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.