Week Four in the Forks

I knew this week was going to fly by -- it sure did. When I think about the four weeks ahead, I feel the same way. On Friday, I completed my midterm evaluation and could hardly believe I'm half way through. It's crazy how much gets packed into these 8 weeks, though. Let me tell you about what happened this week!

On Tuesday, Dustin, Molly (Wilkie's Sous Chef), Jane (our intern from Korea) and I drove down to Fargo to tour a few locations. Our first stop was the main warehouse for FoodService of America (FSA) in North Dakota. FSA is the primary distributor for UND, and delivers to many different locations in the upper midwest from its Fargo warehouse. Don was very friendly and showed us around the different areas in the warehouse and described the receiving/storing/retrieving process they go through 24 hours a day. The FSA warehouse even had its own meat processing facility for packing beef and pork that they set up in a room previously used for ripening bananas! It was great to learn and see more of the food distribution process. Since UND is one of the biggest purchasers for FSA in Fargo, if the University were to request a specific product, FSA would likely be able to stock it -- a pretty good deal.

Our next stop in Fargo was a tour of North Dakota State University's dining services. I felt very fortunate to be able to see the workings of yet another unique style of operation at NDSU. Again, NDSU's dining services were very different from what I was used to at UW-Madison. Like at UND, students purchase a meal plan that allows them to eat whatever they want during a specific meal period. NDSU had 3 separate dining locations for students with meal plans, and each one was like its own mini foodservice operation. Each center had its own "warehouse" for ingredient storage, its own ordering process, its own inventory and its own menu. I can't imagine how challenging it must be to synchronize communication or manage those three separate operations just based on how complicated it can be managing one centralized unit. A couple things that were particularly cool about NDSU dining was that in every location, there was an open industrial grill top available for students to use to grill things like sandwiches or veggies, or cook eggs. At first I was completely shocked by this concept -- how could they trust students to use this equipment properly? I mean, those grills aren't cheap! But they said that the students love them and they haven't had too much trouble with them. I know I'D sure love to grill up my own fresh vegetables for lunch if I went to NDSU! Also, one of the main dining centers also had a private room for students with celiac disease. If the students came to the dietitian with a doctor's diagnosis, they received access to this room off of the main dining center that contains cooking equipment and preparation materials completely safe from cross-contamination in the main kitchen. Students can prepare meals or take some heat-and-serve entrees from storage and be safe from contamination. I thought this concept was super smart and very accommodating to students that struggle to avoid gluten.

Finally, we stopped for a delicious lunch prepared by Chuck, a broker for Hockenberg Newburgh, a food brokerage corporation. I really enjoyed getting to know what Chuck does as a food broker and could tell that he does a great job. I had the most amazing cake I have ever eaten -- yes I ate the WHOLE piece, complete with fresh raspberries that Chuck "carbonated" by placing them indirectly in the gas of dry ice. So cool!! Besides the yummy lunch, I learned a lot about food brokerage -- Chuck represents the face of many different food companies and his job is to get organizations, like UND Dining, to use the products of these food companies in their operations. The most important part of his job is understanding everyone's needs. He has to know, first of all, everything about the products he is representing. Second of all, he has to understand who is selling to and what they specifically have a need for. Finally, he has to have strong relationships with everyone in the process to maintain trust and keep food products flowing from seller to buyer. It was apparent that Chuck does an outstanding job -- just sitting down with him for lunch and I could tell how he goes the extra mile to really make sure he is satisfying his customers. I don't know if I'd even have the head room to maintain so much knowledge about different products and organizations if I were a broker. It definitely takes a special person to be able to do a good job! We all walked out of the meeting with a goodie bag filled with lots of treats -- I'm especially excited about that davinci syrup -- so many ideas!

Wednesday was another exciting day. We premiered our Signature Salad concept to diners at lunch and got their feedback. The two salads we prepared were a vegetarian Caribbean Salad with mangos, pineapple, mandarin oranges, dried cranberries and cashews (YUM), and a Chicken Caesar Salad. We wanted to test this idea to see if people would like the concept of having a fresh salad prepared for them not made to order, but made per a recipe. Many people really liked the idea, especially because they said sometimes they struggled to come up with good flavor combinations at the salad bar since there are almost too many options. I created some marketing materials for the concept, and showed the student workers how to prepare the salads according to the recipe. Along the way, Chef Greg helped us tweak some of the processes to get a better outcome -- like tossing the caesar salad in the dressing before plating it!

Since the concept wasn't on the forecasted menu, I worked with the staff in the kitchen to pull together the ingredients we needed. We had to make a few adjustments to the recipes, like using pre-cooked chicken strips instead of the raw chicken that the recipe indicated to grill prior to service, to save time. Molly showed me how to use the combi oven to steam some of the frozen products for a short period to thaw them, and then keep them cold in the Chill Blaster until we dished them up for service. I made the Honey Lime Vinaigrette for the Caribbean Salad and might be "borrowing" that recipe -- it was soooo good. :)

Wednesday was also the first day of my Food Handling Inservice training for the Cold Foods staff and Dining Room Attendants. For about 45 minutes on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I got to present the training program I had been working on for the past few weeks. I think it went really well! The staff were engaged and asked questions and we even started a discussion on what could be improved specifically in the dining room for better safety/quality control. I will post a link to the training presentations here:

Day 1: http://prezi.com/qfjrqpyzflvq/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy
Day 2: http://prezi.com/2hzubr-7wtoz/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy
Day 3: http://prezi.com/f0wuhmihqyss/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Those are just some highlights of another busy week for me -- I also was busy working in FoodPro on some other menu assignments and did some more planning work for the FoodPro conference.

This weekend was luckily gorgeous weather, and I was able to take full advantage of it! I ran my first (real) long run -- an 8 miler, checked out the farmers' market, laid out, and went hiking at Turtle River State Park with Laura. Now, I'm exhausted and looking forward to a good night of sleep :)