Promotions by Committee

FoodService Director - What I Learned - Deb Girvin

FoodService Director - What I Learned - Deb Girvin

We have a few foodservice workers who are members of the diversity committee. They attend the meetings and act as our liaisons. We like to rotate these volunteers—every few years, we ask different people to do it to give everyone a chance. The group meets every month, so we know each month we’re going to get some kind of request or feedback from them.

First of all, they give us ideas. Our nurses from the Philippines suggested Philippine-themed meals for their holidays. We’ve also done similar things with Asian and Italian meals around different holidays, and some of our Indian doctors suggested Indian meals, and those have been popular. One time we did a food tasting with several different countries’ foods. Members of the diversity committee wore costumes from their countries and manned the food stations. Customers came to see the different clothing and learn about the employees.

The diversity committee is involved in all aspects of these events.  They offer décor and centerpieces, advise on recipes and help with promotions, distributing flyers and doing a lot of word-of mouth marketing. We always get more traffic when we partner with them because they usually offer something other than just food, like a game or contest. It doesn’t always have to do with ethnic foods either. For example, last month they did this ‘connections event’ where they set up a big board on the wall and you had to look for a connection with someone else – like how many kids you have, where you were born or whether you used to be in the military, Then you’d draw a line between your name and the other person’s name.

Our business will jump up during these promotions. On a small promotion it will jump up 10 – 15%. You know all of those people from the diversity committee are going to come because they helped plan it, so you get much more traffic and it’s easier. It gets more buzz around the building.

The spike in business lasts a little longer because you’ll get someone down there for a specific promotion and then they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, look, they have single mini-pizzas!’ I’ve had people come down and see things they like that they didn’t know we had. Then they’ll start coming here for that when they hadn’t been coming at all.”