private party in Carmel Valley where the client asked him to cook a turkey, “but not regular,” Bumper says. “That was her words.”
So he spatchcocked the bird, injected it with creamy Italian dressing until it was plump, buttered the skin and rubbed it with his custom mix of garlic, pepper, salt, coriander, paprika, onion powder and Cajun seasoning. It came out of the oven golden-crisp and infused with flavor, the juiciest turkey he’d ever baked.
After a recent recovery meeting, Casey and Bumper went head-to-head in a cookoff. The dishes: collard greens and mac ‘n’ cheese. Both trophies, by popular vote of about 100 people, went to Bumper.
The secret to his mac is the omission of flour—he says starch has no place in a dish that should be purely creamy. Velveeta, Creole seasoning, egg, evaporated milk and shredded cheese comprise a sauce that meets his standards for spoonabilty.
Casey, a home chef and foodie, jokes that the competition’s not over. He once won a tri-tip cookoff with Bumper and says he’s ready for a brisket rematch.
“He’s been talking that game for the last year,” Bumper retorts.
The two men go on regular tasting missions— they’ve been to San Jose for pastrami, to San Francisco for prime rib—and feeding missions, passing out hundreds of hamburgers and hot dogs to unhoused people in Salinas’s Chinatown. Meanwhile, Bumper mentors Bridge residents in recovery and says he’s reconnecting with his family. The service energizes him.
“It makes me want to do better,” he says. “I owe this world so much more than I’m giving right now.”
About the author
Kera Abraham is a Seaside-based writer, community advocate and communications consultant. A few things that give her joy: schooling sardines, fresh-baked sourdough and wooden stairs in the woods.
