University of Oklahoma week 6 = Starbucks!!

Week 6

Monday

Today Nova and I observed what it was like to receive stock… at 6am. It was not my idea. We were told to “dress warm” and “bring a parka.” However, when I found out that my internship placement was in Oklahoma I had absolutely no intention of packing “warm” clothing or a parka! It is for this very reason that I showed up to work in my typical work shirt and dress pants. Needless to say, my attire was not exactly up to par. The two guys that we worked with supplied us with gloves and a jacket, but I was still no match for the meat & veggie freezer!
               All of the restaurants run by the housing & food department on campus get deliveries from US Foods every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. During the school year, it may take hours to unload everything because the orders are huge compared to the summer order.  Lucky for us the orders are fairly small because I do not know how much longer I would have lasted in that freezer!

Wednesday & Thursday

So much coffee!! On the first day of this internship, Dot asked if there was anything in particular that we would like to learn about, and I immediately chose Starbucks. For the past two days we have learned how to be baristas! J (And personally, I think we were pretty fantastic) It was so much fun! Chris, the manager of Starbucks, Bedrock Café, and Bookmark, knows just about everything that there is to know about the different coffees offered at all 3 of his managerial locations. He and his whole team are fantastic! Rhonda has been working here for 6 years, Jeanelle- 2 years, and Makenze- 4 months or so. They are such a fun and relaxed group to work with (which fits the personality of Starbucks perfectly). We began the day with coffee tastings. We tried a total of 6 different coffees plus any interesting sounding drink on the menu. Even though I am not a fan of black coffee, I was really glad that I had to try it because you can really taste the extreme differences between each coffee. The most unpleasant drink we had to taste was a “dead” espresso shot. Espresso shots die within 8-10 seconds of being poured, so if you do not add some other liquid (as in milk or water) or hand it to the customer fast enough too much air touches it and it loses the desired flavor. Don’t get me wrong, a regular espresso shot was nasty as well, but I would rather lick the floor than drink a dead espresso shot again.

On Starbucks Training Day 1, I learned all about the hot bar (making hot drinks). It was not too difficult because many of them start with the same two ingredients: steamed milk and espresso. After that, the name of the beverage usually tells you what goes into it. The confusion comes in knowing how many pumps of each syrup goes into each drink. That gets pretty tricky. On Day 2, I learned all about the cold bar. It was much harder than the hot bar! Passion tea Lemonade and any of the refresher drinks are super easy, but Frappuccino’s are kind of a pain. There are just so many different things to do with Frappuccino’s and each one has a slightly different preparation method, which makes everything that much more confusing. Now that I have spent 2 days in Starbucks, it is fun to go there, tell the workers what type of drink I typically enjoy, and have them come up with a new drink combination for me. I just loved every minute of it!  On Thursday evening, Camp Crimson was having a rave party, and Starbucks was supplying some drink samples to encourage the incoming freshman to stop by in the fall. Camp Crimson is a 3 day camp for incoming freshman to pretty much show them around the campus and get them all excited about the fall semester. Chris invited us to stop by just to see what it's all about, and we had a blast! On the bike ride to the Union, there was a lightening storm going on. It was neat just to sit outside and watch it for a while since Nova doesn't see much lightening in  Canada.

Caramel Frappuccino. YUM!

Orange Spice Iced Coffee

Coffee tasting accompanied by zucchini nut muffin

Peach Green Tea Lemonade.
It's Delicious! 

Nova's reaction to a dead espresso shot.
It's seriously awful!

 

some of the Starbucks workers!
Chris, Makenze & Jeanelle :)

She was not very happy with the song
that was playing...haha

On Friday we continued to work on our project that will be presented on Thursday! 

This weekend, a couple of my friends came to town! We had so much fun just hanging out in town, going out to eat, shopping and relaxing by the pool!
I can’t believe we only have two more weeks left! There is still so much I want to do before I leave!