The past week was filled with opportunities to learn more about foodservice management at Ohio State. Monday through Wednesday, I spent time with operations managers at the Courtside Cafe and Juice 2, a quick-service restaurant and juice bar at the recreation facility. There, I learned about managerial duties that involve money (deposits, change ordering, and counting cash register drawers), supervising, and those that occur outside of the building (delivering lunches to camps). I even got the chance to take a couple of orders at Courtside Cafe during the lunch rush. Taking orders was definitely a challenge, having not used this location's system before; however, I survived! I will miss my time at Courtside, not only because of the knowledge that I gained from the managerial staff, but also because it serves some of the best food on campus!
I spent Thursday and Friday morning observing in the instructional kitchen, which is hidden in the basement of Ohio State's union. The kitchen consists of 6 identical stations, and at each station about 3 chefs were working on various dishes. Thursday was spent observing various dishes being made for lunch, and then I got to taste the result of 2 hours of labor. (As always, it was delicious!) Friday was a little different. My observations Thursday were meant to give me an idea of how the chefs work in the kitchen, because, on Friday, I was actually judging the chefs working/sanitation habits. On Friday, each chef cooked a meal alone and they were all judged on the same categories, such as sanitation and taste. It was a great event to be a part of, and I enjoyed watching and tasting the work of all of the chefs.
Thursday afternoon was my favorite afternoon of the week. That afternoon, I spent time in Human Resources. There, I was able to have my resume and cover letter styles critiqued, and I was provided with valuable advice for my post-college career. I also learned how HR supports the University Residences and Dining Services department at Ohio State.
I learned more valuable information on Friday afternoon, when I spent time with the operations manager at the North Commons, a traditional dining hall. I spoke with him, at length, about how he manages his operation, specifically how he manages his unionized employees. I learned that in some situations, dining services managers prefer student employees; however, they also appreciate the consistency that unionized employees possess. I also observed that when working as a manager in any operation, in order to be effective, it is necessary to be clear and fair in both your policies and practices.
This week, I also spent time working on my menu for the theme dinner. One of the chef's helped me to calculate the food costs for all of my items, and I believe that we generated what very well may be the final menu. The upcoming week will allow me to finalize my theme dinner plans; I will let you all know how it goes!
Sunday, July 31, 2011
University of North Dakota - Week 7!
Only one more week and my NACUFS internship experience will be over. It is hard to believe that these 7 weeks have gone by so fast.
This week was fairly quiet at UND. Dustin the dietitian was gone most of the week to a FoodPro Conference, and Wilkerson dining hall was closed for service Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for their annual cleaning. This gave me the opportunity to see some areas of UND this week that I hadn't gotten a chance to see much of yet.
On Monday I finished up entering the fall retail menus into FoodPro, along with the Squires dining hall soup rotation. We may have to go back next week and make a few changes, but for the most part I think the menu planning is almost done for fall!
On Tuesday morning, Mary, my internship coordinator, gave me a tour of the Squires dining facility. It is closed for the summer so I hadn't gotten to see it yet, but everyone I have talked to here and in student surveys it has gotten the highest praise of all of their dining facilities, so I wanted to see what it was all about! While I'm sure it looks much different when it is up and running, it is definitely a very nice facility. They remodeled Squires a few years ago, completely changing the layout. It went from having two smaller dining areas on either end of the building with the kitchen in the middle, to having a smaller kitchen on one end with all of the cooking and serving stations in the middle and the dining area on the north end of the building. Because of this, they have some very large windows in some odd places -- like the storage room and part of the kitchen area. They also had to work around several load-bearing pillars in the facility, because the dining hall is on the ground floor and there are dorm rooms up above, the pillars could not be moved. Mary also told me they had to plan the remodel timing-wise around when students would be out of the dorm for the summer in order to run the ducts needed during construction. Even with that, construction went past its deadlines and did not fully open until partway into the fall semester that year.
It was a little bit dark, but I took some pictures inside Squires:
This is the dining area, it had some gorgeous artwork and lighting.
A look back through the serving area. Notice all the pillars?
This middle section is their huge salad bar (soup wells are at the end). Along the back right is their homestyle cooking line (which also has a rotisserie oven), and on the back left is their pizza oven. Their burger bar & grill is off the picture to the right, and a sandwich & panini bar is off the picture to the left. (And more pillars are in the middle!)
I was especially impressed by the very nice dishes Squires has (you can see some in the picture above), though they look a little heavy and difficult to work with. Mary told me they actually had such a huge problem with theft when Squires reopened after the remodel, over 600 glasses were stolen in just the first couple months! They actually bought cheaper / lesser quality glasses to replace them in order to discourage further theft. That's probably not something you would normally consider when redesigning a dining hall -- the dishes and glassware are probably nicer than what the average college student has in their dorm room!
Another impressive feature of Squires is that their hot food lines do not use wells, but instead have heated granite blocks. I can imagine that would make it much easier to clean and maintain the facility, as well as for keeping food temperatures consistent. About the only major drawback of the remodel was that the managers' office at Squires had to be put in the far back corner of the kitchen (such that you have to walk through the entire kitchen to get to it, and you can't see the serving area or dining area from the office). It was very quiet back there! I can see how there would be advantages and disadvantages to having the office secluded like that, however I am partial to the managers' office at Wilkerson which has windows that look out over the entire kitchen and you can even see some of the serving line.
All in all though, I was very impressed by the Squires facility! I can see why students seem to prefer to go there, and their staff is very proud to work there. Hopefully after the Wilkerson remodel next summer, students and staff will be able to enjoy both facilities equally.
I spent the rest of Tuesday working with the Squires kitchen manager, Molly, out at the smaller Terrace dining center. Molly had never worked out there before (since Squires is closed for the summer, she has been working at Wilkerson) and with Wilkerson closed for cleaning, a lot of the Wilkerson staff was also working at Terrace. It was very interesting to see how the staff dealt with being in an unfamiliar kitchen and getting to meet some of the Terrace staff. I got to work at the checkstand for lunch and helped swipe cards and greet diners to the facility. It is a nice little dining hall, although I am a little unsure of why they placed it in the basement of the Memorial Union building -- it seems a little difficult to find there. Another odd feature of the Terrace dining hall is that their specialty bar is enclosed in a little room that is not very noticeable. Although they have signs for it above the doors, unless someone is specifically looking for it, it is not easy to find. They were serving pizza on Tuesday and hardly anyone went in there! I think if they had it to do over, they should make a window or open up the wall to the specialty bar so that the area is more open and visible to the dining area. It is a very nice specialty bar, but if nobody knows it's there, it seems a little silly to have it!
One of the issues I also noticed with having to shift all of the diners to Terrace for those 3 days was some difficulty for students with special diet needs. Dustin being gone for the week probably didn't help matters either, but most of the students who have food allergies and specific diet needs were used to eating at Wilkerson where they have their own cooler with specific foods, and the staff there knows them and is very careful to prepare their foods separately to avoid cross-contamination. On Tuesday Molly helped all the special diet students who came in to ensure that they got a safe lunch and were properly taken care of. However, on Wednesday one of the students with very severe food allergies had a serious allergic reaction at lunchtime. While I wasn't there, Molly told us at the Wednesday staff meeting that the student went very pale and could hardly breathe, and they had to give her an epi-pen and call an ambulance. They are not sure what exactly caused her reaction, as all the food she ate that day should have been safe for her to eat. Unfortunately it sounded like there must have been some cross-contamination when her food was prepared which led to her reaction. It is not something I would have thought of being an issue when moving students from eating at one facility to another, but I think it really shows how hard the Wilkerson staff works to make special diets for students with food allergies so that they can eat safely on campus. Practicing food safety really does go beyond avoiding cross-contamination to avoid pathogens. Cross-contamination can also be immediately life-threatening when food allergies are involved.
Speaking of cross-contamination, my project that I worked on Wednesday and Thursday was to revise the UND Dining Services Sanitation & Safety Manual. Using the ServSafe textbook and the Iowa State University Extension website, I reviewed each policy from handwashing to dishroom procedures. I updated each policy and tried to do some proofreading and make it look a little more professional. I finished revising the 51 page manual by Friday morning!
Dustin came by for a little while on Friday and gave me a couple tasks to do. We will be meeting Monday morning with the Children's Center staff to go over their menu for fall (their food is served out of the Wilkerson complex). I got to go through their menu spreadsheet and put in a few changes, and then I had to run over to the Dining Services admin building to print off copies of it. Next week, Dustin also has someone from FoodPro coming to do several presentations about the program. I've really enjoyed getting to work with it and learn more about foodservice databases, especially in regards to menu planning and nutritional analysis, so it will be interesting to get to learn more!
