Weeks 5 & 6 @ OU!

Week 5 - Monday and Tuesday

We started out this week at the Flying cow. It is locate in the national weather center. It is a really neat looking building. Inside there are pictures everywhere of all kinds of storms they have seen and caught a picture of. The flying cow is a very cute place to eat at. They have breakfast and lunch there. It is not too busy either so it is never a turn off in that area. They have all sorts of food there to eat. They have breakfast like I said, sandwiches, pizzas, pasta and then a hot area kind of like a chef’s choice. There food is very delicious when I was there my plate had rotisserie chicken, pasta salad, and peaches with a biscuit on the side. Grace had a sandwich called the California turkey club which was pretty large. Their operation there runs very smoothly. They don’t have many students that come there it caters to the employees of the building and the buildings that surround it. While we were there we went made a couple items up that they could use for their flowing cow menu. We made one sandwich called the carnivore sandwich and the side that went with that was the chocolate delight. Then we made a wrap that could be substituted as a salad it was called the herbivore sandwich that was followed by a vegetable soup. We really put some great work into it. The only thing that was hard was determining how much we were going to sell them for. We also go the opportunity to ride around with Alan which deliveries food to the smaller cafes around campus we went to Elements which was in a research building. It was so small and cute. Then we went to the bookmark which is in the Library. It is old school looking and very calm in there. The last one that we went to was the redbud café which was in the museum. It was cute as well. They are all just tiny places to serve to a small amount of people that are hungry. One thing that we did do that has nothing to do with food service is we went up to the observation deck at the national weather center. You could see for miles and they had these really funky chairs in there that were on springs but we had a good time on them.

Thursday and Friday

So far after our lovely vacation day that we got so much rest during we are here at the office working on our second project and really looking forward to lunch. It is nice outside today just a tad humid coming from me living in AZ but Grace just thinks its hot lol. We are so very different in our climate preference.

Week 6 - Monday and Wednesday

We started off this week at Cate- A-La Carte. We met with Sharon the manager of this operation. We started off by brainstorming new items that they can put on their menu for a weekly special; Such as hamburgers, sandwiches and maybe a hot dog. We not only thought of regular items we also had to think vegetarian which is always a different experience for me since I am not a vegetable lover. We got to sit down with two of the employees that work there to do this. We all came up with great ideas. Of course we are all girls so we enjoyed getting to know each other as well. One of the girls just got married to a gentleman from Britain and that was so interesting to hear about his transformation has been coming to America let alone Oklahoma.

In Cate there are 4 different places that you can eat at. One of them is getting renovated at the moment to give more seating room. It is not in service while the summer is going on they just cater to the honor students that are there which is only a small portion of kids and not all the time as well.

Tuesday

We met with a couple people today from different departments that do have to do with food service they are just not in the operations. We first met with Joann from accounting and I told her she sure loves numbers. She makes sure that every ones sheets match up and that money is all being accounted for. She doesn’t actually physically touch money she just deals with paper all day long. She has been here for over 3o years. What a job! She is basically the account lady for all of food service and housing. She make sure all month that the money is coming in and being inputted correctly being sent off to another person who then pays the bill or receives the money and they at the end of the month make sure it all adds up and matches.

Next we met with Kevin Barker. His title I feel is truly unknown but he is an assistant director. He is ahead of the assessments that they do at all of the operations to make sure they are complying with the food safety laws so no one gets sick. He also looks at the balances that each department should be able to use and lets them know you are going to be making this much you can spend this much so that they don’t over spend and then don’t make any money. He makes sure that each manager is getting the most out of their operations. He wants them to make the most money that they can so if that is buying something cheaper or if that is lowering their labor costs he is going to find it and fix it. He really loves his job and has been here a long time just like most of the people here and I think he does a great job at it.

Last on the list today was we met with Pam the sooner suites manager. I would call her the hotel lady. She is in charge of all the summer camps and making sure that all the people that have asked for rooms gets rooms and that they are maintained as well as the guests are well taken care of. During the summer she is in charge of all the towers, a building in traditions east and then a building in crately. While the summer is not going on and dealing with this entire she is renting out apartments in crately. They are short term or long term lease. It’s like have non student apartments on campus. Just regular apartments people can stay at to help with their transition. She also has some cottages that are on campus there are about 19 of them and she rents these out. They are really popular all year long for parents to come and stay or family. They are super popular when football season is going on they will be booked. OU actually sue to have a hotel on campus which was theirs but they had to make room for more offices so they changed it over from a hotel to office buildings. Pam was saying that it use to be completely full during football season they had so many regulars. She says it was hard to give up the hotel because she had to reduce so much space that she had available to all these people that needed a place to stay. I asked if they planned on building another one she said no it just wouldn’t bring the money that they needed for it because so many hotels have gone up around them as well as it would take a while for them to see any revenue coming from it.

Thursday

All I have to say is what a day. We worked so hard. We had been waiting for this day the whole time we have been here. Not every day do you get to learn how to be a barista. When we first got to Starbucks here we got the cute green aprons. Next Caleb started us off with tasting different roasts of coffee. I have never really taken the time to learn what coffee was all about but he was like an open book with all this knowledge about it. We got to try first a medium blend, then a dark blend then a really light blend. They all tasted not so good to me because I am not a coffee fan but you could truly tell the difference. Some of the taste would stay longer in your mouth and others would disappear. After we did that we split up and I went to hot bar first and Grace went to cold bar. This was neat because we got to learn how they actually made the coffee drinks or tea. As we were on these sides we got to taste different drinks while making drinks for other customers. It was a challenge getting use to how much goes in each cup and it was different for each size of cup. The grosses part about the hot side was trying the bad shot which is a shot that has sat for about 10 seconds. Makes you cringe. Also I had to try burnt milk which oh my did I not like, I love milk and that was not milk. After lunch we switched spots and I went to the cold and Grace went to hot. On the cold side it was really neat because there were a lot of cheat sheets there to help you out on how much goes on what. The only thing I thought was hard was not knowing what drink was what. If you knew the drinks you know what items went in it when it comes to pumps of syrup or flavoring of the drink. We had a ton of fun learning what they did and what coffee was all about. We sure were tired though after our days haven’t had to work like that in awhile