Tag Archives: foodservice

Thursday Thoughts: Foodservice Management… Check

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Beware: This post is full of words, and zero pictures.

I’m unofficially done with my Foodservice Management rotation! I say unofficially because although I sent in all of my time sheets and evaluations tonight, I do still have to show up tomorrow for my last day. But what do you do at an internship rotation when all of your shit is accounted for? Eat your last free lunch, that’s what.

Anyway I wanted to reflect on my experiences a bit. If you would like a look back at some posts I did during the rotation, I first talk about it here, thoughts on my first week are here, I get a little bored here, and then I plan an event and it gets better here.

From what I’ve heard (and seen with my own eyes), the money in Dietetics is within Management roles, as in, considerably higher than your Clinical and Consulting Dietitians. Naturally, this would make me want to convince myself that I like working in management and that it’s totally worth all of the shit that you have to deal with like budgets and employee discipline and dish-machines breaking and MDs demanding a specific brand of lox in the Doctor’s dining room. Wanna bet how well that turned out?

I spent the better half of this rotation trying to convince myself that “it wasn’t so bad” and “I could do this”. But then I got smart and decided, you know what, I freaking hate that stuff, I’m going to find something in this joint that I actually like. And that’s when it hit me. I like to cook. I like to make recipes. I like to plan menus. Oh my god, I should be a caterer.

Ok so the epiphany didn’t go that far but I realized I was looking at this career all wrong. I was looking at it as something separate than my life, when really, shouldn’t your career be something that you love since it is such a huge part of your life? Absolutely.

So when I planned that American Heart Association breakfast for the Executives, I started seeing things in a different light. Maybe I didn’t have to like everything I was doing, but at least one aspect of this made me truly happy.

I thought I would come out of this rotation knowing whether or not I was cut out to be in Management, but I honestly don’t know. There are certain aspects of Management that I just don’t enjoy but at the same time, I do know what the hell I’m doing a lot of the time and that usually makes for a good manager. There are a lot of qualities I have that would allow me to thrive in a managerial role, and I’m glad that I was able to learn that about myself with this experience.

The one thing I am confident in is that I’m meant to be in this field. Food and nutrition is totally the peanut butter to my jelly, and I’m so fortunate to know that. As for now, I just need to ride through this internship with an open mind and see where I fall into place.

Other things that I learned from this rotation are as follows:

  • All Executive Chefs should be required to wear those tall white chef hats because it makes them look fancy
  • Terminating employees is a fact of life… don’t get too attached to anyone because the next thing you know they’re doing something so stupid you can’t even believe it and policy says they’re fired
  • Grin and bear it, because shit is going to happen and you have to deal with it because you are the authority
  • One minute you could be making sandwiches, the next minute you’re sitting in a meeting with the CEO and CFO talking dollars and cents and the next you’re fluffing drapes for a catering event. Just go with it.
  • Make nice with the nursing staff

 

Do you know exactly what you want to do with your career or at least what field you want to be in?

Thursday Thoughts: Foodservice Management is fun?

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Last time I talked about my internship, I wasn’t enjoying it too much.

I’m pleased to say that I am liking it again. I’ve said it before but Foodservice is not my thing, but I’m glad I’ve had such a good experience thus far.

If you’re just tuning into my blog, in short, I’m a Dietetic Intern and am currently completing my 8 week Foodservice Management rotation, and I have only 2 weeks left! If you’re interested to know more about my journey through Dietetics, I talk about it here.

Anyway, I started out loving it… basically my preceptor is awesome. She has a very similar personality to me and is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to management. I’m lucky to have been placed in such a large hospital too because the opportunities to learn are endless. But I was getting a little restless and bored toward the mid-point because, like I said, Foodservice is not my thing.

We have a list of required tasks that we are to complete before our rotation is over, and I wanted to combine a few of them so I had bigger projects and not just busy-work. In order to kill two, well I guess three birds with one stone I combined event planning, menu creation and nutritional analysis. It ended up being a really fun project for me. Here’s the outcome…

We were asked to cater a breakfast for the Broward Heart Walk, which is a 5k run/walk put on by the American Heart Association in order to raise awareness of cardiovascular disease and raise funds for research. This breakfast was specifically for the Executives (read: CEOs and CFOs) from different hospitals throughout Broward County (the county where Ft Laud is located). Meaning it was a fancy-schmancy ordeal.