I spent the rest of my Friday shadowing Lori, Wilkerson's evening manager. She and Molly were both working on writing up action plans for some employees who have been performing below expected standards for their job descriptions. I got to help out a little with making suggestions for actions the employees can take to improve and how to properly word the action plans. I know sometimes there are people who can be difficult to work with and there are also some issues that may be beyond what a manager can address with an employee (for example, if a doctor needs to be involved to evaluate an employee's ability to do a job). It is also difficult for me when some employees are very nice as people, to see that they are not performing all of the tasks of their job and may have to be terminated if they cannot step up. Molly had an interesting take on that, as a manager, you are not paid to be the employees' friend, but to be their boss. Sometimes that can involve making difficult decisions about people who are not performing what needs to be done.
Next week will be my last week here at UND! It will be a busy week with the FoodPro seminars and the Summer Picnic on Wednesday, which I am helping plan. I have truly enjoyed my time here, but I have to admit I am very much looking forward to getting to go home and see my daughter Audre. Only one more week!
This week was fairly quiet at UND. Dustin the dietitian was gone most of the week to a FoodPro Conference, and Wilkerson dining hall was closed for service Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for their annual cleaning. This gave me the opportunity to see some areas of UND this week that I hadn't gotten a chance to see much of yet.
On Monday I finished up entering the fall retail menus into FoodPro, along with the Squires dining hall soup rotation. We may have to go back next week and make a few changes, but for the most part I think the menu planning is almost done for fall!
On Tuesday morning, Mary, my internship coordinator, gave me a tour of the Squires dining facility. It is closed for the summer so I hadn't gotten to see it yet, but everyone I have talked to here and in student surveys it has gotten the highest praise of all of their dining facilities, so I wanted to see what it was all about! While I'm sure it looks much different when it is up and running, it is definitely a very nice facility. They remodeled Squires a few years ago, completely changing the layout. It went from having two smaller dining areas on either end of the building with the kitchen in the middle, to having a smaller kitchen on one end with all of the cooking and serving stations in the middle and the dining area on the north end of the building. Because of this, they have some very large windows in some odd places -- like the storage room and part of the kitchen area. They also had to work around several load-bearing pillars in the facility, because the dining hall is on the ground floor and there are dorm rooms up above, the pillars could not be moved. Mary also told me they had to plan the remodel timing-wise around when students would be out of the dorm for the summer in order to run the ducts needed during construction. Even with that, construction went past its deadlines and did not fully open until partway into the fall semester that year.
It was a little bit dark, but I took some pictures inside Squires:
This is the dining area, it had some gorgeous artwork and lighting.
A look back through the serving area. Notice all the pillars?
This middle section is their huge salad bar (soup wells are at the end). Along the back right is their homestyle cooking line (which also has a rotisserie oven), and on the back left is their pizza oven. Their burger bar & grill is off the picture to the right, and a sandwich & panini bar is off the picture to the left. (And more pillars are in the middle!)I was especially impressed by the very nice dishes Squires has (you can see some in the picture above), though they look a little heavy and difficult to work with. Mary told me they actually had such a huge problem with theft when Squires reopened after the remodel, over 600 glasses were stolen in just the first couple months! They actually bought cheaper / lesser quality glasses to replace them in order to discourage further theft. That's probably not something you would normally consider when redesigning a dining hall -- the dishes and glassware are probably nicer than what the average college student has in their dorm room!
Another impressive feature of Squires is that their hot food lines do not use wells, but instead have heated granite blocks. I can imagine that would make it much easier to clean and maintain the facility, as well as for keeping food temperatures consistent. About the only major drawback of the remodel was that the managers' office at Squires had to be put in the far back corner of the kitchen (such that you have to walk through the entire kitchen to get to it, and you can't see the serving area or dining area from the office). It was very quiet back there! I can see how there would be advantages and disadvantages to having the office secluded like that, however I am partial to the managers' office at Wilkerson which has windows that look out over the entire kitchen and you can even see some of the serving line.
All in all though, I was very impressed by the Squires facility! I can see why students seem to prefer to go there, and their staff is very proud to work there. Hopefully after the Wilkerson remodel next summer, students and staff will be able to enjoy both facilities equally.
I spent the rest of Tuesday working with the Squires kitchen manager, Molly, out at the smaller Terrace dining center. Molly had never worked out there before (since Squires is closed for the summer, she has been working at Wilkerson) and with Wilkerson closed for cleaning, a lot of the Wilkerson staff was also working at Terrace. It was very interesting to see how the staff dealt with being in an unfamiliar kitchen and getting to meet some of the Terrace staff. I got to work at the checkstand for lunch and helped swipe cards and greet diners to the facility. It is a nice little dining hall, although I am a little unsure of why they placed it in the basement of the Memorial Union building -- it seems a little difficult to find there. Another odd feature of the Terrace dining hall is that their specialty bar is enclosed in a little room that is not very noticeable. Although they have signs for it above the doors, unless someone is specifically looking for it, it is not easy to find. They were serving pizza on Tuesday and hardly anyone went in there! I think if they had it to do over, they should make a window or open up the wall to the specialty bar so that the area is more open and visible to the dining area. It is a very nice specialty bar, but if nobody knows it's there, it seems a little silly to have it!
One of the issues I also noticed with having to shift all of the diners to Terrace for those 3 days was some difficulty for students with special diet needs. Dustin being gone for the week probably didn't help matters either, but most of the students who have food allergies and specific diet needs were used to eating at Wilkerson where they have their own cooler with specific foods, and the staff there knows them and is very careful to prepare their foods separately to avoid cross-contamination. On Tuesday Molly helped all the special diet students who came in to ensure that they got a safe lunch and were properly taken care of. However, on Wednesday one of the students with very severe food allergies had a serious allergic reaction at lunchtime. While I wasn't there, Molly told us at the Wednesday staff meeting that the student went very pale and could hardly breathe, and they had to give her an epi-pen and call an ambulance. They are not sure what exactly caused her reaction, as all the food she ate that day should have been safe for her to eat. Unfortunately it sounded like there must have been some cross-contamination when her food was prepared which led to her reaction. It is not something I would have thought of being an issue when moving students from eating at one facility to another, but I think it really shows how hard the Wilkerson staff works to make special diets for students with food allergies so that they can eat safely on campus. Practicing food safety really does go beyond avoiding cross-contamination to avoid pathogens. Cross-contamination can also be immediately life-threatening when food allergies are involved.
Speaking of cross-contamination, my project that I worked on Wednesday and Thursday was to revise the UND Dining Services Sanitation & Safety Manual. Using the ServSafe textbook and the Iowa State University Extension website, I reviewed each policy from handwashing to dishroom procedures. I updated each policy and tried to do some proofreading and make it look a little more professional. I finished revising the 51 page manual by Friday morning!
Dustin came by for a little while on Friday and gave me a couple tasks to do. We will be meeting Monday morning with the Children's Center staff to go over their menu for fall (their food is served out of the Wilkerson complex). I got to go through their menu spreadsheet and put in a few changes, and then I had to run over to the Dining Services admin building to print off copies of it. Next week, Dustin also has someone from FoodPro coming to do several presentations about the program. I've really enjoyed getting to work with it and learn more about foodservice databases, especially in regards to menu planning and nutritional analysis, so it will be interesting to get to learn more!
I spent the rest of my Friday shadowing Lori, Wilkerson's evening manager. She and Molly were both working on writing up action plans for some employees who have been performing below expected standards for their job descriptions. I got to help out a little with making suggestions for actions the employees can take to improve and how to properly word the action plans. I know sometimes there are people who can be difficult to work with and there are also some issues that may be beyond what a manager can address with an employee (for example, if a doctor needs to be involved to evaluate an employee's ability to do a job). It is also difficult for me when some employees are very nice as people, to see that they are not performing all of the tasks of their job and may have to be terminated if they cannot step up. Molly had an interesting take on that, as a manager, you are not paid to be the employees' friend, but to be their boss. Sometimes that can involve making difficult decisions about people who are not performing what needs to be done.
Next week will be my last week here at UND! It will be a busy week with the FoodPro seminars and the Summer Picnic on Wednesday, which I am helping plan. I have truly enjoyed my time here, but I have to admit I am very much looking forward to getting to go home and see my daughter Audre. Only one more week!
Saturday, July 30, 2011
The End of Our Time at Purdue
The eighth and final week for our NACUFS internship here at Purdue. And what did we do for this last week? We did the final touches on our projects, presented them to the management, and I took the ServSafe test and passed. The test wasn’t hard at all. It was the presentation that had me worried.
Amy’s video on sustainability was greatly admired and really well done, even if we had problems with the microphones for the camera. The video goes through the process of how Purdue reduces, reuses, and recycles; everything from the left over food down to the napkins that are recycled.
My presentation was on Sanitation: Food Safety Starts with You! I presented my Wheel of Misfortune and the power point I had developed. I used YouTube videos of ants eating a gecko and the new USDA ads on separating, a cooking song with eighty-six slides, and a germ ball game where everyone had glowing hands. Everyone was very impressed with both our projects. After we were done with our presentations, Mary Ann and Jill Irvin gave us a certificate for completing our NACUFS internship and a lot of goodies to take home with us, including a Purdue cookbook!
