First Week at UGA

My name is Asenath Na'Aman a senior at Murray State University majoring in Dietetics/Food service Management. I'm a intern at UGA for the NACUFS 2010 summer internship.

Catherine and I both arrived to Athens on Tuesday, so that was a busy and tiring day for the both of us.

On Wednesday we went to a food show with Kris about local vendors in the area. We got to try different kind of fresh foods that were produce all around the Georgia area. In the afternoon Kris took Catherine and I to dinner at Trapeze, great food.

Thursday was the official start of our internship. A welcome lunch was thrown for us, with authentic Mexican/El Salvador foods which was delicious!
We got everything set up and toured the campus. We visited all of the food service operation on campus. We got to meet many of the employees. It was a great first day!

On Friday we started our day by celebrating my birthday, thanks to kris. Then the rest of the afternoon we shadowed the black shirts (student manager) to see all of the responsibilities they had. We followed Brittany to see all that she would have to do each day as a student manager. We did the daily rounds with her to make sure everything that needed to be done is taken care of. The student managers have a lot of responsibilities.

This week set the tone for a wonderful summer to come!

Week 1

Hello All! My name is Catherine and I’m one of the interns for UGA foodservice this summer (2010). I’m from Michigan and I will be senior in Dietetics next fall at Michigan State University, but I’m pretty certain my focus will be foodservice when I graduate.

I’m really enjoying Athens so far. Asenath and I have been here since Tuesday and been able to see a lot of the campus thanks to Kris. We’ve also met a ton of people in the foodservice department.

Even though it wasn’t part of the internship, Tuesday we were able to attend a small food show in Atlanta. The food show was put on by Royal Foodservice, a recent addition as UGA’s prime produce vendor. I’m glad I able to attend because we got some contacts and information for our project in July and of course there was lots of really good samples!

Thursday was our first official day of our internship. We spent all day touring the campus, most of the units, and meeting most of the managers. The first day was a little overwhelming and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to find most of the places we visited. However, seeing everything will come in handy later and makes me pretty excited for the next two months! J

Friday we had a later shift shadowing student managers (blackshirts). We followed Brittany as she performed her daily rounds, and she showed us the scheduling aspect of her job. From the looks, scheduling is a tedious but necessary job! We also were able to spend a little time with Lakethia, a assistant cafeteria manager. She showed us the central food storage on campus and also some aspects of past special events, like scrapbooks and stored decorations. Hopefully, these will give us some good ideas for our banquet planning in July.

Last day... :-(

I can not believe today is our last day here at UGA. This summer went by so fast. I will be sad to leave, I feel like I was really getting use to it here and enjoying myself. Our last week went by even faster than I thought it would. We started the week out on Monday with our closing banquet for freshman college. We received a lot of positive feedback for the event and I was very pleased with how it turned out. The attendance was over 300 people which was great!

Tuesday we presented our chemical project to Jeannie and a couple other managers. The project was cumulative of what we have done all summer so it was exciting for us to finally share it with Jeannie.

Wednesday we had the taste testing for Five-Star dinner. I thought all the food was really good and I can tell the students will really enjoy it in the fall.

Thursday was our last day. We had a farewell brunch, and had a chance to say goodbye to all of the people we had met this summer.

I learned a lot at UGA this summer and really felt as though it was a beneficial way to spend my summer. If I could start it all over again I would do it again. I now have a different take on University/Collegiate food services and plan to consider it when i graduate.


Thank you everyone at NACUFS and special thanks to the Food Service staff at UGA I will remember you all forever!

Leaving...

• This was our last week here at UGA. We got to tie up a lot of loose ends before leaving.
• Monday night was our Greek banquet for Freshmen College. We spent a lot of time getting everything set up before the event. Everything ended up looking really good and was what we had wanted. The event itself was also a success. There were over 300 attendees which was an impressive turnout. The food got a lot of compliments despite a couple of snafus. We managed to keep from overwhelming the menu with feta cheese in every dish, but the lemons snuck past us. Hopefully everyone else had as much fun with the event as we did.
• Tuesday Julia and I made our presentation on our chemical presentation to the Director of Food Services and several management people. We narrowed all of our recommendations down to 2 options for the university. It was really successful and there is now an action plan in place for UGA to follow through with the project now that we're leaving.
• Wednesday was another fun day. We got to go to the taste testing for the 5 Star Dinner menu that we put together earlier this summer. A few of the recipes had been swapped out, but the menu was still mostly intact. Each of the dining halls was asked to make several of the dishes. Then the chefs brought the food to the tasting. We got to hear about the changes that they had already made to the recipes and what other alterations were going to be necessary. Then everyone got to eat. There were a couple of crowd favorites and a few of the dishes still needed improvements, but overall it was a fun time.
• We also did the final revisions on the article that was written for NACAS. It is now completely done and has been turned in. Hopefully it is accepted for publication sometime in the next year.
• On our last day, everyone threw us a good-bye reception. Chef Bryan put together some fresh fruit and pastries for us. We got to say good-bye to everyone. Then Kris gave us our final evaluations and our summer internship was over.
• I have to say that this has been a great experience. Not only did I have a ton of fun and meet some great people this summer, but I also got a lot of hands-on training in areas that I hadn't before. The projects that we completed were really worthwhile and I'd definitely recommend for anyone interested in food in any way to consider applying for this internship.

