Homecoming: The Black Friday of WSU Food Service.

This weekend is homecoming at WSU.

What this means to many students: “Start drinking at 7 a.m.”

What this means to cafeteria workers who have shifts that day (me): “Prepare for disorder and entropy.”

From past experience, our busiest bunch shift is homecoming morning. Lines get extremely long and there are lots of people. We have a lot of students bringing their parents or relatives, which we welcome. It can be hard to familiarize yourself with another dining area and we understand that you may not know all the rules.

I decided to make a list of things all diners should know, students and other diners alike.

1.     We have designated portions. If I tell you that I can’t give you another waffle, it’s because of food waste. At the end of the shift, we have these huge barrels in the dish room full of wasted food. We serve you as much as you want, but we can’t serve you more of a dish until you eat the first serving of what we give you.

2.     As workers, we are required to clean the dining room, but it is your job to bus your table. It is really hard to clean up after hundreds of people. We appreciate your efforts.

3.     Related to #2, if we have an area of the dining hall blocked off with chairs, it’s because it’s a slower day and it saves us the time of cleaning up another floor of Jack Kane. Please leave those chairs where they are. If there are no places to sit, just talk to a red-shirt employee and they will open up that area of the dining room.

Upstairs or downstairs? I notice more people flock downstairs. 

4.     If you have food allergies or intolerances, don’t hesitate to inform us. We are happy to accommodate and we don’t want to make people ill. If possible, calling ahead will help ensure that you can get what you want. We might have to boil extra noodles or defrost different waffles, and we don’t want to keep you waiting.

5.     Every worker is assigned a different task, and sometimes these change depending on the day. If we are out of chocolate milk, I have to go fetch the beverage runner; I am not trained to change it.

I had no idea how tricky it could be to refill those ketchup containers, until I was asked to, and wound up with a very red, zesty glove.

6.     We love talking to you guys. Having conversations with customers is fun.

7.     If you are dining with small children, please accompany them at all times. We don’t want accidents to happen. A worker carrying a case of cups may not be able to see a small child running under them.

8.    When you are ordering, speak a little louder than normal. We have a hard time hearing over the dish room or the machines around us.

Good news: freshly fried shrimp. Bad news: your voice sounds about 20 decibels lower.

9. We appreciate good manners and love it when customers say “thank you”. It means more to us than you might think.

And lastly,

10. Please, please, please don’t point over the glass to order. The glass is there to keep the food away from people’s hands, objects falling in, or sneezes. You don’t want these things in your food. 

 

Glass: keeping food safe since always.

 

 

 

 

 

May I take your order?

Oh man, what a weekend!

For those of you know don’t know, Chartwells has two main components, which are campus dining and catering.

The catering component isn’t limited to students or academic life. Chartwells caters wedding receptions, parties, or other events.

This weekend was my first catering job. It was for a college reunion at the west campus dining hall in Lourdes. 

Pretty snazzy looking, isn't it?

I lived in Lourdes Hall my freshman year.

I thought places like this only existed in really stereotypical movies about college.

What I didn’t know is that Lourdes used to be part of the College of Saint Teresa.

On Saturday night, a few other staff members at Jack Kane came over to Lourdes to help out with the catering gig. This meant we folded dinner rolls in bread baskets, polished and set silverware, but we were mostly responsible for serving food. 

Hi, my name is Leanne Keacher. I have never been a waitress, but now, I am suddenly going to be a waitress for that huge dining hall. 

That's what it felt like. 

But it was fun! It was super, super busy, so I didn't have any time to take pictures, which was a shame. Instead of this the classic purple polos, I got to wear a white collared shirt and a black apron. I'm really, really mad at myself that I don't have a picture of it. The WSU Chartwells page usually has pictures of catering events, so I am sad that they didn't post any for this one. I put off writing this blog entry because I wanted pictures of the event so you could see how swell the place looked...*head-desk*

 Here is a picture of a wedding Chartwells catered, which is similar to how the class reunion looked:

It sure doesn't look like the same place where I ate egg-white omelets at 7 am with a newspaper in hand. 

Debbie King is the manager for catering jobs. This summer, they allowed alcohol at campus building for catering events. Suddenly after that, she had seven wedding receptions booked. Coincidence much? They even had a wedding in the Tau Center. Not just a reception, an actual wedding, seriously. 

I think the word should get out that they now allow alcohol. Lourdes is a really beautiful building and I would highly recommend it for any special events. They don't serve you the same food as they have in Jack Kane. They offer special menus and custom requests. I was surprised to see chicken stuffed with wild rice, asparagus, and tiramisu at this class reunion, but it was all very tasty. At 9 pm, us staff members got a chance to sit down and enjoy dinner. My friend David hadn't eaten all day, so he was pretty stoked to get a tasty meal at the end of a night of running around like a hyper mouse carrying trays of chicken.

For more information, this is the catering home page:

http://www.dineoncampus.com/winona/show.cfm?cmd=catering

 

Themed Dinners at Jack Kane

Greetings from Chartwells!
We hope you’re having a swell school year.

You might have noticed some changes in Jack Kane Cafeteria this year. 2014 has been the start of some new features. I work for Chartwells, so I will note a few of them:

Hours have been extended for dinner Monday through Friday. We’re open until 7 instead of 6:45.

We have a new line for made-to-order personal pizzas.  All sauces and toppings are available upon request.

There is a new station called “ballpark entrée’s”, which will typically offer fried food. Ballpark line is replacing the potato bar, and is located right next to the wrap line.

What I'd like to blog about today are the themed dinners.
For those of you who are new to WSU, Chatwells does themed dinners routinely, featuring fun food, and many times, fun decorations. The various lines for food will offer different food during a themed dinner, but a few lines go unchanged, like sandwich and wrap/omelet line. We usually hold at least one a month, and we've already had one themed dinner.
On September 24th, we had "State Fair Food" as our theme.

We brought in sno-cone and popcorn machines. And many red-striped tablecloths.

Mini-Corn dogs and cheese curds over here! I don't actually like fried food very much, but I tried some during my break. They were actually pretty good!

From the left: Kimchi, Salad on a stick (thankfully not deep fried!)

We had barbeque pork kabobs, corn on the cob, and fries. Best part about paper utensils? Fewer dishes to wash!

These special dinners are very fun, but they can get very crowed. Peak hours are usually between 5 and 5:30 p.m. The lines can get really long, so if you want to avoid the rush, you might want to arrive when the doors open at 4:30. After about 6:15 or so, the traffic really dies down. Keep in mind, you may not be able to use a to-go box for these events (for the Holidazzle dinner in December, you for sure won't be able to use a box) so plan accordingly.

On Halloween, we will be offering a cookie-decorating station complete with frosting and sprinkles.
Sprinkles make everything better, don't they?

If I could eat this picture, I would. Nom.

On Halloween, you might see many of us employees dressed up. I can promise you I will be.

I started working for Chartwells in the fall of 2012. This was the first costume I wore:

On the left, I was Snow White. Too bad I don't have a full-body shot!

 And in 2013, I was the white swan...

Ever found a hair in your food? It's pretty gross, so I had to be careful not to let anyone find a feather in their food.

Stay tuned for a post in the nearby future about the schedule of themed dinners for the rest of the semester!