Now all that’s left is to pack up and go home. Amy is going back to Boston to enjoy the beach and iced coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts before starting school again in five weeks. Me? I’m going back to the Girl Scout camps in Utah to help them close out their season for the summer. Then I’ll finally go back to Idaho to finish my last year at Idaho State University.
This has been an amazing experience. I’ve done a lot of things in university food service that I probably wouldn’t have been able to do back in Idaho. I’ve gone to Chicago for training, plopped more cookies than most people eat, visited other universities, meet some great people, enjoy water fights and ice cream, deal with the humidity, and realize that this girl form Idaho can do amazing things. I am still numb to realize this internship is over, but it has changed my future forever. So, now as I leave the Indiana plains for the mountains of Idaho, I leave you all with my last thought.
This adventure may have come to an end, but the journey has only begun.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Trip to Buffalo! Week 5.
Today, I went to Buffalo with Jonna, the Executive Chef, and Lisa, an Assistant General Manager to do a couple of tours and talk about the needs of SUNY Geneseo with a variety of food providers.
I got to see the Stock Yards, or the meat processing plant for US Foods. It was unlike anything I've ever seen. Seeing the larger cuts in quantity getting broken down into what consumers see on their plate was fascinating!
Next, we headed to Costanzo's - where they make a lot of delicious bread products. The amount of products they are able to produce is astounding. The whole area smelled like freshly baked bread - one of my favorite smells. Then, we got to test out the product at a sub shop attached to the bakery - delish!
These tours were not only fun from a food-lover's perspective, but they were really informative. The challenges they face are some that I hadn't deeply considered before. The amount of thought that goes into food and keeping it consistent and safe is something I've really learned to appreciate.
After lunch, we headed to the US Food Division offices and met with the Director of Procurement, where Jonna and Lisa explained how SUNY Geneseo is always looking to try new things. It was great to see how the two sides were able to come to a mutual understanding of each other's needs, and oculd find a solution that worked well for everybody.
Then, we ended out day in the Buffalo area with a tour of the US Foods warehouse and wow - what an efficiently run place. It needs to be - the scale is large, and customers in the food business have certain needs an expectations that need to be met.
This was definitely a unique experience - one that will stick with me for a while!
Berkeley Bowl, Final Projects, and Napa Valley
This past week was really relaxed. I’m starting to finish my projects and just received a new one. I’m nearly finished with creating a Standard Operation Procedure for how hard-boiled eggs are cooked and held. My theme dinner will be coming together on Tuesday, August 2nd. I’m really excited and slightly nervous for the dinner – I’m just ready to see everything come together. My last and final project is writing up a job description for a new position that will be opening this fall. UC Berkeley is investing in a food and coffee truck to roam around campus during the day and needs an operator for. I think this is great, the only other school I know of that owns and operates its own food truck is University of Washington.
I spent Monday through Wednesday working on these projects. On Monday though, Ida Shen, our Exec Chef for Cal Dining took me to this grocery store called the Berkeley Bowl. It was amazing! It was very similar to an indoor farmers market. The amount of produce there was unbelievable. The oddest part about the store is that they want the customers to try the different produce before they buy it. One of the employees there took three different types of mangos and cut out slices and let me try them just to compare the differences. On Thursday, myself and five others from the office, Chuck, Ida, Patrice, Alex, and Luther, took a trip to Napa Valley to visit the Culinary Institute of America and go on a wine tasting tour at Sterling Vineyards. I was in heaven when we toured the CIA. I would love to be a chef one day and the school was absolutely amazing. We were able to tour the kitchens and their lecture halls. After the CIA, we ate at this amazing restaurant called the Farmstead and then went on to tour a vineyard and try some wine. Overall, it was a perfect day! I’m nearly positive I’m going to try and move out here after graduation.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Autumn - Ohio State University
The halfway point has passed, and I am now entering the final stretch of my internship! This also means that I am getting closer to the day of my final project theme dinner. And, now, I am realizing that there is a lot more that goes into feeding 550 people than I had previously expected.
On Monday, I worked on marketing for my dinner. The theme for the dinner is "Passport to Europe, " so the meal will feature different dishes from various European countries. My marketing work for the dinner included generating an idea for a poster to advertise the event and searching for decor and music that will be used to give the traditional dining hall, at which the dinner will be held, an atmosphere that is more appropriate for my theme.
Tuesday was also spent working on marketing, but this time I was focusing on marketing tasks for Ohio State. My job for the day was to search the web and generate ideas for a section on the University Residences and Dining Services website.
On Wednesday, I moved away from marketing and worked in the kitchen of Morrill Tower, which serves lunch for the Ohio State orientations. This means that I aided the kitchen staff as they plated hundreds of turkey croissants for the hungry visitors. After helping out with orientation meals, I helped to prepare the employee meal and did prep work for the next day. Before leaving the kitchen, I used the knowledge of the chef and the operations manager to aid me in my menu planning for the theme dinner. Their comments and critiques put me multiple steps closer to finalizing my menu!
Thursday was field trip day! Accompanied by my supervisor and an operations manager at an Ohio State dining establishment, I traveled to Ohio University. The demographics of the cities surrounding Ohio State and the Ohio University are markedly different, as are the dining services operations of the two universities. Our field trip included a complete tour of the currently operating dining services at Ohio University, including a tasting at the bakery and lunch at the union! One aspect of Ohio University's operations that stood out to me was the fact that it has its own warehouse of food products and dining supplies on-site. (I also noticed that there was much less of a rivalry between the two universities, which is nothing like the relationship between Michigan State and the University of Michigan.)
My week concluded, on Friday, with more menu planning, attending an administrative meeting for Morrill Tower dining services, and with inventory work at a campus dining operation. I had the most fun doing inventory work because I was able to put my organizational skills to work. I also know that I will need to use these skills and others during this last stretch of my internship because there is still much to be done for my theme dinner.
On Monday, I worked on marketing for my dinner. The theme for the dinner is "Passport to Europe, " so the meal will feature different dishes from various European countries. My marketing work for the dinner included generating an idea for a poster to advertise the event and searching for decor and music that will be used to give the traditional dining hall, at which the dinner will be held, an atmosphere that is more appropriate for my theme.
Tuesday was also spent working on marketing, but this time I was focusing on marketing tasks for Ohio State. My job for the day was to search the web and generate ideas for a section on the University Residences and Dining Services website.
On Wednesday, I moved away from marketing and worked in the kitchen of Morrill Tower, which serves lunch for the Ohio State orientations. This means that I aided the kitchen staff as they plated hundreds of turkey croissants for the hungry visitors. After helping out with orientation meals, I helped to prepare the employee meal and did prep work for the next day. Before leaving the kitchen, I used the knowledge of the chef and the operations manager to aid me in my menu planning for the theme dinner. Their comments and critiques put me multiple steps closer to finalizing my menu!
Thursday was field trip day! Accompanied by my supervisor and an operations manager at an Ohio State dining establishment, I traveled to Ohio University. The demographics of the cities surrounding Ohio State and the Ohio University are markedly different, as are the dining services operations of the two universities. Our field trip included a complete tour of the currently operating dining services at Ohio University, including a tasting at the bakery and lunch at the union! One aspect of Ohio University's operations that stood out to me was the fact that it has its own warehouse of food products and dining supplies on-site. (I also noticed that there was much less of a rivalry between the two universities, which is nothing like the relationship between Michigan State and the University of Michigan.)
My week concluded, on Friday, with more menu planning, attending an administrative meeting for Morrill Tower dining services, and with inventory work at a campus dining operation. I had the most fun doing inventory work because I was able to put my organizational skills to work. I also know that I will need to use these skills and others during this last stretch of my internship because there is still much to be done for my theme dinner.
University of North Dakota - Week 6!
This week I got to experience a wide variety of things, not only at UND but also at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center here in Grand Forks!
Monday and Tuesday were mainly spent in meetings with the dietitian, lead cooks, kitchen and production managers about the fall menus for each dining hall and each shift. It was interesting to listen to the production concerns about menu planning, mainly having enough labor and time to prepare menu items. Taking their concerns into consideration, Dustin and I had to go back after each meeting and make a few changes to the menus, but overall things were received well. The soup menu for the Squires dining hall was not quite finished before we met with their staff on Tuesday, so we got their input on what they would like to see. Since their facility is not open on the weekends, we had to menu plan for their Mondays to be less labor intensive. As far as the soup menu goes, that generally meant that they could only make one homemade soup on Mondays (they have 2 each day the rest of the week) and that it should be a broth-based soup which is easier to make. Using their suggestions, I was able to plan out the rest of their soup rotation for fall.
