University of Kansas: Week 7

Welcome back!

Seven weeks in – when did that happen?! All of the hard work Mallory and I have been doing is finally starting to come together! 

Monday

I started off the week bright and early at Mrs. E’s with the AM supervisor, Brian. Since Brian is the first person there in the morning, he has a checklist of tasks he has to complete to assure that everything is ready to go for the staff that makes the breakfast meal. This consists of not only turning on the equipment and making sure all of the food is stocked, but also completing a sanitation checklist that covers all areas and equipment. His mornings are a lot smoother if the staff from the night before cleans up well!

As we worked through the check lists, Brian and I continually drifted around the kitchen and serving areas to assure all of the staff were on schedule to have the meal ready for the start of breakfast. Like clockwork, everything was good to go when Mrs. E’s opened its doors at 7 am. About halfway through, there was a rush of campers who all wanted scrambled eggs and hash browns. Everyone had to move quickly to put food on the line, but despite the quick pace, the diners never saw an empty serving line.

After breakfast, Brian’s next task was to assure that the food for lunch would be served on time. We not only had to check that the kitchen staff was prepping the right menu items, but also that all of the ingredients they needed were stocked properly. Additionally, Brian was sure to warn the lunch staff that there would probably be a rush since there was one during breakfast. Most employees were fine with the fact that they’d have to deal with a steady stream of people for a window of time since the dining hall gets much more hectic during the school year! Lunch was yet again a success, and I was thankful to have the afternoon free to work on projects!

Tuesday

I spent my Tuesday shadowing Kory to learn more about service management at Mrs. E’s. In addition to learning about Kory’s duties as a service manager, I was lucky enough to be able to attend a Wellness Committee meeting with him. This mainly consisted of discussion about wellness initiatives to implement with the full-time KU Dining staff. The list of initiatives the committee has created thus far included around 60 items, which ranged from exercise and nutrition to free movie tickets and discounted phone bills.

Along with the employee wellness initiatives, another important discussion during the meeting was the Healthy Hawks program, which categorizes menu items that fit certain criteria including calorie, fat, and sodium amounts. Though it can be tricky to narrow down which menu items to include, it seems like a worthwhile concept because it helps busy college students to quickly choose menu items that are more nutritional without spending the time to check out their options on the NetNutrition database. Hopefully many diners will take advantage of the information this school year!

After the meeting ended, I spent the rest of my day helping Kory to monitor the service quality of Mrs. E’s. He was much better at noticing if something was in need of touching up – the job definitely requires attention to detail!

Wednesday

Mallory and I were thankful to have another project planning day on Wednesday so that we could finish up our planning paperwork for our theme dinner, including the menu signage, serving line diagrams, staffing plan, and nutrition education posters. I mainly worked on nutrient comparison charts for all of the recipes on our menu that contain healthy substitutions. It was really cool to see the recipes we tested finally exist in the CBORD system (and how they stacked up against the original recipes!). Once we finished up our paperwork, we presented all of our plans for the dinner to the management team. Since we won’t be able to do everything that day, we have delegated tasks to the supervisors and managers to assure that everything is done correctly and runs smoothly. I’m sure we’ll run into some minor issues, but I’m confident that Mallory and I have acquired the knowledge we need to handle it like a BOSS.

In addition to finishing our planning paperwork for the event, Mallory and I also received our finalized marketing materials: three posters, six button designs, table tents, and decorations for the spin-the-wheel game for our nutrition education booth. Overall, we were satisfied with the way everything turned out -- we hung the posters throughout Mrs. E’s right away, and we’ve been proudly wearing our buttons all week J. Hopefully the materials will make diners just as excited as we are!

Thursday

Thursday I spent the day with Travis learning more about culinary management. I was lucky to be able to sit in on another meeting, this time for procurement. Every quarter, a Sysco employee meets with various members of the KU Dining team to discuss any procurement concerns. The main topic of discussion for this meeting was eggs. Since the price has gone way up for eggs and egg products due to the recent avian flu breakout, everyone in dining is concerned about how to continue serving their egg items without breaking their budgets. It’s not only a big concern for residential dining because the dining halls serve scrambled eggs on a regular basis, but also because eggs are used in a lot of other recipes. I never realized how vital eggs are to so many different food products until this avian flu outbreak, and unfortunately, it’s going to affect the market for longer than everyone had originally anticipated. It’s an issue that will require continual troubleshooting!
 After returning from the procurement meeting, Mallory and I sat down with Travis to discuss the process of developing recipes and menus. There are a lot of factors that go into developing recipes, including the food cost, ingredient availability, nutrition, available equipment, and of course customer satisfaction. Though it can be at times, testing new recipes has proven to be a fun process for me!
 

Friday

 Mallory and I spent our Friday shadowing Mark Maranell, the general manager of Mrs. E’s. He discussed with us how he handles his budgeting, staffing, and everyday duties. Additionally, he talked with us about the many changes that are being implemented within the human resources department, mostly involving how the employees will be evaluated. Since Mrs. E’s went through a big renovation in 2013, it was also really interesting to talk to Mark about the transition from the old facility to the updated one. 

Mark also helped us put together and test-run a picture slide show for the large TV screen located in the entrance of Mrs. E's. It includes images of fresh food and quotes about eating locally; we hope to increase diners' interest in eating local, fresh food as they wait in line for dinner.

Slide show preview!

 Once we finished up with Mark, Mallory and I headed over to Oliver to pick up some decorations for our theme dinner. We hit the jackpot with decorative fruits and vegetables and also found a really cool wooden shelf to use for our photo booth. Next week we’re going to sort through everything and decide where to place it all.
 

Almost there!

 Now that we have all of the pieces for our theme dinner finalized, Mallory and I just have to put them together and assure that they don’t fall apart -- I can’t wait to see how all of our hard work comes together!
 

Stay tuned!