Autumn - Ohio State University

As the end of the internship draws nearer and nearer, it feels as if time is flying faster and faster.
On Monday and Tuesday, I tied up some lose ends on the menu for my theme dinner, which is now my theme lunch, and performed marketing tasks for my lunch as well as other events/dining locations on campus. For my event, this included putting all of the updated menu items in CBORD and updating the posters and napkin-holder inserts before printing them.

Wednesday was another field trip day! This time, we went to the Hobart warewashing plant. There, we were able to view the factory in which industrial dishwashers and cooking appliances are constructed and a research and development area. One area of the tour that stood out to me was a "testing" room. In this room different types of parts were being continuously run in order to determine the effects of extended use on Hobart's products. For example, one piece of equipment had started its test in January of 2011, and it was still running when we visited! Below are some pictures from the trip:


Thursday started off with another, smaller, field trip, in order to do some market research. The trip took us to a nearby Caribou Coffee location. The main goal was to investigate what types of impulse buys Caribou offers to its customers, because a Caribou Coffee will be sold at one of Ohio State's, soon to be open, facilities.

After the morning coffee run, I spent the rest of my day shadowing management at North Commons, a traditional dining hall. North Commons is where my theme lunch will take place. Therefore, I will be spending the majority of the rest of my internship at this facility, in order to become familiar with its operations. I also spent time at North Commons on Friday; however, Friday morning, I participated in a mock interview. The position that I interviewed for was that of "Service Coordinator," which is a position that requires tasks such as supervision, management, and quality control. Despite my nerves, and the fact that I already knew all of the interviewers, I was told that I performed very well: "Cool as a Cucumber," was one positive comment that I received.

This week was very enjoyable and educational (especially when I received feedback from the mock-interviewers). I can hardly believe that there is really only one more week of the internship left!

Final Week at UGA! BITTERSWEET!!

Last week was a productive but fun week for Adam and I, as we put the final touches on our two projects we were responsible for. The closing banquet for the freshman college students was a success. Everyone appeared to really have enjoyed it from the compliments of the food to the décor. We had to wash and polish silverware for 400+ students, make flower table center pieces, make pineapple tree center pieces, marinate ribs, and decorate the dining hall. We had a ball working with the summit crew. The management at the summit are great people and the staff works really hard. Teamwork was the key to this event. Everyone played a huge part in this event from the cashiers, to the drink guys, to the stock room guys. I would like to thank Ms. Janet (the manager at the summit where the event was held) you are awesome! You taught us a lot! It was the first time I had ever put together flower arrangements. Ms. Chef Shelly, thanks for assisting us with the menu items and for the rest of your hard work. Ms. Red (the baker) for all of the desserts and dressing up for the event! To the remainder of the managers at the summit, you guys are awesome also!
The theme of the closing banquet was Hawaiian.

THE MENU

SALAD: Lilikoi Salad
BREADS: Hawaiian Sweet Bread and Banana Bread
ENTREES: Char Sui Pork Ribs, Mahi Mahi with Mango Salsa, Macadamia Nut Crusted Chicken with Banana-Cilantro Butter Sauce, Sweet & Sour Pineapple Meatballs and Tofu Poke
SIDES: Sesame Cabbage, Sweet Plantains, Pan Asian Noodles, and Maui Bay Vegetable Blend
DESSERTS: Medley of Fresh Fruit, Rum Cake, Palace Fusion Mini Cheesecakes, Lemon Mist Cake, Mimosa Escape Cake and Molten Lava Cake
BEVERAGES: Blue Hawaii and Volcanic Punch

HHHMMMMmmmmmm HHHHHHMMMMmmmmmm GGGGOOOOODDDD!!!!

Today is our final day as Interns at the University of Georgia. Adam and I will have a farewell luncheon at noon. After the luncheon we will have our presentation on our Customer Service Module (our second project) that we had to invent. It is a GREAT one! The project is actually titled G.R.E.A.T. (Greetings, Responsibilities, Educate, Above & Beyond, and Team Work). In the power point slide we define each of the words then we explain how it relates to the guest and to the co-workers. I believe management and the student workers will enjoy this module. Not only will they enjoy it they will learn a great amount of information. After the presentation we have our final evaluations then we depart. I must say this is a bittersweet time. I’m soooo excited about going home to Virginia, visiting my family, and graduating in December 2011 at Virginia State University. I am not ready to leave all the wonderful people that I have met in Georgia.
To Ms. Nicole, thanks for stepping in and being our contact person after Ms. Kris left. It was a pleasure being able to communicate with you and learn from you. Thanks for all of the rides when we went on our field trips. To Mr. Adam, where should I begin? I met you 8 weeks ago and it seems as if we grew up together. You have a great heart and I must say, you will go far in life! Keep up the great work and continue to bless other people that you encounter. I must say I have learned a lot from you in the last 8 weeks and when I come to NY to visit I will def contact you. Until next time, be blessed and congratulations on your last semester at Penn State.
As far as the other interns, congratulations!! I enjoyed reading everyone’s blog and looking at the wonderful pictures that were posted. Continue to be a blessing to others and please continue to be a blessing in the Hospitality Industry. Until next time, little PINEAPPLES be safe.

