Melissa Megan
Upon arrival we met our with our internship coordinator Renee Simpson, who is a registered dietitian for Cal Dining. Renee gave us a brief introduction about her duties at Berkeley including nutrition counseling for students with special dietary needs, menu planning, nutrition education, and audit completion. Renee provided us a schedule of where we each would be working, and we are really looking forward to it. In addition, we met with Jennifer who is the customer service trainer for basic employee training. Renee briefly introduced us to all the general managers (GM) and all executive chefs for Cal Dining. There are 4 "all-you-care-to-eat" dining halls on campus: Clark Kerr, Crossroads, Cafe 3 and Foothill. Following all the introductions we got right to work and took a trip to Clark Kerr dining facility and assisted in prepping for the 400 person lunch and served on the line.
After work, we took our first adventure through campus!
The Campanile in the center of campus
California Memorial Stadium
Megan hugging the UCB golden bear
Day 2
Melissa: "I shadowed the Executive Chef (Mary Ferrer) and managers at Crossroads. Mary gave me a tour of the kitchen facility and introduced me to her sous chefs. She has 8 sous chefs who worked under her supervision. When anything goes wrong within the facility, they would come to Mary for advice and guidance. Then, she showed me how she does physical inventory counts. While doing this, she also checked the organization of the storage areas and make sure that all products are stored at proper temperature. According to Mary, all 4 dining halls are running on a 4 week cycle menu. She always reviews the menu for the next 2 days before ordering any food items. They also get a daily delivery of fresh fruits and vegetables. When it comes to summer, Crossroads is the busiest facility among all dining halls. This is mainly due to the increased number of students who attend summer camps and conferences. After a lunch break, I shadowed the service manager, Ronnie. He is responsible for staff scheduling and uniforms. He showed me how he makes staff schedules using whentowork.com. I also met Michael, who is the temporary GM for Crossroads. He controls the financial aspect and oversees the operation of this facility. At the end, I helped Mary enter the 7 week cycle menu for ECEP (Early Childhood Education Program) into a Google Docs to be shared with other managers.”
Megan: "I was at Clark Kerr working again preparing food and serving the 350 person lunch. After the lunch rush was over, I worked with Debbie and Crystal who are the managers of Cal Catering and Atalie who is a student working in catering. Atalie showed me how they prepare the supplies for the special catered events. First, we assembled table cards which matched all the items on the menu and placed in the specific folder for the event. Additionally, Atalie explained to me how the catering system operates and types of events that take place. Once all the table cards were assembled, Atalie showed me and allowed me to create the menu that is posted at the special catered event. It was important to use the invoice sent by the sales department, and ensure the information on the invoice matches the menu created. After all the menus are created for each event, they are printed and assembled into the folder for the event. After which, Atalie showed me how to make the name tags of the servers at each of the events. Following the assembly of the name tags, Atalie and I organized the ties and aprons for the servers for the events ensuring everything was completely prepared for each catering event. After all of the catering preparation was taken care of, Renee and I prepared the signs for dinner, which included the allergens of each dish. Lastly, before Renee and I finished for the day, we completed a quality assurance test which consisted of us sampling each of the dishes that were served for dinner that night. We sampled fried plantains, cilantro rice, a DELICIOUS flat bread pizza with caramelized onions, asiago cheese and arugula! We then gave our stamp of approval to Chef Daniel and headed out for the day."
After work we again ventured into downtown Berkeley, this time in search for Trader Joe's! On the way we stopped by Asha Tea House for some tea!
Day 3
Melissa: "Today, I hiked/walked up to Foothill. It was a 20 minute walk from the residential and student Services office. Foothill is the 3rd largest “all-you-care-to-eat” dining facility on campus. They feed up to 1500 students and provide late dining service during the school year. First, I met with the GM of Foothill, Albert. He gave me a very detailed tour of the kitchen, dining and storage areas. They have multiple storage areas in the basement and a separate refrigerator for organic fruits and vegetables. Albert also explained the concept behind Foothill management and operation by giving lots of great examples. He was fun to work with because he had a very good sense of humor! I learned many useful management tips from him. Then, I shadowed the executive chef, Marcos Hernandez, for the rest of the day. As a executive chef, he has a lot of responsibility. Every morning, he meets with the store keeper to complete an inventory check. Then, he will order what they need online, or over the phone. He also communicates with his sous chef from time to time to make sure that everything runs smoothly in the kitchen. Other than that, he go over the menu, streamline current operation, plan for upcoming events, etc."
