Week 7 at Rutgers University

Our week started with working with Rukiah at the marketing office. Since the new student orientation would be later in the afternoon, we helped cut about 300 dining flyers in preparation for the event. We then traveled to Livingston Campus to attend the new student orientation. The students were split into two groups and they spent one rotation in the library, where there were tons of student tables full of resources for the students. We were there to represent Dining Services, and some of the other groups included the Police Department, Student Health, Financial Department, etc. For our station, we offered some dining resources and had an electronic wheel where students could spin for prizes. Only a few students had specific meal plan or RU express questions; however, a ton of students were enticed by the bags, bottles, ID holders, sunglasses, and memo pads that we gave out! Even though we’re not entirely familiar with the meal plan since we don’t actually go here, we were quite pleased that we were still able to answer a few basic questions.

At the New Student Orientation with Rukiah

All the goodies on our table

Since the orientation was on Livingston Campus, we met with Cynthia, the manager at Livingston Dining Hall in the afternoon. Cynthia walked us through the front of the house and described all of the different stations that they offered. The students here are so lucky! The dining hall offers a made-to-order wok, pasta station, and omelet station. We also worked briefly with Fran, who had us package some nuts and cereal into large bowls for the dinner and breakfast services, respectively. They had a lot of leftover snacks from the International Conference the week before, so there were a lot of bags of chips, cotton candy, nuts, and fruits available for the students. Normally, packaged goods would not be offered in the all-you-care-to-eat dining hall.

This morning, we visited Shawna, the associate manager at Busch Dining Hall. Shawna went over productions with us. She showed us how forecasting worked on FoodPro and brought us into every refrigerated storage room. It was amazing to hear about how many meals Busch produces everyday. Just the dining hall itself serves about 8,000 - 9,000 students per day. On top of the normal dining hall operations, Shawna also orders food for the commissary and nearby cash operations. We were also given the opportunity to sit into a meeting with the nutritionist and a student regarding special diets. The meeting involved Peggy, Marina, the Chef Manager, Shawna, the student, and her family. Peggy began by asking her about her dietary needs and the daily foods that she would normally eat. She also went over the similar types of food that the dining hall offered and the procedures in which to obtain them. Ultimately, the student was recommended to use the Text-to-Order program, which Peggy informed us of during our first week here. It was so interesting to see the conference in person!

A classic meal at Busch Dining Hall

On Wednesday, we helped out at a catering event in Deiner Park (on College Avenue Campus). We arrived 2 hours prior to the start of the event to begin setting up the tables and utensils. Since the event was outdoors, we had to keep in mind external factors such as the heat and the wind. The wind could possibly knock down the sterno and cause a fire, so we had to place skirts around the platform so that the wind would affect it less. Since the group consisted of 631 people, we set up three identical buffet lines to facilitate the process of getting food. Each buffet line could serve people from both sides. The dinner was a bbq, so the foods included hot dogs, hamburgers, salads, plantains, watermelon, and funnel cakes. When the students came trickling in, I stood by Soraya, one of the catering staff. We kept a close eye on the food, and when the food pans began to empty out, I would go to the grill station to obtain a new tray and replace the empty one.

On Thursday, we spent the day at Dunkin Donuts today, working with Cheryl, the manager, and Gina. The Dunkin Donuts store was located within the Douglass Student Center. There weren’t a lot of customers, but since there was a student affairs event going on in the building, larger groups of people would come through occasionally. Cheryl taught me how to work the coffee station. I felt like a barista! It was so interesting how intricate coffee and tea could be. There were so many different types of coffees and ways in which you could prepare them. Additionally, you could also vary the amount of cream, sugar, or milk in your drink. As an individual that doesn’t drink coffee at all, it was a bit challenging at first learning all of the specific variances since I’m not too familiar with the types of coffee. However, every order that came through helped familiarize myself with the coffee machines. Soon, I was able to make a coffee for a customer all by myself!

Decked out in our Dunkin Donuts uniforms from head to toe

In other news, this is the last week that the Rutgers Club is open, so we made an effort to attend the buffet lunch today! The pasta was made with goat cheese and porcini mushrooms, and it was fantastic!

On Friday, we worked with Chef Pete in Brower Commons. Our luncheon is right around the corner (next Tuesday!) so it was time to make some mise en place for our menu items. We began to prepare the vegetables by washing them with the antimicrobial vegetable treatment and giving them a fine dice. After dicing the zucchini, squash, onions, red and green peppers, we were all done with our mise en place for the day! Our next step is to come in on Monday to finish preparing our menu items. During the day, Chef Pete taught us some important lessons regarding writing menus and recipes. One of the main things we learned was keeping vegetarian ingredients and meat products separate in a food item. For example, our lemon basil potatoes called for low sodium chicken stock; however, Chef Pete pointed out that this would be very dangerous since a vegetarian individual might consume the potatoes thinking that they are vegetarian when they were actually prepared with a chicken stock. Therefore, it’s important to keep these ingredients separate. We also briefly talked about food allergies as another important reason to label every ingredient clearly on recipes or menu cards.

Jenny, the Catering Manager, made us some cute Disney-themed menu cards for our upcoming luncheon - stay tuned!