Week #3 at UC Berkeley!

Since our last post, Ashley and I have embarked on countless adventures, new experiences and learning opportunities! It all started last week Friday when Renee Simpson (Registered Dietitian for Cal Dining) took us on a field trip Napa Valley, California for a tour of Napa State Hospital and The Culinary Institute of America! The hospital is where Renee completed her 10-month dietetic internship. Here, we were able to take a tour around the foodservice facilities and learn about how they produce food for 1200+ patients each day.

Steam Jacketed Kettles at Napa State Hospital

The foodservice production kitchen is the largest I have ever seen! They operate via cook-chill system and production only occurs 4 days per week. There are 10 satellite kitchens on campus, where the food is transported and rethermalized before it is served. In the past 150 year, there has never been a case of foodborne illness at this facility, which is amazing! They actually keep a sample pan of each dish they make, to store for 72 hours after the time of service, just in case there were to be an food-related problem, the food could then be tested for pathogens.

Sean, Renee, Kristen, Ashley and Maria taste testing pumpkin pies

The Culinary Institute is located in St. Helena, CA, which is just a short ride from Napa Valley. Here, we were given a tour by a woman named Mariane, who was very knowledgeable about the entire facility and was actually good friends with Chef Marcos, one of the executive chefs at Cal Dining. During our tour, we saw a few of the students working on their projects. They invited us into the kitchen for a taste test! One student was testing 4 different pumpkin pie recipes. I liked the control the best, although, the vegan version was a close second! There are only 300 students at this school, and I got to see a few of their classrooms, kitchens, and lecture halls (which included a demonstration kitchen at the front!).

The Culinary Institute of America

Earlier in the week, Ashley and I tried our hand at some designing work with Patrice. Our goal was to create a series of posters and fliers for our special dinner event. Neither Ashley nor I have much experince in graphic design, so it was challenging for us, but with the help of some awesome staff, we came up with a design that we are all happy with. We also attended a few marketing meetings with Patrice, and discussed recycling & waste management signage, and its role in the stadium, specifically during football games. One of Cal's marketing strategies for this year is to promote sustainability at the stadium.
We also met with the Associate Director of Dining and Administration, Mike Laux, who got his degree in Foodservice Management from the University of Minnesota, and has been working at Cal Dining for over 20 years. His job includes everything from the labor component of each dining facility  & retail location, to being a liaison with Human Resources. He deals with grievances, discipline, medical leaves, policies, and conflict mediation. He is also involved in a lot of the sustainability initiatives like Chews to Reuse. Ashley and I learned about the use of unions within the dining employment and also a little bit more about NACUFS and how it benefits universities.

One of the photographs I took during my photography lesson

Other things we did this week include continuing to provide dietary and employment information to incoming students, exploring the city with Brian (Manager at Foothills Dining Facility), interviewing potential future cooks for Cal Dining, attending a webinar on celiac disease, making it to the top of the clock tower on campus, touring the UC Berkeley Stadium, and taking a photography lesson!

Ashley and I thought that we needed to take advantage of the gorgeous weather this past weekend and spend some time in the sun! We decided to venture to Lake Anza, a man made lake located in the mountains behind Berkeley. The 5 mile hike to the lake was uphill and challenging, but to me, it was worth every step. Upon arrival, we jumped into the water to cool off from our hike. There was a nice beach area, lifeguards, and even a lane to swim laps. We also attended the PRIDE festival in San Fransisco, which was extremely crowded and colorful! We watched the parade and walked around the city for a while before we decided there were too many people us "country" girls.

Monday marked the start of week #3 here in Berkeley California. This week, Ashley and I had the privilege of working with Sean C., Training Manager for Cal Dining. One of Sean's goals at Cal Dining is to develop the company into a preferred employer in the East Bay Area. To do this, he works on enhancing customer service standards, developing new orientation programs for employees, promoting employee appreciation, and making sure the customers are being treated like customers, rather than "students". To help him collect research for the work that he does, Ashley and I got go go "undercover" and do some mystery shopping. We visited a few dining facilities and filled out evaluations about our visit. Things we evaluated them on include  how we were treated there, how knowledgeable the staff was, how clean the facilities were, etc. This "Mystery Shopper" program will actually be introduced campus-wide in the fall. Select students will be able to participate in this experience to evaluate the dining facilities and retail locations. All of this is being done to find ways to improve the service, access and engagement of Cal Dining employees, to work towards continual improvement of the dining facilities on campus.

This week we also were introduced FoodPro, the computer system that stores all of the forecasting, ordering, service records, inventory, invoicing, production, recipes, purchasing, etc., for Cal Dining. At Michigan State, I learned how to use a similar program called CBOARD in my HNF 444 class. Flo is the systems coordinator for Cal Dining, and she is the one who explained a lot of the system to us. Cal Dining is currently working making 2 big changes within their computer systems: implementing electronic invoicing and buying a new software system. Foodpro has been used for the past 20+ years at Cal, but but with so many frustrations, they are now looking to switching systems. The goal is to choose and impliment a new computer software system by the end of August.
Another computer system that Flo works with is Lean Path. It's a system that tracts preconsumer waste. This includes food that doesn't get served, as well as peels, spoilage, trim waste, rhine, and pits. This system has benefited Cal Dining by tracking waste and allowing managers to see where the waste is coming from. It can even pin point specific recipes that have excessive waste , and then those recipes will be removed from production in the dining facilities. Since starting this program at Cal Dining, there has been a 19% decrease in food waste.

On Wednesday we worked with Sunil, the Purchasing Manager for Cal Dining. He took us to tour the BiRite Facility, which is Cal Dining's main food distributor, located in San Fransisco. BiRite is a large company that services much of northern California and even does some business to military troops overseas. They are an independent business that is family owned and only has one location, here in California. Their main competitors are Sysco and US Foods. The amount of food they process every day is crazy! There are 40+ routes that BiRite delivers food 5 days a week. At any given moment, there is around 14 million dollars worth of food in this warehouse. During the tour, we were able to see where food is stored in the 65,000 foot warehouse. There are rooms for dry goods, refrigerated items, and even a freezer room that is 0* F. When I went into the freezer, it reminded me of winter in Michigan.
After the tour, Sunil sat down with us to debrief a little bit and teach us more about what Cal Dining looks for when deciding what products to purchase. When looking for new products, the first thing Sunil looks at is if it contains trans fats, because Cal dining does not sell any food products that contain trans fats. Other considerations include if the product contains plastic or other waste, the quality of the product, the pricing, the vendor's history with past customers, if it is a sustainable product and if it is a local product (<150 miles). All of these things are taken into consideration even before the taste test! Sunil has a student focus group who tests out new products for him. He told us that the customer is the one who has the purchasing power, so it is important to get their opinion on new products. Overall, it has been another awesome week in California. Once again, I learned a lot more about how university foodservice operates and different career paths I can take as a dietitian. Ashley and I have off tomorrow for the holiday, and then it's back to work on Friday!

***Happy 4th of July***