Tag Archives: management

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: Stickin’ with the plan

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Yesterday I mentioned I’d be swaying from my usual daily posts, until I figure out a better way to work with only 24 hours in the day. But since I’m a little less frazzled today I thought I would do an actual Thursday Thoughts because I wanted to talk about my first week in rotations a bit more.

I don’t want to talk specifics since that will bore all of you but I do want to utilize my blog as a way for me (and others) to look back on my internship at some of the things that I got to do.

This week was plagued with catering events. Being at such a large facility, events are happening all the time. The biggest events this week was today for Breast Reconstruction Awareness day (BRA day, which was actually October 17) that was done in coordination with Chanel, with guest Giuliana Rancic.

source

Unfortunately I didn’t get to see her, nor did I win a Chanel handbag, but it was still fun to watch it all come together. Another big event we did was yesterday, the Chief Police’s Appreciation Luncheon for all of Broward county police. That was fun because they were all in uniform and all packin’-heat. So many guns in one room hah.

Aside from all the catering, we’ve been doing your typical management stuff: employee discipline, purchasing, scheduling, blah.

And to be completely honest, although I like this so far, I still don’t think I’m cut out for Management. Especially since I know that not every facility is like this. I’m more interested in hands-on nutrition like Clinical or Wellness, so I’m really looking forward to my other rotations. But for now I’m going to just learn as much as I can while I’m here.

 

Just because I’m curious, do you own anything Chanel?

I don’t :(