Week 1 @ OU!

Hi guys! This is Grace and Kelsey and we're interning at the University of Oklahoma for the summer. We've only been here for a week now but its been amazing and we're loving every minute of it! Kelsey is from Arizona and I'm from Nova Scotia, Canada so it was a long trip for me but we're both here and settled in.

Our first day we ended up doing a food handlers course off campus so we got to explore Norman a little bit which is the town we're in. It's beautiful! So after this we headed back to campus and met up with Dot Flowers, our internship coordinator. I had the joy of filling out some paper work (by some, I mean tons!), then we got to travel the campus a bit, meet a bunch of the managers who handle the food service areas on campus, and then we got introduced to our big project of the month. We're working with The Flying Cow Cafe and creating a fitter foods menu for them. It sounds like it'll be really interesting, and we also get to work with the marketing department to create promotional material as well as designing the new menu! We got to eat dinner and check out Couch Restaurants (pictures at the bottom!) which is the main dining area on campus for students.

For our second day we got to go on a 'manager scavenger hunt'. So basically we travelled all over campus to the 23 different locations to eat at and met all the supervisors and managers who are in charge of each area. It was really great since we not only got to learn campus, but meet the managers we'll be placed with in the upcoming weeks to learn what they do for their job position. We also got to travel up to the National Weather Center (where the Flying Cow is at) which is such a gorgeous building (pictures at the bottom!). One thing we've learned quickly is that the weather here changes in a heartbeat. We're crossing our fingers for no tornados. In the afternoon we got to sit in on an annual planning meeting with Shawn Henry who is the manager of Couch Express and Xcetera. The meeting consisted of several different housing and food service managers where they discussed sustainability, increasing revenue, decreasing costs, and marketing/promotion aspects of these two locations on campus. It was really cool to see the details that went into determining factors that influence each of these topics and how creative you have to be. We even got to throw in some of our own ideas too!

On our third day we got to spend most of the day with 'Bacon', the manager of C-Bord and Micros. He went through everything involved with using C-Bord which is the program the university uses for inputting different recipes and ingredients from the multiple food locations across campus and much much more. We'll mainly be using this for our project to determine the nutrient information of the recipes. We also got to look at the time/temp control system they use which allows you to look at the fridge/freezer temperatures at each location on campus and will send a notification via e-mail or text to the manager to make them aware that temperatures aren't being maintained. Then Micros is the cash system used at the university, so Bacon gets to create the actual touch screens used while ringing a customers meal through, as well as inputting various employee code information (ie. allowing someone to clock in/out properly, accessing certain areas of the system, selecting which section they're assigned to work it, etc.) and a ton more. We got to sit in on another meeting with Shawn where she met with Core-Mark who provided information for products they will be supplying for her Xcetera convenience store on campus (which is currently being renovated).

Day 4 (Friday!) we got to meet with Amy from marketing in the morning. She went over everything that they handle which consists of more then just the housing and food service areas on campus. They get 5 interns during the school year who work with them, as well as two other managers who work with her. It was kind of a slow morning but we'll be back to work with them for our big project later this month and get some hands on experience in the department! After this we got to work on our project for The Flying Cow. For the actual fitter foods project, we need to analyze each menu and get at least six different items in which calories are less than 500 and fat is less than 15 grams. We managed to figure out our way around C-Bord after the great demonstration from Bacon. We also used US Foods catalog online to determine some more nutrition information.as well as contacting the managers at the Flying Cow to get the portion sizes for each item on the recipes. We'll be doing this each Friday for the rest of the month then doing promotional work the first week of July filling the customers in on the benefits of fitter foods!

That was our first week and as I said we're loving every minute! There are a few other pictures below from around campus and we'll keep you guys updated each week on what we've been up to! Looks like there are some great things in store for us :) hope you're all having as much fun as we are!