Day 1: My Goals and how it Starts

During my independent study, I chose to work at Schlotzsky's Deli. The first week of working there, I shadowed  multiple different people so I could understand the various view points of running a successful quick serve restaurant. A quick serve restaurant is a type of restaurant that is above the standards of fast food, but not quite an elegant place to have a fancy meal. It is a place to have a fast, semi-cheap, quality meal. For this independent study that I am doing, I had a few specific goals in mind while working at the restaurant. My SMART goals are learning the importance of: health standards as it pertains to food, food prep, ordering of supplies, the importance of not wasting food to increase profit, and the management/roles of employees. At the end of my independent study, the way I will have learned what it takes to keep your health standards up to code for cooking food, will be able to fully understand what the health standards are. I know a major example is expiration dates, so it is important to serve the older food first before it expires and has to be thrown away. To understand food preparation  I am simply going to have to experience it. Mr. Rukieh, the owner of Schlotzsky's has a schedule that he has been slowly developing over the years. This is based on his sales by  days of the week. This allows him to get a fairly accurate idea of what food needs to be prepared in the morning. This obviously is trial and error, so it will take time to figure out. The ordering of the supplies is similar to the food preparation. You always want to have enough material, but not waste any because it cuts into profit. This is something that will needs to be learned based on volume when opening a restaurant. Not wasting food is just simply going be putting a lot of effort into your job and weighing/measuring proper amounts of material being used. Lastly, the management of the employees is going to take up the whole independent study time, for a part of every day. This is because I will be shadowing someone new and understanding their role in the business and what may happen without it. My goals are all an important key to the success of opening a quick server restaurant to the public. I really wanted to work with Mr. Rukieh, because he is a owner that takes pride in his business and his customers. He shows up to work every day and performs all of the jobs the employees complete on a daily basis. By listening to his customers, you can easily see that he forms close relationships with them, making his restaurant a destination at sometime in their day.

On my first day, I shadowed the owner of a chain of Schlotzsky's Deli, Tony Rukieh. Mr. Rukieh went over my goals with me so he could help me achieve them, explained the important aspects that are necessary to run a successful quick serve restaurant, and showed me the ins and outs of Schlotzsky's Deli. When running any kind of restaurant, it is important to have dedicated workers who want to be part of a team. I learned that most people have their own position in Schlotzsky's, and they are very good at it, but Mr.Rukieh showed me the importance of making sure any employee can do any job that needs to be preformed at Schlotzsky's. In the morning when I arrived and finished reviewing my goals with Mr. Rukieh, we first made all of the catering orders that we had for the day. That included salads, sandwiches, getting drinks, dressing, silverware, and napkins. After the catering orders were finished, I started to help with the morning preparation of the food that would be needed throughout the day. People don't always come at the same time to eat, nor do the same number of people come to eat everyday. We had to make sure we had enough fresh food cut and ready to be made for the day. The baker had gotten in early, (like he does every morning), to bake fresh buns. When Mr. Rukieh and I arrived, we were then able to cut the rolls. We cut the different sizes of buns in half so they were ready for use. Next, we tool the fresh lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions and sliced them accordingly for making a sandwich. Next was cutting the fresh meat, there is a slicer that is used to cut the meat (you have to be 18 years or older to use it, so I did other work) and I then helped separate it into sizes. Once the prep work was done at around 11:00 a.m., other employees arrived and the doors were open for business. I was introduced to Nicki, the manager of Schlotzsky's, where she showed me the finishing process of sandwich making. With this knowledge, by the end of the day, I was able to put the correct portions, condiments, and toppings on all of the different sandwiches correctly so they could be served to customers. At the end of the day, I had taken in a lot of information and was happy that I chose to do this independent study, because I found it to be something that I look forward to getting up and doing every morning.

One thing that is done every Monday at Schlotzsky's is bringing in and putting away the weekly order of food products and items that are delivered. An order of all new food from meats to vegetables to cookie mix, to cups and lids arrive. Each item is checked off of a checklist of what was ordered one by one until there are none left. Each item is put away as it is checked, but is especially important to check food products. This is important, because you need to make sure that your supplier is giving you the correct amount (determined by weight) of food that you payed for and keeping a sharp eye out for expiration dates.