Montana State University- Week 3

Tuesday: 

We started out our morning with a procurement meeting with the chefs and some managers.  We discussed samples that have been tested and products that we had decided on.  After the meeting I continued to work switching out our old tomato product with the new tomato products on computrition and filemaker.  I did this for most of the morning and sent some emails for some of my other projects.  At lunch chef Martin made some new recipes for the food truck.  He was working on the Asian menu, it was so good!

 This was the layout of all of the food we tried!

 This is an Italian Griller Rope that they are thinking about having at the carving station in their dining center remodel

This is vegetable fried rice and general Tso chicken for the food truck! 

After lunch we came back to the office and threw a surprise birthday party for Rose, one of the ladies that we work with!  We got her a piñata and the bakery made her a cake! It was really fun! 

This was Rose's birthday cake! It was soooo good!

From left to right this is Sam (the culinary intern), the piñata :), Rose, me, Carla (the other food service management intern) and Virginia (a student employee)

 

I finished up the tomato product switch and it was time to go back to the dining center to try pizzas with the new pizza sauce chef Martin is developing!  So much food!  After this we went out for dinner for Rose's birthday!  When we came out after dinner, we had this view!  So sweet.

Wednesday:

In the morning, Carla and I got our payroll stuff worked out.  Then I worked on some of my projects until a meeting at 10. We had a meeting with a broker for Stalk Market.  MSU is looking to get more  sustainable paper products.  They have a pretty cool line of stuff!  For lunch chef Martin was trying some other Asian recipes for the food truck!  He had a few different fried rice recipes and some chicken curry and two different hot sauces. 

After lunch, I have been chipping away at some of my projects.  I am working on figuring out what products we will order from National Food Group, which is a distressed broker.  I didn't know what a distressed broker is until I got here! 

After work I went for a run and then Carla and I did yoga!  I think we ended up doing more laughing than yoga poses though, which is fine! :)

Wyoming Cowboys Weeks 1-2

 After a week long journey through the Grand Canyon, Utah, and the Rocky Mountains I finally made it to the cowboy state, Wyoming. My name is Josh Reyes and in the fall I will be a senior at Arizona State University working towards a degree in Food Industry Management. The education I have received so far has prepared me for the business side of agribusiness and the food industry and while I have worked with hunger advocacy groups on food policy and hunger outreach I have never had the opportunity to get food service management experience. I will also get to share this experience with my fellow intern Chris Ware, who graduated from Westchester University with a degree in nutrition. Needless to say I am looking forward to the amazing opportunities that are here in Laramie! I am happy to write about my experiences here in Wyoming but I find that a story is best told through pictures so ill stick pretty close to that.

The Northern desert near the four corners of AZ, UT, CO, NM

I started my journey from Phoenix, Arizona and drove over a thousand miles around the southwest and Rockies.

Downtown Denver

I made many stops along the way to Wyoming including camping in Ouray and Telluride, Colorado. The last stop I made before Wyoming was in Denver, Co. i really enjoyed Denver and could even see myself moving there one day.

Before i met my internship coordinator, Mark Zieres and Chris I wandered around the University of Wyoming campus for a while. I was a little surprised to see how big the campus was. Coming from a school with 60,000 students I didn't think the school would be so large.

On the very first day of work Mark took us around the campus to look at all of the different retail locations and dining options on campus. I was pleased to hear the school has a bakery that makes everything sold from scratch.


The Book and Bean is a retail location in the library that serves pastries and coffee as well as sandwiches and sushi.

Ames Monument

Vedauwoo 

At the end of our first day in Laramie Mark took us out to see some of the local scenery. The Ames monument was amazing to see in person. It was built in the 1800's as a tribute to the funders of the Union Pacific railroad that built the town around Ames and Laramie for that matter. After that we went to hike at Vedauwoo park.

 In our first week we also planted a garden with Amy Bey, RD. She showed us how to turn the soil and set up a watering system.

In our second week we got to do some prep work in the kitchen and even get our hands dirty making tacos and a vegan paella dish.

One of my favorite parts of the week was getting to test teriyaki recipes with the staff at the dining hall. Chris and I had to make six different batches to get the recipe just right but when we did it won the blind taste test.

THE BOOT BARN!! I will have to get some cowboy gear before I leave.

Wyoming Week 3

This week has been our busiest week yet! We jumped right into some hands on experience prepping food in the kitchen and looking over a Teriyaki sauce recipe to modify. We replaced the existing Teriyaki recipe at Washakie Dining Hall with a new one made from scratch (if you've ever taken a recipe yielding enough for a small family and tried to make it feed thousands, you know this is complicated). After about four tries at getting the flavor right we got pretty close. At the end of two full days of testing we took all of the different variations of Teriyaki we had and hosted an employee survey of them. The recipes were set at random and surveys were handed out. We took this data and crunched the numbers to determine which was the favorite. While I could go on with more details I'll let the pictures finish the blog this week.

