The Weekend
On Saturday, Lindsey and I spent some time by the pool and each got a little burnt. We went out for icecream at a local custard place, which was really good. We were going to go out for wine tasting, but decided to stay in, which ended up being a very good decision because I ended up with a bout of food poisoning that evening and all of Sunday. So the rest of my weekend was not very fun at all.
Monday
I spent the day at home trying to get over my food poisoning.
Tuesday
I made it back to work today. Not feeling 100%, but definitely better than I have been. So far today we have met with Kevin Barker who is the Director of Business Operations for the Food Service Department. He wears many hats. I have no idea how he keeps all of his jobs straight. He is in charge of financials, budgeting, purchasing, franchises, ServSafe teaching, safety inspections, temptrack & C-bord, audits, Liaison with the Health Department, and a part of the Oklahoma Restaurant Association. So he is a busy guy. Right now they are finishing up the fiscal year, so they are preparing all of those final reports and also budgeting for next year so he has a lot of things coming at him at the same time. He was extremely nice, and told use how he always tries to treat everyone as his customer (no matter what situation he is in). He offered to help us with whatever we need in the future, or any information we may need. We ate lunch at the Laughing Tomato, and then we started working on our business plan and also making some finishing edits to our In-Service presentation. That evening I had a meeting for an organization I am in at school, worked out, made a huge batch of pasta, and slept soundly!
Wednesday
Today we hammered out a lot of work on our business plan in the morning. We are rolling with the idea of setting up a Nutrition Awareness Week. We picked a different themed day for the 5 days of the school week, and we plan to set it up at the Union during National Nutrition Month in March. We do not actually have to carry out this business plan, since we obviously will not be here any longer, but we just have to plan it! We also went and performed a sanitation inspection with Kevin Barker at Couch restaurants. It was really interesting to follow someone around while they perform one of these seeing as we have learned all about them, but I have never actually gone on one with a professional. There are so many details that you have to pay attention to when you are performing these. He was telling us that the minute you walk into the place you are inspecting, the inspection starts. You can judge a lot by how a restaurant looks in the front, because chances are the back of the establishment will be worse than the front. He also told us to first just observe the place when you get there and see if anything huge takes your attention. I also did not know that as far as employee hygiene and criteria, if one employee does not have on a hairnet, the entire establishment flunks for that category. He also told us that he takes pictures to document what he finds because a lot of times the places will not believe him that something happened. We learned a lot from this inspection, and we did not even perform an entire inspection due to it being the summer, and them not being as busy! He said that when he usually does Couch it takes him around 6 hours total to do the entire thing, Wow!! He also told us a lot of stories about things he and his friends have found on inspections, and I literally could not believe it. He said Chinese places are the worst for sanitation purpose (not surprised, and this is why I refuse to eat at them usually other than PF Changs :) ). One time a Chinese restaurant was chopping their chicken over the floor drain and then they were told to throw it out and then the inspector caught them digging it out of the garbage can when they thought he had left!! Another inspector found one of the workers bathing in the sink using the same washing tools they use for their dishes. Yuck!! It makes me so much more cautious of my surroundings at a restaurant now that I know all of this stuff. We actually did not go to the Laughing Tomato for lunch (I know you are shocked..), but we went to Crossroads! It was really great! In the afternoon, we did some more work on our business plan.
Thursday
Well... When it rains, it pours. Walking to work today we got absolutely drenched. It was a light drizzle when we left the building, but as soon as we got far enough away from our apartment to turn back it started pouring. I am still soaked writing this. We met with Nancy today all about her many tasks she has! First and foremost, Nancy is Frank's assistant. She handles his calendar and his administrative work. Another large thing she is in charge is the meal plans for the university. There are so many options here for various types of meal plans! Each meal plan can be chosen based on the amount of actual meals and then meal plan points. It was interesting to find out all about the athlete meal plans, and how there are a bunch of rules that the university has to follow in feeding them based off of NCAA rules. I had no idea. She deals with a lot of numbers and a lot of reports overall. She handles taking care of franchise royalties, employee meals, termination of meal plans, financial reporting, paying rent for buildings, department charge cards, travel arrangements for the department, university vehicle reservations, maintaining approve driver lists for the department, and making student employee meal cards. On top of all of this already, she holds a position as a Director of Customer Relations during football game days. The suites in the stadium are controlled by an outside company, so she serves as the liaison between that company and the food service department. She then prepares a report after the game of what went wrong and what went right basically. She actually went to OU as a student and worked in food services while she majored in music with a minor in business! This afternoon we got to meet with Shawn Henry who is the Director of Retail Operations for the Food Service Department. She is in charge of approximately 17 different operations. Currently, her big project has been the new restaurant that will be going up in the Union, which will be called the Union Market. They are planning to specialize in upscale grilled cheeses (YUM). They currently have 7 specialty grilled cheeses prepared, and also poutine. They also will have a salad bar, hot bar, Cow on the Fly sandwiches, soup bar (with tomato soup, chili, chicken noodle soup, and a soup du jour), and sushi! On top of all of this amazing stuff, they are also planning on doing infused waters (one daily) that will have different fruits in them that talk about the benefits of those fruits. They are also going to take the leftovers from the hot bar and turn them into take home packages that people can pick up after work to take home for dinner. This is such an awesome idea to cut back on waste! They will also have basics like fruit, granola, and apparently bulk candy! All of their equipment is going to be brand new, other than their fryer, which only will be fairly used! Another one of the operations she oversees is the Bookmark Cafe, which is currently being renovated. Starbucks, which she also oversees, just went through a renovation also. The current Wong Key in the Union will stop operation on June 30th and be walled off to expand Chick-Fil-A so they will be able to expand that menu. For the Union Market, they will be implementing kiosk ordering, and there will be TV screen with rolling order saying when they are ready. These kiosks are also supposed to be able to remember your last couple orders, so if you have a regular, you will just be able to click on it to order. She is also currently thinking about reorganizing the management underneath her so that there are two managers that restaurants will report to: a north and a south area manager. This way she will just have these managers reporting to her, not all 17. Shawn has been in this position for 2 years now. She also is a part of the bid processes. They currently accepted a new milk bid, so she was at a meeting for that earlier today. Part of her job is also taking care of departmental orders currently because the person who used to take care of this job is no longer doing it. She also talked to us about disciplinary leave and termination since she has 17 operations under her this is a big thing. She is involved in all of those decisions. I found it interesting that they have to get vice president permission to terminate an employee. Overall, we learned a lot from her! She was so nice, and she wants us to come up with some upscale grilled cheese recipes for Union Market! I can't wait to start looking!
Friday
Today we got root beer floats! Woo! They were served in the afternoon during work. We spent a majority of the day just working on our projects.
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