On Monday evening, the executive chef, Greg Gefroh, was having a Chef's Table event for about 20-25 residence hall directors and apartment directors, where he did a cooking demonstration and fed them a very nice 5-course meal. I got to do a short presentation at the beginning about the nutrition education lessons I have made for a community nutrition intern to present in residence halls in the fall. I passed out copies of the rough draft of the handout for the first lesson to all of the hall directors there and talked a little about each lesson and asked if they had any feedback about nutrition education topics they'd like to see. I was a bit nervous about standing up and talking, but I think I did okay -- I know they were really all there to eat good food! Hopefully they will promote the education sessions to RAs and help spread the word that nutrition education is available at UND.
On Tuesday afternoon I got to interview several people at the UND Dining Administration office. I've never fully understood the role of administrators, so it was rather eye-opening to see the variety of roles each job fills there. I got to speak with Lola Conley, who does payroll and is involved with hiring and payroll paperwork training for dining services. Interestingly, up until recently she was called on as backup if a dining center was ever short-staffed -- though she told me the only thing she won't do there is cook hot food!
Then I got to interview Orlynn Rosaasen, who is the Director of dining services. His role is more of setting the direction for the department, and getting everyone to buy into its vision and mission. He also has a primary role of negotiating contracts with their primary vendor and with their vending contracts. At UND, all residence hall students are required to have a board plan in the dining halls (but it is optional to live in the residence halls, even for freshmen), and interestingly Orlynn shared that he has had some parents of students get a doctor's note saying their child medically cannot eat in the dining halls. However, after Orlynn pointed out to them that UND has a full-time registered dietitian on staff who can personally arrange any dietary needs with the student, all of the parents have been willing to work with them. It really highlighted for me how important a dietitian's role in college foodservice is, and how the director pulls everything together and solves problems.
I also got to speak with dining services' accountant, Lynette Franks. Lynette's main role is monitoring their board plan rates, and making sure that their expenses are met even though food costs and other factors can be highly variable. I am not a math person so I highly respect the job she does! She also talked about how each dining services unit is treated as a separate account to see how they are faring, but that all of dining services should be working together to achieve the goals of the department, and not trying to compete with each other. I thought it was interesting, I have noticed that there is some competition between dining halls, but didn't think that it would translate to financial competition -- especially when they are required to have their pricing the same across all units.
I also got to stop by the Old Main Marketplace on Tuesday and took some pictures of their Guiding Stars nutritional displays and the nutritional information stickers they have printed on retail salads, yogurts and fruits. Dustin the dietitian here at UND is going to a FoodPro conference out in California next week, and will be doing several presentations about the work he does here at UND. The pictures will be for a presentation he does on nutrition information in retail settings. It was interesting to see some of the information provided, the pita chips and hummus that they sell said on the package that it has 649 calories! I thought that was rather high so I pointed it out to Dustin, and we double-checked the nutritional information for the hummus. Turns out that it was a little higher than it should have been, so we got that fixed.
Wednesday was my day out at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center! I got to spend the day shadowing their chief dietitian, Bonnie Hoverson. Bonnie and everyone of the staff I met there were incredibly nice and showed me around the facility. Just inside the door I was greeted with a huge ChooseMyPlate poster:
Wonder if I could use that for the UND nutrition education sessions?
Throughout the day I got to see different areas of the building. They were originally geared towards micronutrient research, and did a lot of studies on selenium, copper, zinc, etc. Recently, their studies have shifted towards obesity research because of the needs of the country.
In the morning I got to meet with Angie, their main database dietitian who works with their own proprietary software that uses both the USDA Nutrient Database for Standard Reference and the FNDDS (Food and Nutrient Database). She works with all of their research subjects who have to do dietary recalls, food logs, diet histories, etc. and gets all of that information logged into their database. It was really interesting talking to her about how she got involved in working in research -- it really got me thinking about my future and the possibility of me trying to get involved more in research too.
Then I got a nice little tour of their body measurement lab by their exercise physiologist Bill. They have a lot of equipment similar to the CRC at Ohio State, like a BodPod, a DEXA scanner, and indirect calorimeters. They have a large poster on one wall of the lab showing the DEXA scans of four different individuals all with a BMI of 24.2 -- slightly above normal range -- but the DEXA also determines percent body fat. The percent body fat in these individuals varied from 19% at the lowest to over 40% at the highest, all from the same BMI! It was a really good portrayal of the fact that BMI really does not tell the whole story about a person's body composition. One of the pieces of equipment they had that I hadn't seen before was a very nice bioelectrical impedance machine:
Bioelectrical impedance uses the body's water to conduct a small electrical current. Using the idea that water conducts electricity and fat does not, it then can be used to calculate a person's fat free mass (lean mass) and fat mass. However, BIA can be very difficult to use because so many factors can change the amount of body water in a person (and there really is no "normal" amount of body water for a person). I think I could've talked to Bill all day about the equipment they use there and the advantages, disadvantages and difficulties of each one. Perhaps I should look into exercise physiology instead?
The day I was visiting there, they had a couple of engineers from Minnesota at the facility to speak about smartphone technology and how it can be used for nutrition research. Before lunch I got to sit through a session where one of the engineers spoke about not only smartphone technology, but also about how he can build mobile direct calorimeters and use them rather than relying on indirect calorimetry. There are very few direct calorimeters left because they take so much money to run and a dedicated facility, but the idea that they could be made into mobile facilities was interesting. Most of the rest of the talk was focused on smartphone technology and up and coming developments in nutritional assessment through pictures, accelerometers and other capabilities. Not having a smartphone myself (I know, I must be one of the last people in the world without one!) it was interesting to see how quickly the technology is expanding. In the afternoon I also got to sit in on a chalk talk where the researchers at the facility started discussing research project ideas with the engineers, using the smartphone technologies!
After lunch I got the rest of my tour with Bonnie. I got to see the two kitchens they use there for research studies, and got to peek into a couple of their labs. One of the main studies they are currently doing there is with the US Army, testing diets with different levels of protein and their effect on calcium levels and bone health. They are using a safe calcium isotope to help measure calcium loss in the study participants. Interestingly, Bonnie told me that the calcium isotope is acidic, so they have to use a very small amount mixed in milk to provide it to participants, otherwise it curdles the milk!
On the top floor of the facility, they have a nurse's station and rooms to house up to 14 people (only 13 are currently in use) for live-in research studies. The protein study with the Army is a partial live-in study, meaning that the participants live there but are allowed to leave to go to classes during the day and are on their honor not to eat anything other than what is provided to them through the study. The rooms they stay in are pretty nice!
This one was a spare room that had some extra equipment in it, but each room also has a desk and a bathroom. The bathroom has a refrigerator in it for collecting urine specimens, but there is a separate door for researchers to get things out without having to go into the bathrooms. The study participants can also use common areas while living there, they have a pool table, a piano and a nice reading area among other things. Their normal lounge was converted into a blood draw station for this study though -- not quite like a hotel or resort, but almost!
One of the projects Bonnie is working on right now is to come up with 6 "plates" showing regional Midwestern dishes using the MyPlate concept. She has a lot of cookbooks and recipes, trying to capture different cultures and farming commodities. It sounded like a monumental task to me, hopefully we will get to see the finished product online in the future.
I truly had a great time at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center in Grand Forks, I can't thank Bonnie and her staff enough for letting me spend the day with them and showing me around. Maybe I have a future in research somewhere?
Thursday and Friday this week were back to menu planning and interviews. On Thursday afternoon I got to interview Cindy Spencer, Director of Res Life and Education, and Judy Sargent, the Director of Resident Services. They are both great people to talk to, and it was very interesting to get to learn more about the housing side of services at UND. Cindy is an incredibly caring person who coordinates all of the residence hall staffing and provides guidance and leadership for all of the students who work there. She shared so many stories of things she has seen, that were both sad and touching. She also serves as the person to call in a crisis or emergency in the residence halls, in addition to providing leadership and supervision in her department.
Judy Sargent reminded me a great deal of my advisor back home at Ohio State, the director of the School of Allied Med. Judy talked with me a lot about her role there and the various projects that she oversees, particularly in how they have tried to involve IT in the housing experience at UND and all of the planning that goes into each project. She also shared with me her background in working with non-traditional students in apartment housing and helping them get two playground projects approved and installed. I really appreciated that she was an advocate for non-traditional students finding success in college and in trying to make their living experience a positive one at UND. As a non-traditional student myself, I have seen that returning to college can be a daunting and difficult process where you can feel out of place, and not many administrators seem to stick up for the non-traditional student.
On Friday I got to experience the confusion that is menu planning for all of the retail locations that are served out of the Terrace dining hall, including the Twamley Snack Bar, Airport, and the Med School Food Cart. I got to plan the soup rotation for their fall menu at each location, following the requests of each area but trying to match it with the soups that Terrace is already producing, before entering them all into FoodPro. I definitely have a new appreciation for Dustin's job as a dietitian, I don't know how he keeps all of these menus sorted out!
