Milestones: John Birchfield, 1930-2012

Former NACUFS President and College Dining Silver Plate Award winner John Birchfield passed away in late December at age 82. Birchfield, who most recently had been founder and principal of the Birchfield Foodsystems (now Birchfield Jacobs Foodsystems), Inc., foodservice consulting and design firm, was also author of Design and Layout of Foodservice Facilities and served as director of dining services at the University of Tennessee from 1966 to 1973, when he won the Silver Plate for his accomplishments.

Birchfield was elected national president of NACUFS for 1972. The following year, he was awarded the organization's Distinguished Service Award and hosted the first NACUFS annual conference to be held at a member school site.

He then joined Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ, as vice president and later also served as a professor in the School of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management at Michigan State University. In 1979, he founded Birchfield Foodsystems and a decade later served as president of Foodservice Consultants Society International (FCSI).

In addition to Design and Layout of Foodservice Facilities, which is in its third edition, Birchfield was the author of numerous articles on foodservice and management, including a stint as regular guest columnist for Food Management in the 1970s.

For a memorable historical photo of Birchfield and nine other College Dining Silver Platers who gathered at the 1993 NACUFS Annual Conference in Nashville, go here.