It's the Final Count Down

Week 8: Our Final Full Week at UGA

Monday: Decorations and Chef Sam

We started off our final full week at The Summit to work on some decorations for the closing banquet, which is this coming Tuesday. We were still waiting for most of our printing so we worked on tags that are going to be attached to the napkin roll-ups for each guest at the banquet. The tags are meant to look like the mailing address side of a postcard they will say Under The City Lights, Coast To Coast centered on them with the ‘return address’  reading Freshman College Closing Banquet 2013. We have decided for our 'stamp' to be UGA’s iconic Arch picture. So all morning we focused on making sure they all had hole punches in them so we would be able to tie them with ribbons onto the napkins. It does not sound like a task that would take long, but when you have 400 tags to do your hand gets pretty tired!

The postcard inspired tag for the napkins

After our 400 hole punches, we moved on to work with Chef Sam Somar. Sam is new to the University Food Services side of things because he spent many years as a Chef in New York in various restaurants and country clubs. Both Meghan and I asked Kris if we would be able to spend some time with him to learn how to cook a few dishes and observe his techniques. The thing Sam stressed about his type of cooking is that it is SIMPLE; he wants everyone to be able to make it. After watching him cook I could tell that it was something that everyone could make, maybe not as good as he does, but they could still pull it off.  Sam believes that you should not have to be in the kitchen for hours upon hours in order to make a great meal. He taught and served us three great meals all with Italian inspiration. First was Penne Alla Vodka, my personal favorite! Sam started the rigatoni first because he said this type of pasta takes longer to cook. Next, he taught us how to make the vodka sauce, something I cannot wait to make for my mom! I will share this recipe for anyone who would like to try and make their own! We did not really use many measurements because Sam knew how much to make for two of us and a lot of it is to taste.

1. Take olive oil and garlic over medium and high and brown the garlic

2. Add half a shallot, tomato sauce (1 wax box of pome tomatoes), pinch of oregano, and salt and pepper to taste

3. Let that cook for a little while so the sauce absorbs all the flavors and then add a little bit of sugar to cook the acid

4. Remove from the pan and set aside.  Add olive oil, garlic, and the other half of the shallot to the now empty pan and put over high heat until browned.

5. Remove pan from the heat and add vodka—this creates a HUGE FLAME (Meghan freaked out a bit haha) Sam was able to do it over the fire because of his experience, but advised Meghan and I not to try it. Keep it away from the flame for 2-3 minutes to make sure all the alcohol has burned off.

6. Add back tomato sauce then heavy cream to it, this will give it the heaviness as well as light red/pink color.

7. Finish it off with butter and remove from the flame to add cheese, if not the cheese will separate.

8.  Once the sauce is finished toss in pasta and serve.

Sam also taught us that we could make this hours before we want to serve it and shock the pasta so it stops cooking. Next, Sam taught us how to cook Shrimp Scampi, which is a sauce that has a white wine base. Meghan and I both do not like seafood so I was very hesitant to try it, but it turns out I really enjoyed it and was really starting to get full by this point. Finally, Sam asked Meghan and I to pick out random vegetables so we could roast them. After Sam taught us how to properly cut (using our middle finger knuckle as our guideline and curling our fingers in) we drizzled the vegetables in salt, pepper, and olive oil, and balsamic vinegar and put them in the oven to roast. Our entrée dish was the next we learned to prepare, Chicken Marsala. First, you use olive oil to heat the pan and seared the chicken for two minutes on each side and remove from the pan. Next add olive oil chops shallots and sauté until brown, add your mushroom and allow it to cook for two minutes. Finally, add the chicken back to the pan and flame with Marsala Wine and Demi Glace (again for an experience chef). Sam served the Chicken Marsla with the roasted vegetables and it was wonderful. At the end of this lesson I was STUFFED! I was really appreciative of Sam taking the time out of his day to teach us his techniques. Whenever we work with Sam I can truly see his passion for cooking and making GREAT food to share.

Sharpening the knifes

scary flames

Making it a Vodka Sauce with the cream

Penne Alla Vodka

Shrimp Scampi

Chiken Marsala

TUESDAY: The Niche and Your Pie

We got special treatment today for breakfast, we got to go to The Niche’s soft opening and try out their breakfast menu. When we arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see it even changed from the last time we were there. All the painting was done, touch screens installed, tables and chairs, and logos! It amazes me that every time we go back to The Niche there is something new! In the fall they will be using a kiosk for ordering, but for today we just placed our orders with their staff. I ordered an omelet, hash browns, and toast. The omelet I got seemed to be super fluffy compared to the rest I have eaten all summer, and I was pleasantly surprised. Being a coffee addict I was very excited that their mugs were about double the size of the other dining halls. They can do this because their volume is not going to be as high and the refill of the coffee machine will not be as demanding.