I only have two more weeks left here in North Dakota, it's hard to believe time has flown by so quickly! I am so thankful to have gotten this opportunity to learn about so many different aspects of college foodservice and the role of a dietitian in this setting. It will be interesting to see what these last two weeks bring!
Anna- KU Week 7 !!!
Wow! I can not believe this is almost my last week. Time has gone by so fast and I have learned SO much. This week we were very busy getting ready for our Wizard of Oz event. The most time- consuming part was the monkey wings! But they came out great. We had some confusion at first with recipes and had a little issue with the plantains but all the food came out wonderfully. I got to be Dorothy so that was a lot of fun. Lots of people wanted to take pictures with me, I felt like a movie star. My favorite part was how everyone came together to get everything done. I really had an amazing time planning and managing the event and I hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as Lanie and I did.
This week we also had our final presentation to the managers and directors at KUDS at the leadership meeting that takes place once a month. It took up a good chunk of the meeting, but it would have been impossible to fit seven weeks into a short presentation. We were sure to make a few jokes here and there to keep everyone interested and awake! I hope that our presentation got the main idea across of how thankful we were for everyone's hospitality and knowledge they were willing to share with us.
For our last weekend Lanie and I took it easy and we are certainly going to try and squeeze as much out of the last week as possible. Can't believe its almost over, I am certainly going to miss everyone and everything in Kansas.
Less Than Two Weeks To Go!
Hard to believe it but there are less than two weeks remaining in our internship here at UGA. This past week was another busy one for Kelvin and I. We spent a lot of our time early in the week working on our customers service training initiative project. The initiative is going to be called G.R.E.A.T. which stands for Greetings, Responsibilities, Education, Above & Beyond and Teamwork. We have discussed in detail how each of these five key words or phrases can relate to customer service from the standpoint of both the staff and the guests. We will be putting together a slideshow, which will be used online for student training as well as posters and explanations to hand out and hang up around campus. We hope to have a positive impact on the level of customer service in UGA Food Services with our initiative.
The latter part of the week Kelvin had some days off and I went on my last two management shadows. First I shadowed Mr. Wayne Fair the Unit Manager of Bolton Dining Commons. We spent the morning and afternoon discussing where new concepts derive from and how to prepare to implement them. We took an in depth look at UGA's themed dinners and how they choose themes and how the menus and decor are established for each one. UGA's themed meals are a pride point for their food services as many of these meals have won NACUFS Loyal E. Horton awards for excellence. The key contributors to many of the meals are the student workers who design and create many of the intricate decorations that make the themes come to life. We also discussed how to lead a very large, very diverse team of people day in and day out and what the keys are to showing appreciation to each and every one of them.
Finally I shadowed Gregg, a cafeteria manager at Snelling Commons. We ran a mock health inspection of Snelling and found some areas for their improvement. We discussed resume and interview tips together as well as thoughts on career advancement. Along with Unit Manager Chef Bryan Varin about the ideas of "tray-less" dining and how while it can be more sustainable in terms of water usage reduction and reduced chemical usage, it takes away a lot of good customers service. This is because customers without trays have a harder time carrying for instance just one simple entree, salad and beverage. Especially if they are already carrying backpacks and books when they arrive at the commons. This can cause guests to become unhappy, drop more items and can also cause log jams when customers have to continue to come back to the same lines over and over again. Customer service is key! Let's keep the customers happy and keep using those trays people!
So this is it the final week and half is upon us... This week we will finish our customer service initiative and make final preparations for our Hawaiian banquet! Wish us luck!
Purdue Week 7
It’s our second to last week here at Purdue, and we interns are focused on the details of our projects. Amy has been working hard on filming her sustainability video. My presentation is on sanitation and I’ve been working on the Wheel of Misfortune. One in six people will get a food borne illness this year and I thought to impress this idea on the audience is to have one in six of them get an illness. They will come to the front and spin the Wheel of Misfortune to find out what made them sick, its symptoms, and where they got it. The bacteria I picked are: Campylobacter jejuni, Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, Calcivirus (also called Norovirus), Salmonella, Clostridum botulinum, and E. coli. We managed to track down a wheel and my next task is to convert it to my Wheel of Misfortune.
But our week wasn’t just about sustainability and sanitation. This year marked the first annual Housing and Food Services “Summer Fun” afternoon. The different dining courts and residence halls formed teams and played four different games: water balloon toss, over and under, egg walk, and bean bag toss. We interns were on Team Auxiliary and we came in… cough… fifteenth out of eighteen. Can’t win them all. But! The water fight afterwards was a fun way to cool down in the hot Indiana weather.
We also visited Miami of Ohio in Oxford, Ohio. We took a tour of their food service support facility (a lot like Food Stores here). Except, they don’t process the meat like here at Purdue. No, they take care of all of the baked goods and produce. They even “brand” their rolls with their “M.” It is always interesting to see how colleges try to stand out from other colleges with their food.
Another thing that intrigued me was the Nutrition Information stations. Hey, I’m a dietetic student. Nutrition always interests me. These stations are found at all the dining halls and students can check the nutrition information before even getting their meals. A nice way to get students interested in their diet.
Wait… Only one week left? Where did the time go?
But our week wasn’t just about sustainability and sanitation. This year marked the first annual Housing and Food Services “Summer Fun” afternoon. The different dining courts and residence halls formed teams and played four different games: water balloon toss, over and under, egg walk, and bean bag toss. We interns were on Team Auxiliary and we came in… cough… fifteenth out of eighteen. Can’t win them all. But! The water fight afterwards was a fun way to cool down in the hot Indiana weather.
We also visited Miami of Ohio in Oxford, Ohio. We took a tour of their food service support facility (a lot like Food Stores here). Except, they don’t process the meat like here at Purdue. No, they take care of all of the baked goods and produce. They even “brand” their rolls with their “M.” It is always interesting to see how colleges try to stand out from other colleges with their food.
Another thing that intrigued me was the Nutrition Information stations. Hey, I’m a dietetic student. Nutrition always interests me. These stations are found at all the dining halls and students can check the nutrition information before even getting their meals. A nice way to get students interested in their diet.
Wait… Only one week left? Where did the time go?
University of Kansas Week 7
Wow, this week was a whirl wind. This week we had our Break the Monotony event where we had a themed event of the Wizard of Oz. It went so well. This entire internship from the first week to this week we have been preparing for our event, choosing recipes, testing them, deciding on the décor, it was really awesome just seeing it all come together.
We also had managers, directors, supervisors and employees dress up to make the Land of Oz come alive. Of course Anna and I also dressed up as Dorothy and Auntie Em. Everyone dressing up was really the touch that made the event awesome.
Without everyone’s help we really would not have been able to do it at all. I learned that it really takes team work and everyone being on the same page and knowing what is going on to get it all done.
One of the things that I most enjoyed during the event was taking the reins and being one in charge where people would come and ask questions and I got to be the one who steered them in the right direction. It was a new experience and a great opportunity to grow in leadership on a scale as big as this.
Part of preparing for the event we had to help other people with their costumes, especially the supervisors, so we made their “Evil Monkey” wings for them with hats, and came up with idea to have their tails as shapeable balloons, it was really a fun touch and really simple and cheep, so we could make it into mass quantities for the multiple supervisors.
When preparing for the event we had planned on making cookies that were shaped like Toto’s and red slippers, but as the week neared we saw that that was going to be too time consuming to produce that many cookies and still have them fresh. So we changed our plan the week of the event to make a few cakes and ice them to look like the yellow brick road. The baker also built a house out of Rice Krispies.
It turned out way better than any cookies had and it really was one of the best touches to the event. It was a lot of fun pulling it together because I had never piped a cake and I got to pipe one of the cakes myself. It was a lot of fun. Maybe some cake decorating is in my future ;)
The menu for our event included a lot of fun dishes like Munchkin Empanadas, Evil Monkey’s favorite Baked Plantains, Our own Seafood Carbanara which we called Glinda’s Carbanara served over angel hair pasta, Quinoa and Millet stuffed pepper for our vegan dish, Beef Fajitas, Roasted Mushroom and Artichoke Bisque, Auntie Em’s Kansas BBQ, Vegetable Kabobs, a Apple bar with a lot of fun toppings because you can’t forget those angry apple trees, roasted potatoes, and tofu with pesto for our vegetarian dish. It really was a full menu, and looking back on it I’m glad that we got to have a nice balance of healthy and multi cultural food. Anna and I also talked with some of the customers who did not know we created the menu and asked them how they liked the food and all the comments we that they loved it and they were so surprised that there was such good food. So this made us really happy.
