Our Fourth Week at Purdue

Phew.. this week made me realize how little time we actually have left! Looking ahead at our schedule, I hope we can accomplish everything we've planned on doing here!

Week four was spent going into more details for our project and finishing up our training at Earhart. At the beginning of the week, we planned the script for our video that we will begin shooting this coming week and took some practice footage to test our the video-editing software that we will be using. I'm really excited to make this video and it seems like we have tons of support from the students in Earhart - several have asked to act out some demonstrations for us, which is awesome! We were also able to sit in on an interview for the new Executive Chef position here at Purdue. This was great because we got to see what responsibilities the executive chef would have and we were able to get some insight into the type of person they were looking to hire. Hopefully they'll find someone they like soon to fill this position!

The second half of our week was spent back in Earhart meeting with the administrative team. We spent a day with the dining court's chef, Cara, and she walked us through all of her responsibilities and how she spends most of her time. We showed us the requirements that must be met during each meal and it made me realize how difficult menu planning on this scale can be! They have to offer so many steamed vegetable options, a variety of different entrees that must change between meals, and fresh fruit must be available. All of these things must be met, and yet they are rarely allowed to serve the same items at different meals. Looking over these requirements reminded me of an equation that needed to be solved, and I could understand why this planning would take so long. Also, Cara mentioned that they must introduce a new menu item every four weeks. I thought this was a great idea because it forces the dining courts to come up with fresh ideas and be creative. 

The last two days were spent with Dining Court Supervisors who make sure everything runs smoothly during meals and help to solve problems, should any arise. They also will open or close the court, update information about forecasting in CBORD, and order the food that the dining court uses. Because it is freshman orientation here, the numbers for lunch have been much higher than expected, so I was able to see how they keep their lines full when items run out. I liked this portion of the job because, although it was stressful at points, the supervisors were able to be creative and think about what they had available to serve that would satisfy the customers as a replacement. Also, I found working more with CBORD to be very helpful. While working with the supervisors we were also able to go to another food testing! This one was run by a company that sells Mediterranean food items, such as pita bread, Greek yogurt, baba ghannouj, and lavash. The University already buys its pita bread from this company, and they were hoping to sell more products to them. I tried a Greek yogurt chicken salad that was to die for - I hope I can get the recipe from them! 


I'm really enjoying this internship so far because every week we do something different and get to experience small aspects of this huge operation. I'm looking forward to seeing what's to come!

Only four weeks left! I hope everyone enjoys their Fourth of July! More updates to come next week. :)

-Susan