Summer 2013... NACUFS Intern Style!: Fireworks and forecasting Week 4 UGA

Monday:

On Monday we helped Greg who is going to be the manager for the new Scott hall. We first took temperatures of all the food at his current dining hall, Snelling dining commons. Taking all these temps helped us with the project we would be doing for new Scott hall, we are making temperature charts for the new Scott hall. The temp charts for Scott hall will be simpler than the temp charts for places like Snelling dining commons because Scott hall will only be open for lunch and dinner. When making these charts we have to keep in mind the times that will be best to check the food, and the order in which the food will be displayed in order to make the temp taking process fast and efficient for the person who is temping. We also have to make sure there are places on the charts to temp the coolers under each station (this will mean checking a hanging thermometer in each section).

Another project we went through with Gregg that we will be working on for the new Scott Hall is making preparation diagrams. We will use pictures for each food item they have prepared, when they made a demo of each, and we will make diagrams off of that to show how to properly assemble and prepare each food.

The second half of our day was spent working with Bryan Haymans and Sam at the Village summit dinning commons. Bryan is the unit manager and Sam is the Chef at village summit. We worked with them on our menu for the closing banquet for Freshmen College; this is one of our big projects we will work on all through the summer. Bryan and Sam being well accomplished chefs, with lots of knowledge to help us with deciding what recipes would work and what to change in each recipe. Overall they liked our menu choices.

Tuesday

On Tuesday we worked with Bryan Varin, he is a Chef and associate director for Food services at UGA to go to a construction meeting for Scott Hall. As they are getting closer to the date of “soft opening” for Scott Hall, the project is being looked at with more of a sharp eye. This is the part where they are checking all the details of how the space is looking, and making sure to stress that now time is of the essence and if something is found to be incorrect it must be fixed immediately and they have to go back and check that the correction was completed. Some of the areas Bryan noticed at Scott hall that needed to be fixed were: gaping between the equipment and the counter, missing caulking along the time. This not only made the look unfinished, it also would make for problems with the tile not holding up properly. Another area that needed to be fixed was the ceiling tiles. The ceiling tiles in the kitchen need to be the kind that can be scrubbed, because of the accumulation of grease and food that can happen in any kitchen. The ceiling tiles was a prime example of an instance when you would want a manager who has been in food service to overlook the project because they will know tiles accumulate grease in a kitchen and need to be able to be scrubbed. The last problem that they found was a large gaping left between the equipment and the counters. This seems to have been an oversight in measurement when the counters were put in. They had to come up with a solution there on the spot with the architect, because they need that to be fixed immediately. These mistakes are some of the reasons it is crucial to have these meetings in person at the construction site with the whole team present. This way instead of emailing back and forth they can point to something immediately and have the problem solved.

Gap between equipment and wall

needs to be caulked

wrong tiles on ceiling

team working together to find a way to fix the gap

We spent the rest of our day working with Tamala and others in retail. I went to the “dawg bites” eatery (which is one of their small convenience store locations). I worked with the very sweet and helpful “Mrs. Pansy” on inventory. After we inventoried everything in the store and storage with a convenient hand held scanner, I went to meet about using the “Food Pro” computer system for inventorying. We went over how they use food pro to type in their inventory, then they can use those numbers later to check how much they should have in the stores, and how they are doing with their percent cost for each of the items they sell. Their food cost is always highest in the 4^Th week because that is when they take inventory (once a month). It is highest that day because they don’t have all their sales for the week in yet, because they take inventory on a Tuesday.

Wednesday (Trial and Error)

On Wednesday we started our day working with Shelly Orozco-Marrs, she is the head chef at Bolton Dining commons. Shelly explained to how they type the menu information into food pro each year. This will tell the cooks how much food they will need for the recipe for each item in the menu. Then on daily sheets the cooks will write how much they made of each item and how much was left. Then Shelly will take those numbers and put them into food pro. Food pro will then adjust and update the numbers to help them to know how much they will actually serve of an item in the future. In order to put these numbers in food pro, Shelly has to find the main ingredient in each food and multiple to find how many portions were severed, and then she puts that number in food pro.

We then worked with Bryan Varin. He showed us how to put recipes into their food pro system. Food pro needs specific measurement amounts. We had to take all our ingredients and convert them to be in lbs. and oz. However then when food pro prints a recipe it will put those amounts back into tsp., Tbsp. and cups. Bryan is also a Chef so he was able to help us make any changes to ingredient amounts. He taught us what “concasse” meant. It is a culinary term for taking a Roma tomato cutting an “X” on the bottom , placing it in boiling water (or steaming it) then you put it in ice water for a few minutes. Next you take the tomatoes out of the water and peel off the skin. Finally you scoop out the insides seeds and chop the tomato into chunks.

Chef Sam and Coll finished Fillet Stuffed
Philly Cheese steaks

Fillet stuffed Philly Cheese Steak

Chef Sam and I working on Chicago's deep dish pizza

Finished product to the left fresh Roma tomatoes on the right Canned Roma tomatoes

Then it was time to test some of the recipes for on the menu for our banquet. Chef Shelly and Chef Sam came to the kitchen at Bolton and helped us make two recipes. We made a Fillet stuffed Philly Cheese steak and a Chicago style deep dish pizza. The Philly cheese steak as you can see in the pictures below came out perfectly and was absolutely delicious. We seared the steaks on the grill, and then we slit the steaks and stuffed them with provolone cheese and sautéed peppers and onions. Sam made a much demi-glaze port wine reduction mushroom sauce we put over the fillets then they were finished off in the oven.

We also made the Chicago deep dish pizza. The pizza was a little tricky we had to make sure to let the yeast rise the right amount of time at the right temperature. If you put the dough in at too high of a temperature it will kill the yeast and the dough will not rise. We made two kinds of pizza one using fresh Roma tomatoes and one using canned Roma tomatoes. Although one would think that fresh is always better, in this case we found the opposite to be true. The fresh Roma tomatoes were too watery; the canned had a hardy taste and complemented the thick deep dish crust very well. The crust was a little burnt, so we decided we will try it at a lower temperature next time. Part of the reasoning the burning happened was because the pans we used are thinner than pizza pans.

Thursday

On Thursday we went to work at Tate café. This is one of the food service retail locations in the Tate center. They have two franchise food establishments. “Barberitos” a Southwestern Grille style restaurant that comes from Athens. “Larry’s giant subs” This is a franchise out of Jacksonville, Florida and “Hotei’s” which was a food service creation, they serve Asian grille style foods. We spent the day with these managers seeing how operations are run in both the back and the front of the house. We got to see cash handling and their management style.

We also got to sit in on job interviews for positions in retail management in food service. We got to see the kind of questions they asked each applicant, and what each manager found to be important to them when hiring someone. It was interesting to see what they reflected on after the interviews each manager seemed to have a different insight into what they saw as an asset or fault in each applicant.

Friday

On Friday we went to work Snelling hall where we met with Cindy Malcolm she is a director in payroll. She explained to us how she does the accounting, payroll approvals and budgets. Since UGA food service is self-operated and not funded at all by the University, she explained to us how they have to manage their own funds and budgets. She said she makes a $0 budget; this means she works at 0 and goes up creating a budget. She also explained how they put money in reserves each year to use in case they needed to replace equipment. She said since they are self-operated they have a budget for each dining commons, but that doesn’t mean anyone would try to use their whole budget. She also explained for larger projects, such as building the new Bolton Dining commons they don’t use reserves, instead they take out a loan with the Universities realtor.