We ended our week by giving a final presentation of our time spent in the internship to the directors and managers of KU dining services. This was a big deal and it went really well. For our presentation we also made a short video to show them the event at Mrs E’s. It showed preparing for the event and walking through the whole dining facility to show the decorations. Everyone enjoyed the presentation and said that they loved having us here this summer. It truly has been an awesome experience. It is crazy to think that next week is our last week here in Kansas, it has just flown by.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
ALMOST TO THE END OF A SUCCESS STORY!
Good Day!
Monday Adam and I kicked off the week by shadowing the catering staff at UGA. We got to see how different catering events are booked in the computer system. The events could be anywhere from cookies and punch to planning a wedding. We were able to see the catalog that the staff uses to order different linen for the different events. The managers told us how someone could call to get the price of a certain menu with a certain number of guests then call back a week later and want the price of a whole different menu. I think that would be a headache at times but with technology today, it’s as easy as plugging the items into the computer system and letting the computer do all the configurations. We were also able to talk to Mr. Wayne Pahl for a couple hours. He is a very nice guy who is knowledgeable about the hospitality industry and was able to give us some great advice. He appears too really like what he does here at UGA and his staff loves him. Towards the end of the shift we had to set up a banquet for the orientation students. I was able to put hamburgers on buns, help set up the chocolate fountain, change out sternos for the chafing pans, and expedite. My expediting position consisted of pulling food from the hot box and un-wrapping it for the lines when needed. It was a busy job and I enjoyed working with the student manager. The remainder of the week was office hours and we were able to work on our customer service project. It is still coming along well and it should be completed by next week. Once the project is completed, I will gladly go into details. Until next time be safe!
Kelvin Butler
Monday Adam and I kicked off the week by shadowing the catering staff at UGA. We got to see how different catering events are booked in the computer system. The events could be anywhere from cookies and punch to planning a wedding. We were able to see the catalog that the staff uses to order different linen for the different events. The managers told us how someone could call to get the price of a certain menu with a certain number of guests then call back a week later and want the price of a whole different menu. I think that would be a headache at times but with technology today, it’s as easy as plugging the items into the computer system and letting the computer do all the configurations. We were also able to talk to Mr. Wayne Pahl for a couple hours. He is a very nice guy who is knowledgeable about the hospitality industry and was able to give us some great advice. He appears too really like what he does here at UGA and his staff loves him. Towards the end of the shift we had to set up a banquet for the orientation students. I was able to put hamburgers on buns, help set up the chocolate fountain, change out sternos for the chafing pans, and expedite. My expediting position consisted of pulling food from the hot box and un-wrapping it for the lines when needed. It was a busy job and I enjoyed working with the student manager. The remainder of the week was office hours and we were able to work on our customer service project. It is still coming along well and it should be completed by next week. Once the project is completed, I will gladly go into details. Until next time be safe!
Kelvin Butler
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
WHATS YOUR VISION?
Greetings and Salutations,
This is the one and only Kelvin Butler. This past week at UGA has been a pleasant one. Thanks to Miss Nicole, we visited “Jittery Joes” and “Your Pie.” Jittery Joes is a coffee shop with delicious coffee might I add. We got to meet some of the staff members and we saw the process of roasting the coffee beans. I had never seen the roasting process so I was really amazed. Your Pie is a “build your own” pizza franchise started here in Athens, GA. The owner is a former UGA employee of food services. He was a marketing major in college and always knew he wanted to open a restaurant. He was blessed with his vision to be able to open multiple restaurants. It was great getting to meet the owner; it added some new ideas to my vision. Towards the end of the week we got to work with the catering team. I had fun with them because we got to work with other employees our age. The catering team is a great group of students that knows how to get the job done. You give them a task and you don’t have to worry about it afterwards. Adam and I are still working on our customer service module for the student workers. YYYAaaayyyyy it’s coming along wonderfully. Until next time folks, be blessed!
NACUFS National Conference - Dallas, Texas
This past week (Tuesday through Sunday), I was lucky enough to be able to attend the NACUFS National Conference held at the Gaylord Hotel and Conference Center in Dallas Texas! I had never been to a conference before or to Texas so this was an all new experience.
The conference consisted of many networking events, banquets, interest sessions, and one huge vendor showcase. The showcase was awesome! It was basically a giant room that held over 200 different vendors. The products the vendors promoted ranged anywhere from gelato, soy milk, burgers, to dishwashing machines, food containers, and food management systems. The best thing about the vendor show was the amount of free food and giveaways that were offered. On both days, we would skip lunch and go straight to the vendor showcase because of all the free food that was there.
During the stay at the conference, four different interest session timeslots were offered. Each time slot had about five to ten separate sessions to attend. I went to three of the four sessions. The ones I attended were titled: Grow Food Sustainably: Permaculture on Your Campus, Food Trends: What’s Hot and What’s Not, and the Culinary Forum.
While all three were extremely interesting, the most inspiring was the Grow Food Sustainably session. It was hosted by Ryan Harb, the Chief Sustainability Specialist at UMass-Amherst. Harb, along with the help of hundreds of volunteers, created the first permaculture garden to be formed on a college campus. It currently offers the school about one thousand pounds of produce each year that are used directly in their dining commons. The garden is so beneficial to Umass and really brought the school together as a whole to create this one-fourth of an acre garden. While it is great as a school activity, it is also an amazing way to teach students and faculty the importance of sustainability and how a school can help promote this. Check out this video about it at: http://permaculture.tv/umass-amherst-permaculture/ J Hopefully we can all start creating these at our schools!
Peet’s Coffee and Tea sponsored our dinner on Friday night. We were taken to the Dallas Cowboys football stadium and had dinner inside!! After dinner, we had a tour of the entire stadium and were able to walk on the field and view the locker rooms. The stadium was huge!!
Overall, the conference was amazing! I am hoping to help out at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference this coming fall since it will be held at my university, Penn State. The National Conference for next year is also going to be held in my hometown area of Boston so I would love to volunteer for this as well!
Monday, July 18, 2011
Anna- KU Week 6 !!!
This week in catering I learned a lot about service and a lot of neat new ways to fold napkins! We got to help out with a bunch of different events, including new student orientation. I was a little crazy how long it took to get ready for NSO and then within about 15 minutes everything was a mess. I also learned, from working a bridge club event, that out have to serve from the right and pick up on the left. These were some awesome things to learn since they can help me in my future as a caterer. I also got to meet some other catering people close to my own age, they were really nice and even invited us to go to the lake with them on Sunday. Thursday was a very exciting day for us! We got to use all the skills we learned in catering to run our own event. We got to take care of the reception at the Dole Center for an event put on by politician, Barbara Ballard. It was a lot of fun setting everything up and then helping out later with the dinner. I was nervous about doing the event but it was exciting to have the opportunity to do it.
On Friday we got to go to the Roasterie!!!!! It was awesome, they are so passionate about their coffee. My favorite was the coffee ice cream!! I think I must have eaten almost the whole pint! I got some cute little presents there, including two burlap sacks that the coffee comes in!!! I plan on making a purse or something out of them! This week is our Wizard of Oz event, it should be awesome!!!
Field Trips and Catering
This past week at UGA took us on two great field trips. We began the week by paying a visit to Jittery Joe's Coffee processing center. We met the operator and staff of the facility and saw how they roast the different types of coffee beans. We learned how different coffee blend are created and so how long it takes to roast a batch of coffee beans. We also saw where and how Jittery Joe's ships out it's many different flavors of coffee. Field trip number two for the week took us to "You Pie" a local pizza restaurant that was started by a former UGA food services assistant manager. "Your Pie" is a build your own personal pizza concept that is similar to places such as Mo's Mexican restaurants, Subway, and Chipotle. "Your Pie" is a franchised company that was started in Athens, GA where the original 3 restaurants are and now has branched out with franchised restaurants now in 9 locations. The company is using their own research in combination with that of potential franchisees in order to choose the best new locations for the franchise. They hope to be all over the entire South East United States within the next 5-10 years. The last part of our week was a day of shadowing the UGA catering team. We helped set up and run a lunch event for a group of high school juniors and their parent's on a tour of the campus. We also discussed industry practices and good and bad management styles with Mr. Wayne Pahl, the head catering manager. We are still hard at work on our two projects and will post more details as the big day of our closing banquet approaches, as well as when we firm up our official customer service training initiative.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
University of North Dakota - Week 5!
This week has been busy busy busy! I spent the first part of the week continuing my work with Dustin the dietitian here at UND. On Monday I finished up the 4th and final nutrition education lesson plan and powerpoint, entitled "How to Understand a Nutrition Facts Label". The FDA Consumer information page on nutrition facts labels was a huge help in guiding the lesson. I just need to put together the rough draft of the online information sheet for that lesson and I'll be ready to pass on the materials to the marketing department. I can't wait to see the finished product!
