Mizzou Livin' Week 6

My special event week was finally here and gone just like that! This week brought to an end one of my biggest tasks of the summer: planning a special event and preparing a menu to be served during dinner at the Plaza 900 Dining Facility. The days leading up to my event, Tropical Tour 2012, were filled with last minute preparations and checking that the food tasks were getting accomplished. Like any event there were a couple of complications along the way. The major one was having to go to the grocery store on Monday since a couple of my food items that we had ordered never came on the truck. Luckily the local grocery store had all the items needed to complete my meal including 275 King's Hawaiian rolls, 5 lbs of Panko crumbs, and lots of papaya. Marian, the manager working the night of my event, was able to help me get discounts on the food since we were buying the items by the case. Besides this, all the food items were prepared on time and made really well. The recipes I created, including the Coconut chicken turned out really well in my opinion, and it was great to hear other people say so too! The coolest part of the event was definitely the decorations which included giant Tiki posters, hula skirting around all the stations, and a fruit display with palm trees made out of pineapple. All of the staff was more than willing to help me decorate and offer ideas of what would look cool.
Being able to organize an event from start to finish really helped me see some of the behind the scenes aspects I never think about. One example of this is having a back up item for each item on the menu in case you run out of something. Of course this is an important aspect, but I never thought of it before! I am amazed at the quality of food Mizzou is able to produce for the cost they do considering my items ended up being nearly twice the cost items usually are. I was told all Special Events end up costing more but it was interesting to me to look at the costs of my items and try to figure out ways to make the recipes less expensive. For the meal of my event we forecasted 401 people but ended up with around 450 which mean't more people to taste the foods and see all my hard work! Overall this week was really exciting and I loved getting to organize an event. The next two weeks will go by really fast I know but now I kind of wish it would all slow done since I have been enjoying the internship so much!!!