Cereal bar
Storage area (Basement)
Computer available for students to obtain nutrition information of the foods
Melissa and Chef Marcos
Megan: "Today I worked with Executive Chef Daniel at Clark Kerr
dining facility. I received a thorough tour the facility that
included the dining area, the serving line, the prep area, cooking area,
refrigerator, freezer, and dry storage area. Chef Daniel talked with me
about the way the kitchen runs during the summer verses during the academic
year. During the summer there is a main entrée that is prepared with a meat
option, vegetarian option, vegetable, and pizza station. Then during the year, there are different
stations that are set up such as burrito, pizza, and salad bar. These stations
are appropriate to reflect the needs of the customer, especially when it comes
to addressing food allergies and providing certain options that are allergen
free. Based upon the conferences booked at UC Berkeley, there are a predicted
number of meals that need to be served and depending on the count of people
reflects the type of meal that can be prepared. Chef Daniel also needed to
place an order of produce and therefore needed to review his inventory, look at
the recipes for the upcoming week, and finally place an order with Trinity
Produce. Once the order was complete
Chef Daniel showed me the program that he uses for meal planning called Food Pro,
which will be updated with Etech, in the fall. Within Food Pro, Daniel reviewed
the recipes in the system from his five-week cycle menu and altered the menu
based upon the number of people that are estimated to be served. Some of these changes are reflected upon
staffing or the complexity of the dish being prepared. As an executive chef, Chef Daniel constantly
needs to attend to issues that his employees brought to his attention or
concerns that he had. Although there
were minor interruptions throughout the day, it goes to show that even though
the purchasing needs to be completed if they are down a chef or a server the
slack needs to be picked up, which was strongly reflected in Daniel’s work
ethic. I really enjoyed working with
Chef Daniel and hope to be back working at Clark Kerr again!"
Clark Kerr Campus (slightly off the main Berkeley campus)
The horse-shoe shaped serving line
Broccoli being prepared to be put into the steam kettle for dinner that evening.
Day 4:
Melissa: “Café 3 is the 2nd largest “all-you-care-to-eat” dining facility on campus. This morning, I went to Café 3 and met with the executive chef, Sean O’ Donnell. My job for the day was to shadow him and learn more about the management aspect of this dining facility. Every morning, his store keeper will come to him with a list of staple items that need to be purchased. He will also go through the menu for the next few days and writes down any specialty items that he needed to order. Sean then ordered all the products using the BiRITE online ordering system. BiRITE is a local food distributor that supplies most of the products for Café 3. In order to ensure the freshness of fruits and vegetables, they receive a daily delivery. Additionally, Sean utilized a food management system, FoodPro, to calculate food cost and to forecast how much food they need to make in order to meet the needs of students during normal operation hours and special events. However, Sean told me that they are in the process of transitioning to a new system, Eatec. Before taking my lunch break, I helped Sean create the station menu for today’s dinner and the following day. Other than listing the menu option, I also looked at the nutritional information and listed all the allergens. I also labeled the food item if it is vegan or vegetarian. Later, Sean introduced me to his sous chef, Daniel. Daniel oversees the operational production of the kitchen. At the beginning of his shift, he would check the temperature of cold storage areas and fill out the temperature calibration log. He also taste-tested some food items to make sure that they are still fresh. When the cooks were preparing and cooking for today’s dinner, he would check if the foods were cooked to the right temperature and provide help/guidance when needed. I enjoyed my shadowing experience at Café 3. Sean and Daniel were great at explaining the management and operation of Café 3! I learned a lot from them today."
Chef Daniel's favorite tilt skillet
Melissa working on todays dinner menu and tomorrow
Chef Daniel making mac and cheese! yummy
Megan: "Today I worked with executive Chef Mary at Crossroads Dining facility. Working with Chef Mary was a completely different experience than working with Chef Daniel previously because of the size of the facility and the amount of food that is being produced in the kitchen. At Crossroads dining during the summer depending on the week they are serving anywhere from 1500-2500 meals for each breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Once again, the number of meals that are needed to be prepared are projected which makes it easier for preparing enough food.