Tuesday and Wednesday I spent the day helping Dustin with fall menu planning for the dining halls. They use a 5-week cycle menu every semester. My main project last week was to plan the soup menu for Wilkerson, the main dining center. They serve 2 soups at lunch, extended lunch, dinner, and extended dinner each day. Dustin wanted to incorporate more homemade soups into the menu, and fewer convenience (i.e. Campbell's) soups, to try to provide a better quality product and attempt to reduce the sodium content. The executive chef here at UND, Greg, has been recipe testing a lot of new homemade soups this summer, so I took the list of new homemade soups and went to work trying to implement them in the new menu. The goal was to have 1 homemade soup and 1 convenience soup at every meal. I also had to make sure that there was one vegetarian soup at every meal. While it sounds fairly easy, the process became more complicated when I realized that there were only two vegetarian homemade soup options because the rest were all made with chicken or beef bases. One of the convenience soups, the chicken tortilla soup, is very popular with the students so Dustin wanted to leave it on the menu once a week. It got to be somewhat difficult to pair the chicken tortilla soup with a homemade vegetarian option, but we made it work.
Once the soup menu was planned in a spreadsheet, I had to go back into the FoodPro system and menu the new soups at every meal they were offered. Wilkerson also sends out food to the Children's Center and Facilities here, so it was a bit like being a detective trying to find every meal where soup was being served and making sure it was correctly input into the menu, and old soups were taken out. I also got to change a few of the weekend entrees for the Wilkerson menu, to try to add some non-breakfast items into their brunch menus. They have a great selection of new wraps and casseroles to choose from, hopefully the students will enjoy the changes come fall!
On Wednesday I also got to do the soup menu for the Terrace dining hall, which is smaller than Wilkerson and not open on the weekends, so it was much easier to incorporate choices into. I still have to get those soups entered into FoodPro next week.
The rest of my week was spent doing rotations at the UND Bakery! It was a bit of a different experience working nights and getting to help out making a wide variety of baked goods. On Wednesday night I was mainly shadowing the workers there to see what they do and how they do it. But I did get to help Tracy, the bakery manager, make donut dough. We used a sheeter, almost exactly like this one:
The donut dough goes in just under the red line, through the rollers and down the belt. Each batch of dough was run through 3 or 4 times to get it to the right thickness. Tracy even let me run a batch of dough through. You have to catch it on the backs of your forearms in order to put it back through the roller properly. As the dough gets thinner, it also gets longer and harder to catch!
Once the dough is the right thickness, Tracy used a variety of donut cutters to get the donut shapes we needed. I also got to help roll and twist cinnamon twists, we ran cinnamon rolls through the dough sheeter, and the last of the dough went towards making two loaves of Apple Fritter bread. There was enough dough leftover to make a giant monster apple fritter!
I also got to work with the large deck oven they use in the bakery. It has 6 shelves that rotate around the oven, and each shelf has room for 4 full sheet pans. Both Wednesday and Thursday night we prepared and baked off muffins, cookies, breads, buns, danish, and a variety of other pastries. On Thursday I got to measure out and mix muffin batter for several different kinds of muffins (I'd never used a mixer that big before!) and I got to scoop out and bake off about 4 dozen multigrain blueberry muffins. I think my favorite item in the bakery had to be the pistachio muffins though-- I wish I had taken a picture, they looked so unnaturally green, something like this: (not my picture, but these are pistachio muffins!)
Hulk Muffins!
The other neat part of my bakery experience was that on Thursday night I got to fry off all of the donuts we rolled the dough for on Wednesday. Some of them I also got to fill (like Long Johns) or dip in chocolate, caramel or white icing. We also fried the monster apple fritter we made with the leftover dough. It really took me back to when I used to work nights at a Tim Horton's coffee and bake shop -- though the UND bakery donuts are actually made from scratch and fresh, not frozen and reanimated like Tim Horton's! I think you can definitely tell the difference in quality.
Since the bakery at UND makes all of the baked goods for all of their dining services, we got to load up carts for each area of operation according to what they needed for the day. The carts are then lined up in the inside loading dock of the warehouse so they can be delivered to their respective units first thing in the morning.
While it was a great experience at the bakery, it's been difficult to transition back to being awake during the day! As a dietetics student, it was also somewhat disheartening to see how many unhealthy baked goods options there are out there. I talked to Tracy about that, and he showed me some new healthier recipes they have tested in the past, but didn't have much success with. They do have a lowfat chocolate raspberry brownie that we made, but it has so much added sugar in it to replace the fat that was removed, it's really not that much healthier than the original product. (5lbs of sugar for 4 pans of brownies, oy!) Tracy's take on the topic was that people don't eat baked goods to be healthy, they're intended as treats. While I think that's true, it can also be dangerous. I know there is a temptation to label a food as "healthy" and then many people (myself included!) will over-indulge on the healthy food until they've eaten enough calories to equal the regular version. Apparently they have looked at some multigrain donut options, but the fact that they are all fried in oil and glazed or topped with sugar, the multigrain component really isn't going to improve the nutritional value enough to be worth it. It really drives home the importance of the concept of everything in moderation!
I am really looking forward to next week, not only do I get to continue with menu planning, I will be doing some event planning for an upcoming picnic that UND holds for its retirees every summer. And next Wednesday I get to spend the day at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center here in Grand Forks, shadowing their chief dietitian! Only 3 weeks to go, but so much left to do!
Tuesday and Wednesday I spent the day helping Dustin with fall menu planning for the dining halls. They use a 5-week cycle menu every semester. My main project last week was to plan the soup menu for Wilkerson, the main dining center. They serve 2 soups at lunch, extended lunch, dinner, and extended dinner each day. Dustin wanted to incorporate more homemade soups into the menu, and fewer convenience (i.e. Campbell's) soups, to try to provide a better quality product and attempt to reduce the sodium content. The executive chef here at UND, Greg, has been recipe testing a lot of new homemade soups this summer, so I took the list of new homemade soups and went to work trying to implement them in the new menu. The goal was to have 1 homemade soup and 1 convenience soup at every meal. I also had to make sure that there was one vegetarian soup at every meal. While it sounds fairly easy, the process became more complicated when I realized that there were only two vegetarian homemade soup options because the rest were all made with chicken or beef bases. One of the convenience soups, the chicken tortilla soup, is very popular with the students so Dustin wanted to leave it on the menu once a week. It got to be somewhat difficult to pair the chicken tortilla soup with a homemade vegetarian option, but we made it work.
Once the soup menu was planned in a spreadsheet, I had to go back into the FoodPro system and menu the new soups at every meal they were offered. Wilkerson also sends out food to the Children's Center and Facilities here, so it was a bit like being a detective trying to find every meal where soup was being served and making sure it was correctly input into the menu, and old soups were taken out. I also got to change a few of the weekend entrees for the Wilkerson menu, to try to add some non-breakfast items into their brunch menus. They have a great selection of new wraps and casseroles to choose from, hopefully the students will enjoy the changes come fall!
On Wednesday I also got to do the soup menu for the Terrace dining hall, which is smaller than Wilkerson and not open on the weekends, so it was much easier to incorporate choices into. I still have to get those soups entered into FoodPro next week.
The rest of my week was spent doing rotations at the UND Bakery! It was a bit of a different experience working nights and getting to help out making a wide variety of baked goods. On Wednesday night I was mainly shadowing the workers there to see what they do and how they do it. But I did get to help Tracy, the bakery manager, make donut dough. We used a sheeter, almost exactly like this one:
The donut dough goes in just under the red line, through the rollers and down the belt. Each batch of dough was run through 3 or 4 times to get it to the right thickness. Tracy even let me run a batch of dough through. You have to catch it on the backs of your forearms in order to put it back through the roller properly. As the dough gets thinner, it also gets longer and harder to catch!Once the dough is the right thickness, Tracy used a variety of donut cutters to get the donut shapes we needed. I also got to help roll and twist cinnamon twists, we ran cinnamon rolls through the dough sheeter, and the last of the dough went towards making two loaves of Apple Fritter bread. There was enough dough leftover to make a giant monster apple fritter!
I also got to work with the large deck oven they use in the bakery. It has 6 shelves that rotate around the oven, and each shelf has room for 4 full sheet pans. Both Wednesday and Thursday night we prepared and baked off muffins, cookies, breads, buns, danish, and a variety of other pastries. On Thursday I got to measure out and mix muffin batter for several different kinds of muffins (I'd never used a mixer that big before!) and I got to scoop out and bake off about 4 dozen multigrain blueberry muffins. I think my favorite item in the bakery had to be the pistachio muffins though-- I wish I had taken a picture, they looked so unnaturally green, something like this: (not my picture, but these are pistachio muffins!)
Hulk Muffins!The other neat part of my bakery experience was that on Thursday night I got to fry off all of the donuts we rolled the dough for on Wednesday. Some of them I also got to fill (like Long Johns) or dip in chocolate, caramel or white icing. We also fried the monster apple fritter we made with the leftover dough. It really took me back to when I used to work nights at a Tim Horton's coffee and bake shop -- though the UND bakery donuts are actually made from scratch and fresh, not frozen and reanimated like Tim Horton's! I think you can definitely tell the difference in quality.
