Week 1 at UGA

Hello everyone! My name is Florence Battles and I will be your host for the evening. Let me start by telling you a little about myself. I'm a senior at Southern University A&M College in my hometown of Baton Rouge, LA where I am studying Food Management.

Hello world, it's Flo

Wednesday, June 3rd
     I arrived in Athens after a 9 hour drive. I met Kris in Myers Hall to get checked in for my stay at Mary Lydon were I would later meet Kara, my fellow intern. After getting settled in my room, I decided to go explore for a little while before I headed back in to get some rest for the first official day of the internship.

The Spirit of Athens  

Thursday, June 4th
     The first day was all about meeting some of the people that we will be working with for the duration of the summer. Everyone that we met was incredibly nice and excited to get the summer started. We had breakfast in Bolton, which is the newest addition to the Food Service dining facilities. It's a beautiful two story building with amazing food and large windows. After breakfast, Kris took us on an amazing tour of the other dining facilities and the rest of the campus. The campus is very large and beautiful with a lot of interesting history in many of the buildings. After the tour, we headed to lunch at the Village Summit, another absolutely gorgeous dining facility, where we met with more people who will be helping us along in the internship. We finished our tour after lunch and were left to our devices at the end. Kara and I decided to some more exploring of downtown were we found adorable local shops and the only Ben and Jerry's storefront in Georgia. We ended the day with dinner at Bolton accompanied by a beautiful sunset.

Mural in Tate Hall

Friday, June 5th

    On this day, we got to shadow Gregg Hudson, manager of the Niche and the energetic man in the world, and the meal plan ambassadors while the worked their magic on incoming freshmen and their parents to sell meal plans at the Resource Fair. It's not a hard sell because the meal basically sell themselves. I found it interesting that up until now they only had two meal plans to choose from, a 5 day and a 7 day. But this year they added two additional meal plans that would allow the students the same 5 and 7 day plan with addition of Paw Points which are a dollar to point match system that allows students to go to any retail facility and purchase food if they are not close to any dining facility or want to simply purchase a Grab 'n Go item. After listening to how the meal plan ambassadors, I even tried my hand at helping a few student sign up for meal plans. After gaining a good understanding of how the meal plans work, I look forward to understanding how the individual dining facilities operate.

Monday, June 8th  

    Today, we got the opportunity to spend the day with Bryan Varin, Interim Executive Director of Food Service. He showed around the Niche while we picked his brain about writing recipes, interviewing and evaluation processes, his background, and all the inter-workings of the Food Service division. He gave us a lot of insight on what makes UGA Food Service different from other colleges and universities. We even got the chance to sit in on an interview for a sous chef at Oglethorpe Dining Commons (O'House). The interview process was nothing like I had ever seen before. While there were standard, structured questions, the interview felt more like a conversation. Also, the candidate had to prepare a meal from a basket of ingredients that each applicant will receive when they come in for their interview. In my personal opinion, I believe the candidate did a great job with what was in the basket.

Inside Village Summit with Kara and Bryan

     After lunch, we had a meeting with the O'House team to discuss possible themes for the Freshman College Closing Banquet at the end of July. I cannot wait to show you guys what we're working on. This summer is going to be great.

O'House

Until next time!!

Flo :)