CAFE LAURA
Food Service Management
Cafe Laura is a student-run food-service facility on the Penn State campus. It acts as a "living laboratory" where students are able to rotate through staff positions and also are able to function as managers for two fully operating days.
Students are put into "management groups". We are responsible for creating standardized recipes for each station of Cafe Laura which includes homestyle, soup & salad, action station, and specialty sandwich. On our management days, each member of the group is responsible for being the manager of one of the following stations: the back of the house, sanitation, salad, homestyle, deli & grill, action station, and dining room.
Our management duties for the first day include providing standardized recipes for each station, creating a purchase order for required ingredients, creating the staffing schedule, conducting inspections on quality of meals, and most of all managing our fellow peers to ensure that everything is completed on time and running smoothly. On our second management day, we are expected to improve our management skills and also provide a report with forecasted revenues and food costs along with a report on actual cost.
Cafe Laura is a fast-paced learning experience. The structure of the course allows students to be thrown into foodservice and forced to adapt and learn quickly. This approach has pushed me out of my comfort zone in the best way and has strengthened my ability to adapt tremendously. Each week I am put into a different area of foodservice. Learning to adapt has meant learning how to utilize my skills from other areas to handle an unfamiliar task, observing other techniques, and knowing when I need to ask for advice.
Staff rotation tasks include:
• Preparing the food while following food safety procedures
• Serving food in high volume and fast-paced operations while maintaining high standards of customer
service
• Communicating efficiently with coworkers and management
Certifications Achieved: ServSafe Manager
MENU PLANNING
Cycle Menu
In my course, Introduction to Food Production and Service, I learned the basic principles of food production and service management. This included learning how to create a cycle menu. The importance of this activity was to learn how cycle menus are utilized in clinical settings. For instance, cycle menus are typically used in hospitals.
My group and I worked together to create a cycle menu that would be appropriate for college customers. As we created the menu we were careful not to repeat foods, to alternate proteins throughout the week, and to ensure cross-utilization of ingredients throughout the week to keep cost low. We came up with the unique idea do cultural themes for each day which would allow the menu to be diverse while also ensuring various cooking techniques. Furthermore, we made sure to include vegetarian options each day.
We were able to create a menu that was diverse and offered a lot of variety. We also learned that by planning a cycle menu in advance for a week, you are able to ensure nutritionally balanced meals for patients.
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BUDGETING PROJECT
In Introduction to Food Production and Service, I created standardized recipes from recipes found online and then bugeted how much the recipes would cost. Writing a standardized recipe included calculating portion, portion size, and yield. It also required each ingredient amount to be converted to a standardized amount. Fruthermore, a strandardize recipe includes mise en place and procedures. After this completed this assignment, I can confidently create a standardized recipe which can be followed easily by staff.
I then calculated cost by using EP quantity, EPQ unit, yield %, AP quantity, APQ unit, and unit price. By using the numbers caculated I determined the total cost and cost per serving.
RECIPE MODIFICATION PROJECT
Food Service
At Penn State, as part of the Science and Methods of Food Preparation Lab, my group and I completed a Recipe Modification Project. This project required us to choose a recipe of our choice and modify it to be lower in total fat, SFA, and sodium. My group and I chose to modify Olive Garden’s famous creamy chicken gnocchi soup.
The original recipes ingredients, heavy cream and bouillon cubes were modified. To lower the total fat, heavy cream which has 160g of fat was replaced with milk and cornstarch which only has 16g of fat. To lower the amount of sodium, chicken bouillon cubes with 6600 mg of sodium, was substituted for organic chicken broth which contained 3780 mg of sodium.
This project included using my knowledge of food science to successfully modify ingredients to mimic the original ingredients in a way that would still taste good. This is an important skill as a dietitian in order to help clients modify the foods they love in a healthy way so that they can still enjoy them!
You can read the whole report by clicking the button below!
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