THEY HAVE A SIGN

New Tables and Chairs

Painted and Signs

My Breakfast

After our lovely breakfast we headed over to Your Pie to meet with Drew French, the owner/creator of the company. The most surprising factor of it all is how young he is, only in his lower thirties now. Your Pie was first opened in 2008 in Athens, Georgia (he is a UGA alumni). When developing the concept he came up with a few ideas, the focus being a down the line custom ordering process. He also already knew what he wanted to do when developing his concept, he wanted to be able to Franchise it in the future. In 2006 he visited Ischia (where his wife’s family is from) and he fell in love with brick oven pizza and decided he needed to go with a down the line brick oven pizza concept. The added bonus to this concept is that they have various gelato choices at the end of to satisfy your sweet tooth! During our meeting we talked about how he developed his restaurant, got a logo, opened his first store, and how it began to grow. After he opened his first store he began to expand in the area and he eventually started to franchise it out. His first franchisees were people who he knew, it has continued to grow since then and there are locations in Georgia (all over), Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina. One thing that Mr. French stresses is customer servic3. He really wants to bring that unique experience where their staff is interacting with the customer throughout the whole process. He wants his customers walking into ANY Your Pie and receiving a really great customer service experience along with quality food to keep them coming back. I really enjoyed speaking with him because he gave me insight on so much especially for me who wants to start my own restaurant (one day). I enjoyed his honesty with everything we talked about, even telling us able the failure of one of his later concepts and how he has learned from it. Overall, I took away all the hard work it takes to start a business (you will spend MANY MANY hours there), keep in contact with friends ( they may be able to help), develop a concept you believe in, and do your best to maintain your level of standards at ALL of your restaurants. To this day Mr. French still owns three of his locations, all in Athens, and is looking to expand into more of the Southeast region with his franchises , especially Atlanta. Personally, I would love one up in Pennsylvania.

Drew French making my pie

Delicious Pizza

Following our delicious lunch at Your Pie we headed to Snelling to work on some of our printed materials. We fixed our menu tags and our table numbers, formatted them and printed them. From there we headed to The Summit to spray paint our sticks for our street signs which will be in our table vases. After we finally figured out how to keep the newspaper down to spray the first side of the rods it decided to rain on us and we had to call it a day.

Wednesday: Prep and P&L’s

On Wednesday morning we were off to The Summit once again to do some more decoration prep for the banquet.  Today we got to finish off the rods for the vases because there was no rain! After we finished them Meghan and I worked on making our light up flag poles with dangling stars for the stair case. We had to decide how much we wanted them to sag and also figure out how long we needed the cords at the end so they could still be plugged in. We mocked up one with our white lights and tested it and it looked great! After we got out light situation figured out we finished up some table diagrams. We put together a buffet table diagram for what order we would like to have the food in.  The other diagram we made was for the individual tables. It showed where the menu, silverware, water, iced tea, flowers, and table numbers will go in order to create uniformity. The morning finished up by figuring out how long we were going to make our ribbon for our roll ups and if we were going to bow them or curl the ribbon.

Spray Painting

By the time we were done with those tasks it was time for the financial round table for all the unit managers and luckily Meghan and I were invited to go. Susan put together the meeting and ran the presentation/lessons. She started off reminding everyone of what UGA’s fiscal year is and that every month there are close out dates on a Sunday. That is important because you need your sales, expenses, and payroll to match up. It was also important to remind the unit managers that the FoodPro dates are different than the reporting (business) week at UGA. The UGA reporting week is from Wednesday-Thursday and FoodPro is from Saturday-Friday. The managers all need to know these dates and not mix them up because it is important that everything matches up. I thought back to Kris’s session at the management workshop and how they are all dates that should be listed in their calendars in order to refer back to it (at least for me I would need that). Next, Susan taught an on hands lesson on Food Cost and Food Cost Percentage. The equation was nothing new to me because I had it nailed into my head in accounting, but it is Beginning Inventory + Purchases – Ending Inventory = Cost of Goods Sold or Food Cost. In order to get Food Cost % you take your food cost/sales, and typically they are shooting for 33% or lower. Susan reminded the managers that there are many factors and influence that can affect your Food Cost % and to be aware of them. The waste factor of food cost is going to get very tricky when The Niche starts using Snelling as their commissary, because they need to make sure they are only using the allotted amount and not more because the excess will hit Snelling hard. Throughout the meeting Susan discussed inventory analysis, inventory transfer, detail analysis reports, and account status reports. I am not able to discuss many things because we used specific examples and it is confidential information. I learned a lot and I was very happy to see physical P&L’s and reports in front of me to get the hands on aspect of accounting and finance.

Thursday: Soft Opening at The Niche

Today I was flying solo because Meghan was taking ServSafe class. I reported to The Niche to help them for their soft opening. The Niche has five full-time employees and will get some student help in the fall, but they show a major emphasis in cross-training because of the limited number of employees. I helped the team at the Niche with calling out orders and handing them to customers. I was not able to join in on the cooking of the orders because it was very important that their employees who were going to be there when they open get experience. I was very impressed by their employees because they got double numbers than they were expected and worked really well as a team! The quality of the food they served was always about par and there were many compliments. I learned a lot by observing such as better ways to get things down the line and communication skills. The one thing that day that was a difficult task to conquer was the computer system. They IT department hooked it up that day so there were many kinks to figure out, it was difficult but a definite learning experience in case things happen in the future. The most exciting thing for me today was to see that the signs Meghan and I made were hung up behind the grill as guidelines!

The Niche Employees Working

The Signs

Computer Order Screen

Friday: Prep

Today was all about banquet prep. Meghan and I knew what we had to do and we delegated tasks to complete it. We finished the roll-ups and, cut out all of our table numbers, and made all of our flag pole lights. Today I felt more like a manager and I enjoyed it a lot!!!

The Finished Roll Ups

Flag Pole Lights

Table Numbers and History

Free Time:

This weekend was more relaxed for Meghan and I. We had to run a bunch of errands on Saturday and then ate at Mamma’s Boy; I tried Biscuits and Gravy for the first time…. I LOVED IT! We both had a really nice relaxing last weekend in Athens, I will for sure miss it!