The first half of the event was a meeting in which the CEO of our hospital spoke, followed by one of our Clinical Dietitians and a cardiovascular disease survivor who had undergone quadruple-bypass surgery in our hospital just this past summer. My favorite part? They all mentioned MODERATION numerous times! My favorite word.

The second half was the breakfast. In collaboration with my preceptor (the Director of Food and Nutrition), we planned the event details such as how many tables and what linens we were using. The menu was my part though. I searched for recipes, made them “heart-healthy” and added my own twists, gave them to our Executive Chef to test, and planned the menu from that.

Along with planning the menu, I made “heart-healthy” recipe cards, which included some of the items that we served at the breakfast. We sent them off to Marketing to make them all pretty. The recipe cards also included the nutritional analysis per serving, following the American Heart Association’s Heart Check Nutritional Guidelines.

Since we had an omelet station, I knew people would be gathering around the buffet table with a little bit of time while they waited for their omelet. I figured it would be fun to add a little touch by placing “Did you know” facts around the buffet table.

I had many people come up to me and compliment the creativity.

Afterwards, naturally there were leftovers so we sat down for a late breakfast. I loved everything, especially the frittata and sweet potatoes. I’m so glad it went off without a hitch.

If there’s one thing I learned from this, it’s that I really love creating menus and recipes. That’s the foodie in me coming out though, so I guess I wasn’t entirely surprised by that. Now that this event is over though, my Management rotation will start winding down and I’m almost sad to see it go… almost being the key word ;)

Do you like planning events? What about recipes??

Thursday Thoughts.. on Friday.

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Happy Friday Everyone!

I’m actually writing this post in the car on the way up north to Orlando. My dad had to fly into Orlando for business, so naturally my mom wanted to tag along. Of course this eventually turned into a vacation involving both of my brother’s and their girlfriends, so Andrew and I are on our way to spend the weekend with them! We’re planning on spending Saturday at Animal Kingdom, and then on Sunday we’re doing an early Thanksgiving feast since I won’t be making it home until Christmas.

Anyway, my workouts this week were not something to talk about. I ran a couple times but that’s all. I’m hoping to get in a run tomorrow morning, somehow…

What I do want to talk about is my internship this past week! That exclamation point isn’t exactly appropriate because it was actually not fun at all.

The hospital I’m at just switched to a new electronic medical records program, and because of this, everyone has been running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The nurses requested to have sandwiches catered to their units until things got settled with the program, since not many would have the time to make it downstairs to the cafeteria for lunch. Yes, every single nursing unit… along with the labs and pharmacy, etc. This equated to about 900 sandwiches during the day, and another 500 for the night shifts. All the managers (and myself) were in the kitchen making sandwiches all day Monday and Tuesday.

So as you can imagine, that sucked.

Then, on Wednesday, instead of going to my rotation, all of us interns were to report to a High School in north Fort Lauderdale. This was fine because I got to see how everyone was doing in their rotation sites and catch up, but let me tell you… school foodservice is not my cup of tea. First off, Dietitians don’t usually work in every school. They are normally at a regional level, so per county there may only be a few Dietitians working within the school systems. Second, I just couldn’t help but feeling like a lunch lady. Props to those who work in school foodservice but it’s just not for me.

Also, the National School Lunch Program, although it has come a long way, still has some issues… to me at least. I understand that there is only so much money that each school can work with, but you cannot tell me that fried plantains count as a vegetable, and apple juice is a serving of fruit. The one thing that I was actually very happy with is that next year, every grain they serve is required to be whole grain/whole wheat. Meaning all of the pizza crust, buns, bread, even cookies have to be made with whole wheat flour.

Thursday and Friday were spent with the Storeroom Supervisor, observing food procurement (purchasing), inventory and receiving. How fun, right?

Although this week was boring, it was still necessary. I’m trying to learn as much as I possibly can from each rotation just because I have to do it, so why not?

What are yoooou doing this weekend?