The Many Faces of Campus Dining

This past week, I got the chance to interview all of the personnel that work in the administrative office of campus dining. Here is my brief summary of everyone I got to interview.

Arlene -- Director of Campus Dining: She takes on full responsibility of all dining services including catering, residential, and retail. Her number one concern is food safety. Her goal is to provide quality service that meets the expectations of students. She commented that a food service operation is successful when you find people that are willing to do their job and love what they do. 

Dianne – Dietitian: She is the superior administrative position. She oversees everything that happens within dining services. 

Chef Tim -- Executive Chef: He oversees all of the recipes, and any changes. He is over all of the unit chefs at the different operations. 

Tracy – Marketing Coordinator: Maintains dining website and facebook page. Gives campus dining national exposure. Deals with special events and planning those special events and getting the word out. She also helps advertise for meal plans. In essence she brands the image of campus dining.

Don – Accounting Executive: Don is the representative from US foods service. He manages the buying group. Several universities within Illinois formed a buying group meaning they all have the same primary vendor and order together. These large orders are subject to discounts benefiting all that are involved. He deals with purchasing specs and ordering.

Annie – Secretary /Clerk: Deals mainly with record keeping and file maintenance of civil service workers and student employees. She records evaluations, medical paper work, and tracks attendance. She works mostly with Human Resources.

Sabrina – Accountant Technician: Fills out credit and orders items from them. She also takes care of reimbursements. She pays the bills and creates requisitions.

Haylie – Accounts Receivable: Creates bills so campus can make revenue. She also keeps track of carryout, meal plans, and helps operate catering. Also deals with customer satisfaction. She takes questions about meal plans and lets them know why the university does what it does.

Lin – Secretary/Clerk: Lin’s main job is to support Dianne and Tim. She does odd jobs and randomly assigned projects. She also used CBORD and helps update pricing. She mainly organizes, files, and takes minutes. 

Gail -- Catering Manager: Gail takes orders from numerous different special events. She manages about 70 student employees. Manages Catered events. 

Chuck -- General Manager of Retail: Chuck is in charge of all of the retail operations including Einstein's, pizza hut, burger king, MCallister's, and other operations. His job is a little different in the fact that he is managing different restaurant chains that all operate in a different way. Communication is vital.