The Retail Side of Things

This week was different from other weeks since I spent most of it on the retail side of UGA's food services. It was a change from the dining halls.

Monday we shadowed the executive director of food services around campus. We got to help write a press release and sat in on a phone interview for R&I magazine. Of course Mr. Floyd spends a lot of his time in the summer trying to sell the meal plan to the parents of the incoming freshmen so we also spent a lot of time doing orientation things again. It was a really long day, but I got a broader perspective of the whole food operation at UGA. A lot of the little things that I'd been told by different people took on new meaning after talking to Mr. Floyd about it.

Tuesday I was out at Red Clay Cafe, one of the on-campus eateries. It was a totally different atmosphere working the retail side of things. I manned the cash register for several hours. And learned to do many things at the same time while still smiling at the customer. I also sat in on their debates over new menu prices that are going into effect in the fall. Then I got to be creative and make new labels and price tags for the bakery items.

Wednesday I worked in another of the retail eateries- Barberitos. It's one of the newest units that's only been open 6 weeks. They are really popular with the students are it's pretty steady business all day. I got to see how they dealt with not having the correct produce order come in.

We also met with the last chemical company this week. They brought us a proposal that we had to add several things to. But now we can really start to analyze what we think UGA should do in the future. Which is a good thing since we now only have 2 weeks left here and the presentation that we're making is coming up fast.

Friday was different from other days in that we attended an assistant manager training seminar. The day revolved around knowing your management style and using it to interact with others to get the best results. I've attended other seminars similar to this, but not quite the same. It was interesting to hear how each style thought that they should be dealt with in a high stress situation. Hopefully I can apply what I learned in the future.

Half way through!

As time goes on we are getting closer to the end of our internship. At the beginning of this week we marked the half way point.

To start this week we worked the Freshman College arrival banquet. We helped set up for the banquet right after lunch. Doing this event really helped us understand more what we have to do for our closing banquet. We now know how to do general setup for the closing banquet. I think everything ran very smoothly and all the freshmen really seemed to enjoy their dinner.

Tuesday we met with two different chemical company representatives, after that Katie and I worked more on our chemical project. On Wednesday morning we went flower shopping to Flowers Inc. with Janet. Katie and I picked out the flowers we wanted for our table arrangements and flowers to put in Grecian urns for center pieces.

Later that day we had a production run with Stuart learning how Food Pro really works. I can see how it is a full time job just to understand the program. That night I shadowed Chef Paul for a catered dinner that was for 35 people at the Village Summit. It was really cool to get to see how he does dinners like this. I also got to work with the "Tiny Intern" and help prep the food and plate it up on site.

Thursday morning I had office time to work on our entry for the NACAS magazine. Later that day we had a mock health inspection at TATE II. I thought it was really interesting to see all the little things that go into a health inspection and everything they look for. I hope to retain everything the inspector taught us so I know what to look for while I'm walking through the dining halls.

Friday we had the day off. On Saturday Kris, Katie, and I went to an organic farm called Dancing Sprout. We started the day at 10am and I planted seeds for a local farmer with Kris. The farm was run by a local teacher from Athens and his wife. He told us that his kids are always interested in helping out. I really learned a lot helping them and it also felt good to know that helping this man for two hours cut out on so much work for him. He is not a farmer for a living, but I think if he could be he would be.

I am looking forward to the next couple of weeks. We are becoming much more comfortable here in Georgia and really starting to get the hang of things in Athens.

Another Week of Fun Filled Adventures

The Greek dinner for Freshmen College is almost done being planned. We have figured out the decorating scheme and floor plan for the event. The manager at the Summit (where the event is being held) helped us to place a linen order. We also went flower shopping with her and found some interesting things to incorporate into our decorations.

The chemical project is also coming to a close. We met with the Ecolab reps again. They gave us a complete bid for a product line. Then we met with Momar for the first time and arranged for them to organize a bid for us. They told us a lot about their green line. We're supposed to meet coming up with Butchers the third and last company on the list to get a bid from them. Then all that we have to do is organize our presentation.

On Friday we also got to conduct a Mock Helath Inspection at Tate on the new units. There are still some kinks to be worked out in the system apparently. But the units are running really well considering that they've been opened just over a month. Seeing the health inspection forms and reading the regulations now makes me want to see the reports for the restaurants that I eat in.

Saturday we went on another field trip. This time we went to Dancing Sprouts farm and got to play at being farmers for the day. I basically spent a lot of time weeding in the full sun. But I met some interesting people. The farm is also organic and encourages sustainability so it was a different perspective than what I've heard before when the owner was talking. It was a fun but dirty day.