Mr. Kelvin Butler

Our Final Day At UGA...

Today is our last day as interns at UGA, so I just want to show my gratitude one final time. To all of the management and staff of UGA Food Services, I say Thank You! If not for your gratuitous amounts of hospitality, I could not have felt as happy and at home as I did for the past two months here in Athens, Georgia (900 miles away from my home in New York). Each and every one of you taught me something new and valuable and I cannot say enough about my time here. I also have to say thank you to my fellow intern, Kelvin Butler. It has been my pleasure to have met you and worked side by side with you for the past two months. I believe that I now have a lifelong friend in the state of Virginia. You are a great person with a strong mind and an obvious passion for the hospitality industry, where ever your future endeavors may take you (Hotel ownership, night club ownership, Chik-Fil-A ownership, or anything else that you come up with) you will most certainly be successful!

Final Projects at UGA

Hard to believe it, but mine and Kelvin's time at UGA is nearly complete. Today is our last day of work, which makes for some very mixed feelings. Happy to have met so many great new people and learned so many valuable things for our future careers, and also happy to be heading home to see family and friends that we have missed so dearly, while at the same time sad to have to say "see you later" to so many people that took us in as if we were family for the past two months.

This past week Kelvin and I finished up our second big project, which is a customer service training module for student workers and management in food services at UGA. We created a program called G.R.E.A.T. standing for (Greetings, Responsibilities, Education, Above & Beyond and Teamwork). We believe that these five words truly exemplify customer service. In the online training course we explain in detail how each of the words has meaning to the food services workers and then how it translates to the guest's experience in the different food service units at UGA. We also hope to get all of the units to hang posters with the G.R.E.A.T. words where all of the workers can see it every day and be reminded of the training. In order to introduce this new program to upper management, we have a formal presentation this afternoon.

As for our other final project, Kelvin and I finally hosted our Hawaiian themed Freshman College Banquet at the East Village Summit Commons. After more than a month of planning and careful considerations the day finally arrived. Kelvin and I spent a total of three days prepping for the banquet. We marinated pounds of pork ribs, arranged 100 floral centerpieces, folded 400 napkins, polished silverware for 400 guests, built 9 large palm trees out of pineapples and leaves, and strung pineapple chunks and cherries onto 500 umbrella toothpicks for placing into specialty beverages. We oversaw the set up of the entire dining room and banquet lines, including teaching the student staff how to set the tables, how to arrange the centerpieces, and how to distribute the beverages (Blue Hawaii and Volcanic Punch). Our guests arrived at 5:30pm and were greeted by cold beverages at the entrance way. Around 6:15pm they lined up at the banquet lines for an array of foods that included:

Char Sui Pork Ribs

Macadamia Nut Crusted Chicken Breast with a Banana Cilantro Butter

Tofu Poke

Sweet and Sour Pineapple Meatballs

Mahi Mahi with Mango Salsa

Sweet Plantains

Pan Asian Noodles

Sesame Cabbage

Hawaiian Sweet Bread

Banana Bread

Lilikoi Salad (with a dressing imported straight from Hawaii)

Molten Lava Cake

Mini Cheesecakes

Mimosa Cake

And an incredible display of fresh fruits sitting underneath a 3 palm trees made from pineapples

The event ran very smoothly and the student guests and the dining commons staff really seemed to enjoy themselves at the event. The Executive Director of UGA's Food Services Mr. J. Michael Floyd as well as the Director Mrs. Jeanne Fry both came to our dinner along with several other mangers and workers that have been a large part of our internship experience here at UGA. Our special guests also truly enjoyed the meal and the atmosphere of the event. At the end of the night we had many congratulatory statements telling us that it had been one of the best Closing Banquets of the Freshman College! We even had a special request for our Ribs recipe. What a great feeling of accomplishment!

Autumn - Ohio State University

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!

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!

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.