Weekend at work
I usually don’t work at school on weekends, but for special occasions I do, and love it. Saturday, we catered to the participants of the Daffodil Lectures on Sustainability and the Environment, part of the Commonwealth Honors College’s 10th anniversary celebrations. This was a big deal for us. We were honored by the Commonwealth to promote UMass Dining by having the delegates eat at the DC’s because of the great food and more importantly, for the global cuisine, promoting healthy eating and buying locally. To make it more fun, the college also had the chancellor and deans serve hors d’oeuvres to the guests.
We met with staff of Commonwealth College several times to ensure it would be a successful event. The Berkshire Room is a nice private dining area connected to the DC and our executive chef Willie and catering director Brenda and manager Ryan were also involved in the planning. We knew we could pull it off and we wanted everything to be perfect.
We were quite busy all evening, in fact, it seems that there is never a slow day at Berkshire. We serve an average of 7000 customers per day including 4000 for the evening and late night. The plan was have a brief reception in the Berkshire Room and guests were invited to go through our ten stations and get whatever they wanted to eat. We wanted our guests to experience what we offer to our students daily.
Things went like clock work. It was fun to see the chancellor and deans wearing chef jackets and being part of the wait staff, if only for half hour or so. They seemed to enjoy it and one of them mentioned that it was not easy to be a server. Later everyone went out and sampled different food from each station. The sushi and the stir-fry concept were their favorites. They could not believe that our student sushi chef rolled up sushi, one roll at a time. The same comments were heard from everyone, that eating in the Dining Commons is not what it used to be, it is better. When I told many alum in attendance that they are probably eating at one of the best Dining Commons in the country, their eyes widened and they smiled saying they could understand why and that they wanted to go back to school.
Sunday was another busy day with 1900 students and parents visiting – we had lots of fun with them and shared good food stories with them. We were even able to convince a few to choose UMass rather than another school, just because of the food!
This is Ken Toong and thank you for keeping UMass Dining at the top.
Contact Ken at ktoong@mail.aux.umass.edu
You can follow Ken Toong on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/KenToong