Since the bakery at UND makes all of the baked goods for all of their dining services, we got to load up carts for each area of operation according to what they needed for the day. The carts are then lined up in the inside loading dock of the warehouse so they can be delivered to their respective units first thing in the morning.
While it was a great experience at the bakery, it's been difficult to transition back to being awake during the day! As a dietetics student, it was also somewhat disheartening to see how many unhealthy baked goods options there are out there. I talked to Tracy about that, and he showed me some new healthier recipes they have tested in the past, but didn't have much success with. They do have a lowfat chocolate raspberry brownie that we made, but it has so much added sugar in it to replace the fat that was removed, it's really not that much healthier than the original product. (5lbs of sugar for 4 pans of brownies, oy!) Tracy's take on the topic was that people don't eat baked goods to be healthy, they're intended as treats. While I think that's true, it can also be dangerous. I know there is a temptation to label a food as "healthy" and then many people (myself included!) will over-indulge on the healthy food until they've eaten enough calories to equal the regular version. Apparently they have looked at some multigrain donut options, but the fact that they are all fried in oil and glazed or topped with sugar, the multigrain component really isn't going to improve the nutritional value enough to be worth it. It really drives home the importance of the concept of everything in moderation!
I am really looking forward to next week, not only do I get to continue with menu planning, I will be doing some event planning for an upcoming picnic that UND holds for its retirees every summer. And next Wednesday I get to spend the day at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center here in Grand Forks, shadowing their chief dietitian! Only 3 weeks to go, but so much left to do!
Autumn - Ohio State University
This weeks activities consisted of Menu Planning and Cafe Services. On Monday, I spent time with two of Ohio State's chefs, in order to fine-tune the details of my final project, which is to plan a dinner that will be served in a traditional campus dining facility. The chefs aided me in completing the menu that I am planning for the final project, and I was able to shadow one of the chefs on that day. During the shadowing experience, I sat in on a meeting between the chef and a student with allergy concerns. I also witnessed a sales meeting between the chef and two sales representatives.
On Tuesday, I experienced a more technical side of the foodservice system at Ohio State. I spent my day learning some of the functions of CBORD, foodservice software, and of the university's register systems, MICROS. Tuesday was a very technical day, and I was provided with a lot of information. However, I was able to use the time to use CBORD to look up the recipes and food products that would be needed for my final project.
For lunch on Monday and Tuesday, I was able to participate in a tasting of revamped menu items that will be served in one of Ohio State's dining halls in the Fall semester. The food was plentiful, as you can see below, and it was delicious!
Wednesday was the beginning of my cafe services experience. I also experienced cafe services on Thursday and Friday. During these three days, my time was spent shadowing the Cafe Operations Manager, her Assistant Manger, and her Service Coordinator. Each day, I followed one of these individuals on trips between three of Ohio State's five currently operating cafes and their main office. The tasks that I completed with cafe services included learning how to make espresso drinks for the first time and completing evaluations of the three cafe locations, in addition to learning the varying yet overlapping responsibilities of the individuals who I shadowed.
An exciting event that occurred during my stay with cafe services was that, on Thursday, the division of Ohio State's University Residences and Dining Services (URDS) that supplies the cafe's with sandwiches and salads was understaffed and was not able to produce the needed amount of food in time for delivery. As a solution, myself and other URDS staff put on aprons and hairnets, over our business casual attire, and helped get the sandwiches and salads out on time. This event illustrated just how much the various URDS divisions depend on each other. I really enjoyed my experience with cafe services; however, next week, I will be moving on.
On Tuesday, I experienced a more technical side of the foodservice system at Ohio State. I spent my day learning some of the functions of CBORD, foodservice software, and of the university's register systems, MICROS. Tuesday was a very technical day, and I was provided with a lot of information. However, I was able to use the time to use CBORD to look up the recipes and food products that would be needed for my final project.
For lunch on Monday and Tuesday, I was able to participate in a tasting of revamped menu items that will be served in one of Ohio State's dining halls in the Fall semester. The food was plentiful, as you can see below, and it was delicious!
Wednesday was the beginning of my cafe services experience. I also experienced cafe services on Thursday and Friday. During these three days, my time was spent shadowing the Cafe Operations Manager, her Assistant Manger, and her Service Coordinator. Each day, I followed one of these individuals on trips between three of Ohio State's five currently operating cafes and their main office. The tasks that I completed with cafe services included learning how to make espresso drinks for the first time and completing evaluations of the three cafe locations, in addition to learning the varying yet overlapping responsibilities of the individuals who I shadowed.
An exciting event that occurred during my stay with cafe services was that, on Thursday, the division of Ohio State's University Residences and Dining Services (URDS) that supplies the cafe's with sandwiches and salads was understaffed and was not able to produce the needed amount of food in time for delivery. As a solution, myself and other URDS staff put on aprons and hairnets, over our business casual attire, and helped get the sandwiches and salads out on time. This event illustrated just how much the various URDS divisions depend on each other. I really enjoyed my experience with cafe services; however, next week, I will be moving on.
Purdue: Weeks 5 and 6
The last two weeks have been focused on the video on sustainability and the presentation on sanitation. But there has also been a couple of other things to distract us from our tasks. Last weekend, we helped cater a couple of weddings (which is the reason why I didn’t do a blog post last week). We got to help with the prep work, plating, setting up tables, serving, and cleaning up after the guests left. It made for a long couple of days.
This week we toured the West Lafayette Waste Treatment Plant. This is where they take our “yack” form the dining halls (the leftover food), and have microorganisms eat it away, which creates methane, and finally energy! They also clean the water waste that comes through as well. Here are the pictures:
This is where the "yack" gets dumped.
Raw sludge and digested sludge are kept apart.
Cleaning the water...
And one of the final products: Clean water!
I can’t believe we only have two weeks left. Where did the time go?!
This week we toured the West Lafayette Waste Treatment Plant. This is where they take our “yack” form the dining halls (the leftover food), and have microorganisms eat it away, which creates methane, and finally energy! They also clean the water waste that comes through as well. Here are the pictures:
This is where the "yack" gets dumped.
Raw sludge and digested sludge are kept apart.
Cleaning the water...
And one of the final products: Clean water!
I can’t believe we only have two weeks left. Where did the time go?!
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Lanie-6th week at the University of Kansas
This week was our second and last week in catering. We helped out with a lot of events, including New Student Orientation, Women’s Bridge Club lunch and a Youth Leaders Banquet at night where we had the privilege to do the entire welcome reception and test our skills of packing everything we needed for the event and serving customers.
We had a lot of fun, but the best part of the week was a personal tour through the Roasterie which is the supplier for all the coffee on KU’s campus. We got to see everything from them testing the coffee that comes in daily to seeing their air roasting machines for the beans and we got to drink a lot of delicious coffee.
We also got to try their very own coffee flavored ice cream where they only sell it at their factory. So we got to try some and it was the best ice cream I have probably tasted in my life. I will never go back to anything like Starbucks! They now have me sold for life! It was a great way to end the week. Some cool things that we learned how to do this week was doing multiple napkin folds to make a table look exciting and glamorous. Now we can use these folds to make any table look good.
Next week is our big event, and we are so excited. All the planning is well underway and with the help of the supervisors everything is in motion and ready to happen on Wednesday! Anna and I are both excited and there will definitely be some good pictures to show off this exciting event! Can’t wait!
Thursday, July 14, 2011
WHAT A SUCCESS!!! Thanks to all those Invloved!
What a great event!! We got nothing but compliments from all those who attended. Our Pirates of the Caribbean Luncheon turned out to be well decorated, had great food, and a wonderful staff. Thanks to the Chefs, Assistant Chefs, and Kitchen assistants that helped in preparing for this event; we put out a lunch that everyone can be very proud of.
We couldn't have done any of this without our lovely advisers Eric Janssen and Carol Cronin. We would like to give a special thanks to the staff at the bakery for making us delicious rum cake, delectable cookies, and a fabulous centerpiece to top off our desert table! Also a special thanks to Donna for teaching us how to form fondant into our pirates!We would also like to send a special thank you to all our chefs. Chef Jim Buel, Chef Bruce Haney, Chef Charlie String, Chef Scott Chapman, and Chef Beth Field; you were our A-Team. Thank you all so much for your hard work! A big thanks to Pam Bass our salad master for putting out some remarkable salads! And of course a thanks to all our staffing for that day, we never could have pulled off such an event without everyone involved.
And finally AAARRRGGGGG!!!! No body be walking the plank today, we'll be enjoying this swash buckling menu!!!! Shiver me timbers, swab the poop deck, and get'er done!
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