When Mary arrived it was very important that the first
thing that she did was check in with her sous chef Jennifer and check that
everything from the previous dinner and the breakfast went well and there were
no issues or concerns. Jennifer and Mary
talked about things that went well, which staff members are doing well, needs
improvement, and overall ensure they are on the same page. There were a few concerns
that came up, and those were addressed and taken care of. Once Mary checked in, Mary provided we with a quick tour of the facility to briefly show me
where everything is kept. The next item
on Mary’s to do list was to complete the ordering for all of the pastries and
breads. In order to do that, Mary has to
go into the walk-in refrigerators and check the inventory of what they
have. It was impressive to me in that
size of a facility that they have so many walk-in refrigerators and still know
where everything is! We found that we
were very low on a few items, so therefore Mary and I quickly did the
calculations to ensure enough was ordered and sent the order off. Next, the order for meat had to be completed,
so once again Mary did a quick visual inventory, reviewed the menu for the
following week and ordered enough meat.
Unfortunatley, Mary was informed there was a shortage of a few products, but she mentioned this happens occasionally and especially when serving this many people. Lastly, Mary and I did a total inventory check of the
all the walk-in refrigerators, freezers, and dry storage to make a list of
exactly of what needed to be ordered.
Mary mentioned that she had not completed an order of this size in
awhile so it took a bit of time to go through everything. While
Mary and I were walking around, there happened to be a huge rush of people and
we needed to serve pizza. Althought this
was not expected, it was easily addressed and taken care of, and the pizza was
served as quickly as possible. Around
mid afternoon there was a meeting with the general managers, chefs, and
director Thierry Bourroux to address the issue of crowd control and keeping lines moving
when serving this quantity of people. It
was also decided that all of the food lines being served would
have the same food, and would be spread out throughout the dinning hall to keep
the flow of traffic and get people to move in and out as quickly as
possible. After the meeting I checked in
with my intern supervisor to ensure everything was going well. I had a meeting to go to with Renee and senior executive chef Jose and the managers of Crossroads to discuss the implementation of a wellness station. This was a very interesting meeting as the menu of the station is discussed along with new equipment needed. The meeting was to get an idea if a wellness station would be possible to put in the facility and we found it would be a great addition. The wellness station should hopefully be in place in spring of 2016. My last duties of the day consisted of serving on the line for dinner.
Dish room at Crossroads
Chinese line served for lunch
Quality assurance sample plate to be tasted
Dry store room
Pizza line Megan helped served in during the rush at lunch
Megan and Executive Chef Mary
Megan serving on the line for dinner
Day 5: This morning, we had breakfast with the senior executive chef, Jose Martinez, and Renee. After breakfast, Jose briefly explained the
walk through process from the loading dock to the kitchen areas. Food safety is
his biggest concern when doing a walk through. As an executive chef, he
needs to make sure everything is organized properly and minimize
workplace injury. The main project for the day was to review the menu for the fall semester. Jose created a 4 week cycle master menu and incorporated many
new ethnic food recipes such as Korean, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean. We were very impressed with the variety of the menu and his
creativity in making such a wonderful menu! According to Jose, the senior executive chef creates the master menu a semester ahead, then the executive chef plans meals a week ahead when purchasing, and lastly the the sous chef plans 3-4 days in advance. In addition to working on the master menu Jose worked on revamping the late night menu which he added a few new items. Two out of the four main dining halls have late night hours Sunday through Thursday serving from 10pm to 2am. Jose also worked on another menu for training tables, which is a dining service only for athletes. We went through the
menu and discussed some changes made in order to meet the nutrient needs of the athletes. We also sat in his meeting with the Director of Residential
Dining and Retail, Thierry Bourroux, and General Manager of Training Table,
Brian Walker to discuss the Training Table Menu. The rest of the day we spent with Jose we discussed the protein flip, which is something they are trying to add into the menu a little at a time to make it healthier and include more plant based protein and less animal based protein. We also discussed a lot about how Cal Dining tries to be as sustainable as they can such as sourcing local. Cal Dining devotes a lot of time to finding local products and knowing where the food is coming from. Lastly we attended a in-service training about ergonomics and ensuring we are protecting our bodies from injury at the workplace, especially in foodservice. We really enjoyed attending the inservice from Tang Health Center and found it really interesting!
Megan getting a snack on the way to a meeting!
Ergonomics meeting we attended hosted by Tang Health Center
Safety shoe covers should always be worn!
About the protein flip
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