Thursday

Today has been quite a busy day! Before breakfast, Tara and I assembled 1 consolidated box of all of the dish samples that we have been accumulating at the SUB address. Once the food court opened at 7:00 AM, we ate breakfast and then headed down to our normal office with our box of dish samples. After laying them all out on the floor, we took a good look at them to decide which samples we had, and which samples we were still waiting on. We were only missing one company's samples. Tara gave this company a call, and they said that the dishes should be arriving any day now.

At about 8:45, we headed out to the Bozeman public school district's central kitchen to speak with Bob Burrows and Janet Cassidy about their foodservice operation. They run a cook-chill facility, which means that all of the food is cooked onsite, then chilled to safe temperatures, then sent out to 7 elementary schools and 2 high schools for their breakfast and lunch programs. This was the second cook-chill facility that I have ever visited, Tara's first. It was interesting to be able to compare the facilities and see how the same concept can be run differently for each specific purpose. For example, this operation cooks for 9 public schools as well as for some other buyers (such as MSU, we buy our marinated chicken from this operation). The operation that I had visited previously prepared all of the food for 7 regional hospitals in Virginia. The sites were set up and run differently, but both were efficient for their purpose. After our tour, we talked with Bob and Janet about our new menu and our usages of the chicken that we order from them. At the end, Paul allowed some time for us to pick their brains about the foodservice industry and what our future options could be in school foodservice.

When we got back to the office, we cleaned up the dish samples and then headed up to the SUB for lunch. Once we ate, we headed back down to our office to be greeted by Wendell and Scott, who were here to talk to us about sweet potatoes. Wendell is a sales rep for Bright Harvest Sweet Potatoes and Scott is a broker who works with Bright Harvest (manufacturer) and SYSCO (distributor). We were very lucky to get the two of them in a room together, because after we talked taters, we got to hear how their roles work together to capture and finalize a sales transaction.

These types of experiences that Paul has set up for us are invaluable and could not have come at a better time in Tara's or my educational career. We are both on the brink of graduation and making decisions about jobs/careers and other post undergraduate opportunities. It's only the end of the 3rd week, and my eyes have already been opened to the vastness of options that I will have in my future. I have also realized that because there are so many different options, that I will probably have multiple jobs throughout my career. In a lot of industries, this can be looked upon as a bad thing. From what I've seen this summer, it's fairly mainstream for this industry.

This afternoon, we are going to continue to work with Food Services of America to get some prices on the dish samples that we are looking at (the final company's samples got here this afternoon!) and do some more checking over of the fall menus.

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