Getting so close!

I started off this week with office time. Monday was spent with a lot of time getting everything ready for the banquet next week. I moved all the decorations from Bolton over to Summit. The rest of the day was spent tying up all the loose ends for the dinner the following Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday were spent at the retail operations. Tuesday I assisted Tamala at Red Clay cafe. I choose the specials for the first two weeks of school, I really enjoyed having the freedom to make a managerial decision. On Wednesday I shadowed Chris at Barberitos which is located in the Tate Center.

Thursday we took a field trip to Zaxby's corporate office. I found this very interesting, we toured with Chef Paul's wife who works in R&D at corporate. We did a taste testing for new gravy's that they would be selling at different Zaxby's locations. We also toured one of the Athens Zaxby's and got to eat lunch there. Friday we did banquet prep and did all the flower arrangements.

One Week to Go

I went back over to Red Clay Cafe on Monday. I followed around Tamala the unit manager. She had me working the cash register again. I also wrote the weekly specials for 2 weeks. I saw how FoodPro was updated daily to get supplies for the next day. In the afternoon we also went out to one of the eatery units to help out with the parent's orientation for the freshmen.

Tuesday I was scheduled to follow Chef Paul around the retail center at Tate II. He sent me to do inventory with the stockroom manager. Standing around in the freezer for extended periods of time is no fun. The stockroom manager and I also rearranged the stockroom so that all the products used by specific retail units were grouped together. Paul also showed me how to do forecasting and he had me update some of the patron counts in FoodPro.

Wednesday was spent with Chef Bryan at Bolton. The executive chefs at the dinning halls have things very different from the retail operation. Bryan also showed me forecasting and price checks. The number of items and the volume of product moved though was significantly higher.

Thursday we took another field trip. This time we went to Zaxby's corporate headquarters. Zaxby's is a quick casual chicken place that is based out of Athens, but has over 400 units from Texas to Virginia. We spent some time in the R&D unit hearing about how they test new products. Then we were in the test kitchen and got to try some new gravies that they are in the process of adding to their menu. After that we got a tour of one of the local units and got to eat some of their food.

To round the week out, we went out to Summit and did prep work for the Freshmen College closing banquet that is on Monday. There were a lot of little details that had been handled all summer, but they're finally all coming together for the final event. All of the flowers that we ordered came in yesterday. Arrangements had to be made for each of the tables and center pieces were put together for the banquet tables. Flower arranging isn't something that I do all that often, but most of the arrangements look really good. The white and green color scheme goes well with the blue and white table cloths. Also, all of the signage that we designed came in and looks really nice. This event is going to be worth all of the effor that went into planning it.

Katie and I started out this week shadowing Mr. Floyd. We got to see what an "average" summer day is like for the Executive Director of Food Services. The day started at orientation where we greeted parents and incoming freshman. We saw that no day for Mr. Floyd is average and he talked to us about what his work week is like in the summer verses what he does in the fall. Katie and I got to sit in on a conference call with a woman from R&I (Restaurants and Institutions). She wanted to learn more about the day to day life of the director of food services. Our day went from 7am to 7pm. We interacted more with orientation and then finished our day at the orientation tailgate.

I spent both Tuesday and Wednesday following around Chefs. On Tuesday I shadowed the retail chef, Paul. On Wednesday I shadowed Chef Bryan. Chef Paul and I spent the day doing inventory. The units do a weekly inventory of everything on hand in the stock room. Wednesday Bryan and I did the forecasting for the next three weeks and put all the information into Food Pro.

Thursday I spent the day with Bambi who is the assistant manager at Red Clay Cafe. Bambi showed me how to make sandwiches and I was on the register during the lunch rush. At the end of the day we closed out the registers and I learned how to shut down the entire cafe.

On Friday we attended the assistant manager workshop. We had been given materials prior to the workshop to have our coworkers complete with questions about who we are as workers. The main idea of the workshop was for us to learn about our management styles and to understand how to work with other personalities. I really found this helpful and felt as if the questions helped me to understand others and myself.

Only two more weeks of internship! I can not believe it has gone by so quickly!!