University of Kansas: Week 3

Welcome back!

After three weeks at KU, I can’t believe how time is flying! I can remember imagining months ago what my time at KU would be like, and here I am, almost halfway done. Week three included a wider variety of settings for Mallory and I, and I continue to be pleasantly surprised by the amount of learning taking place!

Monday

We kicked off the week by meeting with Alecia Stultz, the Assistant Director of Retail Dining. She walked us around campus to show us the numerous retail operations and explained the differences between the self-branded, franchised, and contracted dining options. It was interesting to hear about Alecia’s experiences with the various retail operations on campus; there are a lot of factors to consider when deciding the best ways to go about retail dining services in terms of customer demand, staffing, food cost, and location. 

After our tour, Mallory and I had lunch at Impromptu with Dave and Alecia. I was happy to return as a customer after shadowing Kim there last week -- my Blackened Salmon Salad hit the spot!

Blackened Salmon Salad 

During lunch, we discussed with Alecia the food truck project. She explained some of the issues that she has run into with starting up a food truck on campus. Along with deciding what menu items to offer to KU students, Mallory and I need to consider the best location to park the truck (along with where it is allowed to be parked), staffing, equipment, and where to store the truck. Basically: we have a lot of work to do! Now that we know more about the information we need to find, we’re excited to get the ball rolling and see where our creativity takes us!

After finishing lunch, Mallory and I met with Nona and Lisa to go over budgeting. Nona explained the different factors that effect cost and revenue and how these factors are dealt with differently within retail, residential, and catering operations. While I had learned some of these concepts in my college curriculum, it was interesting to apply them to an actual operation. It emphasized the point that while all three sectors of KU’s Dining Services differ a lot, they must work together well in order to offer supreme service to their customers, while also being mindful of what works best for KU. Budgeting is quite the balancing act!

Tuesday

On Tuesday, I spent the day working in North College Café, which is located in Gertrude Sellards Pearson Hall – a far walk from Hashinger Hall (thank goodness for buses!).

Mixing the dough like a pro

While at NCC, I rotated through different positions, starting in the bakery with Judy. North College Café has a beautiful new pizza oven, and they make their pizza dough and sauce from scratch. I was lucky enough to assist in both steps of the process! I helped Judy mix up some pizza dough. She explained to me how they make the pizza dough three days before they use it to cook. This assures that they have back up dough in case the diners go pizza crazy. Later on, when I worked on the serving line, I got to make a pizza (though I wasn’t skilled enough to throw the dough in the air). The pizzas came out smelling and looking amazing; I loved how bubbly and thick the crust was!

That's amore :) 

I also worked on the serving line making and serving Sweet n’ Sour chicken and tofu. Since the majority of the diners at NCC this summer are camps, they usually arrive all together, which means all the food has to be ready to go and then is depleted quickly. It was a slight change of pace since I was used to batch cooking at Mrs. E’s, but I think I had a pretty good handle on it by the end of the rush. 

After the lunch rush, I headed back to the kitchen and helped prepare food for dinner. Since I spent a lot of time working at Mrs. E’s, I was already somewhat familiar with how to use the equipment, properly store items, and read the recipes. Overall, NCC was pretty similar to Mrs. E’s except it was a smaller operation so a few things were done differently (how much food was prepared, how they handled leftover food items, etc.).  

Wednesday

On Wednesday, Mallory and I headed to Oliver Dining Hall to shadow the manager (and our coordinator!) David Weakley and the head supervisor, Frankie. David walked us through Oliver and explained to us all of the things he checks on when he first arrives and throughout the day. These included the cleanliness of the facility, the amount of food being prepared, the status of the food in the coolers and storage room, and any staffing issues. On top of these tasks, we also had to taste the Brownie Bites that were being served for dessert to assure they were up to par. They were . 

After observing some staff meetings, Mallory and I headed down to the basement to look at the decorations in storage and see if we could find anything for our theme dinner. We were pleasantly surprised! There were decorative fruits and vegetables, baskets, and watering cans that we though would work well. Seeing the decorations made the vision of our dinner even clearer and thus heightened our excitement!

We finished up our time at Oliver shadowing Frankie. She deals a lot with staffing concerns, so she explained to us how she handles scheduling workers, human resources concerns, and training supervisors. She made it very clear to us that she expects the best from her staff and really wants them to succeed, and she works hard to assure that this happens. It was inspiring! 