Weighing some turkey for the Sandwich Station

 Peppers ready to be diced

Shout out to my vegans eating tofu!

I cried a little.

Slicing some ham on the slicer.

Cutting the cheese.

Morning manicotti prep for dinner.

Pizza.

Ingredients ready for battle.

Hard at work.

This makes me laugh every time. (Chris) Ware Wash

Color by (inventory) number!

Go Pokes!

Sensory Evaluation

Taste testers

A few of our samples

After this week we will transition into 'front of the house' operations. This weekend we plan to take a short ride out of town to Vedauwoo to spend a night or two camping. Thanks for following!

Chris

Ram’s Horn: Day 17

My morning started off in Cold Production helping Janelle and Rena prepare the breakfast trolleys for the salad bar.  Once again, because it was freezing cold, I needed to wear my sweatshirt as Rena and I prepared and organized the fruits in the production cooler.  Every so often I had to escape the cold by leaving the cooler to run warm water over my fingers.

Next, we diced about 20 liters of tomatoes.  Our options were to do it by hand or use the electric slicer.  We decided that we would slice the tomatoes by hand.  As Rena and I worked on the tomatoes, Janelle was on the other side of the room slicing a sack of onions.  Within 5 minutes we all had watery eyes from the onions.

Later in the afternoon I worked at the Tex-Mex station where we made quesadillas, tacos, taco bowls and burritos.  I've never made a burrito before (at least not a skillfully folded one) so I took the front-line and received orders.  We had a lot of conferences and sports camps going on - therefore a lot of hungry kids.  Some of the kids made a mess and were seemingly clueless about the rules of college dining hall.  I couldn't help but notice a few kids who seemed to have been taught basic manners such as "please" and "thank you".  One of the more interesting conversations was between two little boys who appeared no older than seven years old.

Boy 1: Could I have a beef taco?

Boy 2: You forgot your "please".

You could see the embarrassment on the first child's face when he realized that he had forgotten his manners.  He apologized and asked again and he didn't forget to say "please".  It was refreshing to know that kids are still being taught manners.  Most persons may overlook the exchange between the boys however it gave me hope that there is still hope for our young people. 

Later in the afternoon  I had to make one of the burritos while my partner was completing other tasks.  Luckily, a trainer was walking in the area and I asked her to show me how to properly roll the burrito.  I was soon to be tested as a customer came in and asked for a burrito.  It was only a burrito, but I was nervous.  I don't like to receive food that does not have good presentation and looks sloppy (nobody does for that matter).  My burrito turned out just fine.  The customer even called me an expert!  I appreciated the comment, but it was pretty funny seeing that I had just learned to roll a burrito only five minutes earlier.

After I got back from the gym, a friend called me asking what time was the Chocolatier in Old Town closing.  I thought "workout-schmokout".  There is always time and space for chocolate.  The store closed at 10pm.  It was almost 9pm and it was about a 30 minute walk.  I really wanted chocolate but as we passed Coldstone (which was just a 5 minute walk from campus) we decided to visit the Chocolatier another time instead of trying to sprint for chocolate.  It was pretty warm that evening so an ice-cream was perfect.  I decided to try the salted caramel shake from Coldstone - it did not disappoint me.

Have a great week everyone!  

The University of Oklahoma Week 3

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.

Montana State University- 6/16/2014

The start of another week at MSU! 
I can't believe we are almost half way done!
It cannot be real... 

Monday morning I did a CURE report to find out what Blue Bunny products we are using most and at what location.  I typed up the notes from our meeting with Bob Burrows at the cook-chill operation.  I also tied up some loose ends with some of my other projects. Not a very exciting morning!

At lunch we had a few products to sample!  We were going to compare many different kinds of veggies burgers but the samples went missing, so we ended up just trying two!  We had a black bean burger and a lentil patty.  The black bean burger (pictured below) was really good!

 

 

We also tried two different kinds of gluten free chicken strips, one was chopped and formed (right) and the other one was a whole  muscle (left).  I think everyone agreed that the one on the left was much better, but much more expensive!

 

 

Chef Martin was also trying recipes for the breakfast menu for the food truck!  It was a mix of seasoned potatoes, pico de gallo, beans and over easy eggs.  There was also one with sausage and one with chicken!  They were all sooo good.  He was going for the garbage plate concept.  I can't wait to try the rest of the food that will be sold on the truck. I think they are going to develop an Asian menu next.  Yum!

 

After lunch I worked on making changes to all of our files for the tomato product switch.  There is so much detail involved when an organization as large as this one switches a product!  I will be finishing that up today and starting to make changes in the files for some of the other products we are switching!

 

Happy Tuesday!

 

Katie



NACUFS Summer Internship - Yale Edition

Week 1

Day 1

The Commons Dining Hall

Hi all. My name is Jordan and I am an Applied Human Nutrition student from the University of Guelph. I am excited to be completing my NACUFS Food Service Management internship at Yale University! I am a first time blogger so we’ll see how this goes...  