Short week

This week was a short week for us.

It is days before the fourth of July so we have a shorter week. Our week started Monday when we did orientation. Orientation is where the freshman come in and learn all there is to know about UGA and how to adapt to college life. We followed the orientation team on there long 7am-7pm day. We begun the day welcoming the freshman to UGA and helping sell coffee and donuts to the parents, after that we all went over to O-House to assemble pamphlets for the parents and students. We all divided up after that half of us going to snelling and half going to summit. At each location we welcomed the parents or students and gave them the daily menu.

The main goal of the orientation team is to inform students and parents about the meal plan and to get them to sign up for it as soon as possible. At UGA the meal plan is not required, students have a choice whether they will buy the 5 day unlimited access or the 7 day unlimited access. The meal plan in my opinion is a no brain er. I had a meal plan my freshman and sophomore year and it made my life, living on campus, so much easier. I think that for anyone with out a kitchen it is the most economical way to eat, people end up thinking its much More expensive because they are paying for all the food at once.

On Tuesday we did more orientation it is a two day event for the incoming freshmen so we followed the team around again on Tuesday.

Wednesday we did more orientation and worked on our projects. Unfortunately Mr. Floyd was sick this day, we were scheduled to shadow him.

We have a long weekend ahead of us!!!! I hope to find lots to do around town and enjoy America's Birthday!

Orientation Week

This week was spent with the orientation team for foodservice. Orientation at UGA is a 2 day process. The foodservice orientation people basically focus on selling meal plans. They also sell refreshments in the morning, greet people coming to eat at the different dining halls, and talk about student employment opportunities. But the main thing is to sell the meal plan.

Day 1 of student orientation starts off with registration. I spent a lot of time directing people here or there and giving directions to Tate Center. The refreshment stand also had to be set up and manned. Then we spent some time assembling information brochures for the parents and students that get handed out. Around lunch we all went to the dining halls where the parents or students were directed to eat and played greeter. In the afternoon we handed out the brochures while the parents were inundated with information about various important things on campus. Then we moved across the street and did the same for the students. Day 1 concludes with the student tailgate dinner where we basically directed people towards the food. All in all it's a 12 hour day.

Day 2 was much shorter, only a 7 hour day because the students have most of the afternoon to explore and do thing independently. We played greeter and checked meal tickets for breakfast. The major event of day 2 is the resource fair. Foodservices sets up 2 booths in the fair and spends a few hours asking everyone they see if they have bought the meal plan yet and if they are interested in working for foodservices. It's chaotic and fun since you get to talk to a lot of people. After cleaning up from that we got to go back to the dining halls and collect meal tickets again for the lunch crowd. Compared to day 1 it was a walk in the park just because it was so much shorter.

The best part of working with the orientation team was our transportation. They have this van that doesn't have any seats in it. So whenever we have to change locations everyone piles in and tries to balance on milk crates. Definitely the highlight of the day for them.

We also got all of the recipes for the Freshmen College closing banquet into FoodPro. Everything is batched out for the actual event. So now we can focus on the flower arrangements, the menu design, and tracking down enough soup bowls for everyone. Hopefully we'll get to all of that next week.

Office week

This week Kris was gone so we had a lot of office time. We worked out of her office a lot and in the dining room where we could find Internet. Our goal for the week was to make progress on two of our projects. We worked on the chemical project the majority of Monday and Tuesday morning. Tuesday we met with two representatives from Ecolab. We told them that we wanted to go to all Ecolab products. We plan to meet with them again after the 4th of July break.

We also worked on the Freshmen College Closing Banquet. We are making a lot of progress, however, we still have things to finish before the banquet. I am really enjoying working on this project it is interesting and I am learning a lot about planning an event.

This week was fun and I am glad that we had time to work on our projects. I can not believe our time here is basically half over. It has gone by very fast.

The Office

We spent this week working mostly in the office on our Freshmen College Banquet menu and on our chemical inventory project.

The banquet menu is looking really good. We've got all the recipes approved and figured out how many portions of each thing we're serving. We also spent most of Friday working on writing out the recipes so that they can be put into FoodPro.

The chemical inventory project is also running really smoothly now. We got all the inventories done and turned in. This week we got to meet with representatives from Ecolab to see about using only Ecolab chemicals in UGA foodservices. They were really great to talk to and had a lot of ideas of what products we should be using. The best part is they're drawing up a bid for us, so we don't have to go crazy trying to put one together ourselves. We've got another meeting set up with them to go over the bid.