Thursday: Talia and Mallory versus Recipe Testing, Round 3

I started my Thursday bright and early back at Oliver shadowing Nichole, who handles the food ordering for both Oliver and North College Café. Along with determining what needed to be ordered, I helped Nichole look over the serving line worksheets from the past few days and put them into the CBORD system. The serving line worksheets contain information on how much of each food item was prepared and how much was served. I helped fill them out when I worked at Mrs. E’s, so it was cool to see the other side of the process – it emphasized how important it is that the numbers on the worksheets are accurate. When the numbers are punched into the system, it adjusts how much of each food item should be prepared next time in order to have a the right amount for the forecasted number of guests. It even changes the measurements in the recipes and the amount that needs to be ordered -- CBORD is a beautiful thing. 

After I finished at Oliver around 11, I headed back to Mrs. E’s, where Mallory was testing a different beet cake recipe and a baked apples recipe. We decided to find a new beet cake recipe because our last one contained a lot of eggs; the price of eggs is going to go way up due to the avian flu break out that is depleting the chicken supply. 

If your mouth isn't watering, you probably need to get your
saliva glands checked out. 

Despite this obstacle, the beet cake worked out amazingly! I actually think it tasted better than the first recipe, and it was more nutritionally conscious because it contained less fat since the eggs were replaced with applesauce. We also made a chocolate ganache out of only chocolate chips and coconut milk, which complemented the cake really well. We’re definitely keeping the beet cake on the menu! We are thinking of leaving “beet” out of the title, though, and having people taste the cake to see if they can detect the beet flavor. Although many of the people who tried the cake today couldn’t taste the beet, there were a few people who could, so we’d be interested to see how that would pan out with a larger sample size of taste testers. 

Talia and Mallory: 8. Recipe Fails: 2.

These didn't last very long....

The baked apples were really tasty, as well! Instead of using pie crust, we created a crumble consisting of walnuts, oatmeal, raisins, brown sugar, and butter, which crisped up nicely and complemented the apples well. The recipe overall had a lower fat and sugar content than traditional apple pie, but definitely did not sacrifice taste. 

Talia and Mallory: 9. Recipe Fails: 2.

We headed to the Union building after lunch to meet with Claudia from marketing. We want to create a survey to distribute to incoming freshmen and the different retail operations to gather information for our food truck concept. We are considering a few different menu concepts, hours of operation, and locations on campus, so we would like to know more about what the student population would prefer in these areas. Claudia was more than helpful, and we’re excited to see what we can gather from the survey! 

Friday

On Friday, Mallory and I spent the day shadowing Bill and Jim at North College Café. Similar to our time with Dave and Frankie on Tuesday, Bill and Jim basically walked us through their daily tasks and the ways that they monitor and maintain the standards they hold for their staff, food, and facilities. Jim also coordinates the camps that take place at KU during the summer, so he discussed with us the different aspects that go into planning those. We learned a little bit more about how Jim controls food and labor cost, and he also showed us how he plans the menu cycle; he must consider not only how the different food choices balance out on a daily basis, but also on a weekly basis. Many of the students who eat at the dining halls eat there every day, so it’s important to give them a wide range of options. Otherwise, their meals will become monotonous. 

Since Jim is also working on adding more vegan options to the menu, Mallory and I were lucky enough to test a few vegan recipes for lunch. They included a seitan pot roast, seitan potpie, potato alfredo sauce, butternut squash risotto, and a few different types of vegan pizza. Everything exceeded my expectations! The potpie was my favorite, and I also really liked the pizza (I would even go so far to say I enjoyed it more than regular pizza… ). It was fun to talk with Jim about different ways to make vegan dishes more appealing. I also learned that cheese can be made from cashews -- that’s going at the top of my recipe list for when I return home! 

On Saturday, Mallory and I headed into Kansas City, MO for Boulevardia, which is a festival put on every year by a local brewery, The Boulevard. Along with enjoying some live music, Mallory and I also bought tickets to a beer tasting, which included samples of beers and appetizers from a variety of local breweries and restaurants. I’ve never been super adventurous when it comes to beer, so it was fun to taste a variety of different ones. My favorite was a chocolate ale – as weird as it might sound, I think it’d taste great over some vanilla ice cream. The bands we watched hit the spot, too, and I have some new artists to add to my music library.

IPA fans and stout fans can be friends after all!

All in all, my third week at KU has been a nice mixture productive and fun. Now that the planning for the theme dinner and food truck are moving along, I’m excited to see what new developments will take place this coming week!