One of the entrances to Yale's beautiful campus

Monday was the first day of my internship. I spent the morning in the Dining Services office where myself and my fellow intern, Andrew, met a number of the staff. They were all very friendly and welcoming. The location of our work area for the summer hasn’t been finalized yet so we sat at a desk in the kitchen... there was a lot of food there to tempt us so the staff joked that we had the best seats in the house. They weren’t wrong! I think I spent most of the morning saying how I was still pinching myself because this whole experience still feels like a dream.

Andrew in our "office"

After lunch we travelled to Boston with our supervisor Veronica. We visited Feneuil Hall where we saw a number of different shops. Then we walked along the waterfront of Boston Harbor on our way to dinner at Blue Dragon, owned by chef Ming Tsai. Blue Dragon is an Asian gastropub which serves its food tapas style.  Everything was delicious! I don’t think we could have asked for a better first day and I will definitely be visiting Boston again (at least once)!

Day 2

On our second day we attended the Culinary Intelligence Summit in Boston. The main topic addressed at the summit was gluten and strategies to ensure gluten-free food service. There were many passionate presenters and we learned a lot about the importance of training food service staff and preventing  cross-contamination when it comes to successfully serving gluten-free foods.

Andrew, myself, and Veronica before the Culinary Intelligence Summit

We were also lucky enough to try a number of different gluten-free desserts, including brownies, muffins, and cookies over the course of the day (though, as a nutrition student, I probably shouldn’t be mentioning this...).

Day 3

Wednesday was our first full day in New Haven. Andrew and I were introduced to the Eatec software that we will be using this summer. Part of our job will be to go through the existing recipes and analyse the ingredients from each recipe to see if it contains gluten – a great way to put some of the information from the Summit into practice. During the afternoon Andrew and I conducted some more research to better understand the intricacies and importance of gluten-free food service. There are so many things to consider, including not only ingredients in the food, but also cross-contamination among other details.

Day 4

Today started out a little differently than other days. We were fortunate enough to join staff from the Dining Services central office in a morning of team building. I found this to be interesting for a number of reasons. First, I was able to see how the staff interact with each other. I am very impressed with the teamwork, trust, and strong communication that I witnessed. Next, it was beneficial for understanding the dynamics of a team in a “real life” setting. Finally, the meeting was helpful for allowing me to understanding some of the department’s goals as a whole as well as the role each individual plays on the Dining Services team. After the seminar we went out to a local restaurant called Union League Cafe. I thought everything was delicious. How great does this dessert look!?...

Day 5

On Friday of week 1 Andrew and I were able to see some of the kitchens on campus. We helped Christine Centola, the Culinary Resource Center Production Manager, take measurements of different foods that were being prepared. The goal is to standardize the amount of each item that could fit in specific containers. Yale currently has 13 dining halls and food prep is done individually at each. However, they are in the process of opening a centralized location where some of the food prep can be done for every dining hall before being shipped to each facility in a designated container (or at least that is how I understand it... more to come on this I hope!). Christine then took us to The Commons’ kitchen where we toured through the Yale Catering’s and Yale Bakery’s facilities. We may also have taken a taste of bacon popcorn while down there... SO GOOD!

Later in the day we met Cathy van Dyke and Bob Sullivan, the Directors of Residential Dining. This was a very informative meeting. Yale’s dining operation is massive; coordinating and executing meals in 13 dining halls is no easy feat. Cathy and Bob provided me with a better understanding of the different dining facilities on the Yale campus. Yale distributes its freshman class between its 12 Residential Colleges. Each college contains proportional amounts of students from each major so that the students of each individual college represent Yale as a whole. Students generally live in their college for three or four years while attending Yale. The most unique part of the Yale dining experience for students is that they generally eat at their respective Residential College's dining hall where they can bond with students from the same college as well as the college's master and their family. This gives an overall sense of community and family within each Residential College. 

In addition, during the meeting, I gained some insight into different initiatives and expectations of Yale Dining. I was especially impressed to hear that Yale receives high praise for its restaurant-quality food. The food in the dining halls is honestly very tasty and you can't beat the variety!

The Weekend

On Saturday I ventured to East Rock Park. I climbed up the “Giant Steps Trail”, which is aptly named, and it was well worth it. The view from the top was incredible. I could see the whole of New Haven from up there. I will need to bring my phone up there soon so I can take pictures!

On Sunday I was back in Boston to see the Red Sox play at Fenway Park. My day consisted of over 7 hours on the bus and 2 hours of walking but it was completely worth it! Fenway Park is amazing. It is full of history and loyal fans. The Sox ended up losing in extra innings but it was a great game. I will have to make my way back soon.

Week 1 at Yale flew by! I have thoroughly enjoyed meeting the staff at Yale, both in the central office and in the dining halls; they’ve all been so friendly and helpful. Andrew and I have a full schedule this coming week including a number of meetings, two days of Culinary Insight Training, a day at the Farmer’s Market, and even a taste testing! I’m looking forward to this coming week and I will share it all when I have a minute or two. Until next time...