Culinary Training

Culinary training is an ongoing process at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, an Aramark account in New Orleans. With several different restaurants and a complex catering operation generating for millions of dollars in sales, it has to be.

"We are in training mode pretty much all the time here," says executive chef Leon West, who helped open the facility—one of the largest convention centers in the South—19 years ago. "Because every menu changes, we don't have much chance to practice. We have to get it right the first time."

Meal standards: With multiple conventions booked during the busy fall and spring seasons, some of them for four or five days at a time, everything comes down to standards. Each meal is fully documented in an event order, which functions as the game plan that the crew works from. "Managers are given specs and details of kitchen operation from the standards that are in place," explains West, a 25-year Aramark veteran. "They in turn pass the information to subordinates with the amount of direction and detail needed depending on the skill level of the employees."

Approximately 50 employees are kept busy in the convention center's two kitchens, each with its own sous chef and a full prep area and production line. The sous chefs are involved in initial client meetings and in putting together the event orders for each function, which detail not just the menu, but also a timetable and complete instructions for producing each catering—from how many celery sticks to cut for a vegetable display, to which condiments are needed to set up for a reception.

So it is written: "We have a plan for each and every meal, and if something happened to the chef, the next-in-command could follow the plan," says West. "That event order is the bible."

For this reason, West looks for employees who already have some foodservice experience—preferably in hotels or restaurants—recruiting actively from the local community and interviewing all potential employees himself. "Too much experience isn't good, because we want them to do things our way, but they need to know the ropes," he says.

Initial training includes basic orientation followed by an intensive period where new hires are paired with team leaders and other employees who are on their way up in the organization. These production lessons are reinforced through videos, manuals, literature and signage in the kitchen. There are also standardized recipes, complete with digital photos that show plate presentation, for a multitude of popular menu items, including local specialties such as gumbo and seafood cream sauce for pasta.

Step-by-step: For instance, the specs for prepping an antipasto salad for 50 include a photo, ingredients for all the components, and a step-by-step method: Mix the Italian dressing and marinate the mushrooms for two hours; roast the peppers and julienne; stack and cut capocollo, mortadella, provolone and other deli items. The directions then go on to spell out placement on the tray in complete detail, so that salami is always in the lower left-hand corner, capocollo in the upper right. If someone can read, they can put the salad together. (The specs also include complete nutritional information, including dietary exchanges.

Because most of the event menus are custom-designed, however, there is a detailed process of menu testing and tasting. Not surprisingly, this has become another training tool.

"If new menu items are implemented they are first tested in small batches, then sized up to the number of portions," explains the chef. "During the testing process, we're looking carefully at all the elements, including the ingredients, prep method, cooking, plate or buffet presentation, and holding. All of the recipes can then be standardized, with both the food items and procedure in recipe format." The staff can then work from that recipe fact sheet, which always includes a picture.

Clear the way: The first and most important step, says West, is to get organized, and know how to break every event down into its individual steps. "You have to put together that game plan and go over it with everyone on the team. Keep things simple and clear, so they can be executed."

Then you need to supervise. "Managers have to be conscious of the skill levels of their employees," he says. "They do this by checking the progress of various products and projects, and with our guidelines it's easy to see if an employee is doing something correctly by checking the product against the recipe fact sheet.

"Once an employee has shown a certain level of skill and responsibility they can be empowered and moved to the next level," he adds. "That helps us with retention, too. We expect some people to take their skills and move on, but we have employees here who have been with us for 10 or 12 years, because they still have an opportunity to learn."