Meet Kayla Molitoris, a senior majoring in Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management. As a HRIM major, she is required to take HRIM 430, an Advanced Food Production and Service Management. In this class, the students are in charge of Café Laura.
Check out this semester wrap-up of the ups and downs of HRIM 430:
HC: What are the major requirements and responsibilities for this class?
Kayla: The actual course is HRIM 430 Advanced Food Production and Service Management. The class is one large group project. The first day of class you are assigned a management team of you and seven peers. From then on you work together to develop a theme for your restaurant and business plan. Each management team gets two nights a semester to put their business plan to action and bring their theme to life, giving us as close of an experience to opening our own restaurant as possible. When it is not our night to be managers, we spend our time being servers, cooks and dishwasher for the rest of the management teams.
HC: What do you want to do when you graduate?
Kayla: Upon graduation I want to secure a job working in the Country Club industry. Last summer, I interned with Cohasset Golf Club in Cohasset Massachusetts as a Dining Room Supervisory intern. My ideal position would be to start as an assistant food and beverage manager or a banquets manager. I love F&B as well as events, so the Country Club environment is really the best of both worlds.
HC: What has been your biggest challenge in the class this semester?
Kayla: One of the biggest challenges I faced was the group work. Being a self-proclaimed “control freak” it is hard to delegate work and hope it gets done on time and up to standard. I had to learn how to release some of the control and trust my other seven teammates.
HC: What has been most beneficial about the class?
Kayla: I honestly think this is the most hands on experience we will get before we enter the industry. We spend our time sitting in accounting classes or marketing classes and it is hard to see how all of those things will come together. This project makes us combine everything we have learned thus far in our educational careers in every class and put them to work towards one single goal. It was great to see everything we have learned come together.
HC: What is your favorite part?
Kayla: Given that we are all going through the same experience, you get pretty close with your class and your group especially. That was hands down my favorite part of the experience. This is the hardest thing we have been given to do in our college career, and we all rely on our classmates and teammates to help us through it. Despite arguing with each other in a group meeting or yelling at each other in the kitchen, after every class we congratulate the team on a job well done and celebrate. You really all become a close little family.
HC: What was your favorite meal you have done?
Kayla: I don’t want to seem biased, but I can’t help but say my favorite meal was my own. We themed our dinner around “Sex and the City” and focused on New York style cuisine. However, I think all of the themes from the four management teams in my class were awesome. We had a large variety of themes and cuisines between City Lights Bistro, Cafe De Solei and Napatite. Everyone in the class worked so hard and provided an excellent and unique dining experience for our guests.