Employment Outlook, oversight of seafood, Sodexho Marriott Services, etc.

FM Staff

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The employment outlook for executive, professional and sales people in the food industry remains strong, according to the latest hiring survey conducted by Management Recruiters International Inc. Of executives with responsibility for hiring in the food industry, 51% indicated plans to increase their staffs in the first half of 2001, up by 7 points from the second half of 2000. Another 42.2% plan to maintain current staff sizes, up by 6.6 points. Only 6.9% plan decreases.

Is your foodservice operation or product eco-friendly? Then enter it in the Foodservice Consultants Society International’s annual Green Award competition. The award recognizes an innovative environmental operation or product that has improved the environmental standards and conditions of the operation or the industry as a whole. Deadline is June 1. For more info, call FCSI at 502-583-3783.

A new report from the U.S. General Accounting Office finds that federal oversight of seafood does not sufficiently protect consumers. The report noted several weaknesses in the FDA’s domestic and imported seafood programs including the agency’s ability to prevent unsafe seafood from reaching consumers. For a free copy of this report (GAO-01-204), call 202-512-6000 or log onto http://www.gao.gov/fraudnet/fraudnet.htm.

Sodexho Marriott Services, Inc. has appointed Ruth Sandoval vice president, Women/Minority Business Enterprise. She will be responsible for developing and maintaining alliances and partnerships with women and minority-owned businesses and will direct the development and implementation of their strategic plan for women and minority business enterprises. Prior to joining the company, Sandoval was deputy director of the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Michael E. Hurst, FMP, has been honored with the first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Restaurant Association. The award, to be presented annually, will be named after Hurst, who owns the 15th Street Fisheries Restaurant in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. He is a director of the NRA and past president. Hurst is also a professor emeritus at Florida Int’l Univ. and a trustee of the CIA.

Debi Benedetti, former vice president-administration for Bon Appetit Management Company, will lead a new set of management courses to be taught at The Culinary Institute. The new prochef seminars are designed exclusively for executive and senior-level chefs and combine upper level management and culinary education. Courses will be held at the CIA’s main campus and at its Greystone branch in California. Benedetti is a principal of the consulting firm KitchenSync.

The National Restaurant Association is celebrating a major ­ victory now that the U.S. Congress has rejected the recently implemented OSHA ergonomics regulation on work place safety. The NRA called the bill “an extremely costly, one-size-fits-all ergonomics standard” that would have been “absolutely disastrous for the nation’s restaurant industry.” For more info, click on www.restaurant.org.

A bill that would restrict schools from releasing information of students to marketers unless they first get parents’ permission has been introduced by Sen Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) as an attachment to the Bush Administration’s education bill. It is opposed by the Association of National Advertisers.

The Society for Foodservice Management has relaunched its website, www.sfm-online.org . The new site features an interactive bulletin board, association news and more.

Sodexho Marriott Services has been awarded two contracts to provide food services at all U.S. Marine Corps. Mess halls in the continental U.S. The contracts run for up to 8 years and could be worth more than $850 million over that time period.