My name is Yelena Tubich Bajc, a Sodexo Dietetic Distance Intern in the Los Angeles area and a Spring 2018 cohort. I just finished my Food Service rotation and my Wellness rotation at RAND corporation, a nonprofit institution that offers research and analysis services.
First, I was not quite sure whether Food Service Management would be truly for me. However, my uncertainty was dissipated after one week into my rotation and here is why. Sodexo is considered a fee account for RAND, which means that the client pays for Sodexo to be a part of the RAND services and it is a not profit/loss account. Usually there are two budgets, the client’s budget and Sodexo’s budget. Sodexo Main Street Café is located on the second floor in the highly secure building and provides a variety of food options including a mindful menu as well as catering services. The food is available only to RAND and Sodexo employees and their guests. For example, just to name a few, events like “Safety in a World of Driverless Cars”, “Millennials and National Security” or “Security 2040: The Promise and Perils of AI, 3D Printing, and Speed” are held at the RAND. During those events, receptions, parties, lunches and dinners are meticulously organized by multiple teams. Executive Chef, Scott Yada, deserves a lot of credit for executing California Haute Cuisine but a strong team effort is also necessary for all around success. Learning about Food Service Management and catering as well as the importance of being an integral part of the team really opened my eyes and generated in me a strong interest for targeting positions in that domain.
My second rotation, which is my concentration in Wellness, I also did at the RAND. This time I teamed up with RAND Healthy Living Local Santa Monica and started a new wellness initiative at RAND. The pilot series focused on versatile nutrition topics, food demos, educational material, and healthy as well as easy to make home recipes. Those events we called Wellness Wednesday. My goal was to involve as many people as possible through unofficial informative discussion of their food preference and diets and sharing of nutritional values, health benefits and recipes of the varieties of food I was presenting on Wellness Wednesdays. Overall great experience! People liked it, especially the free samples! Who doesn’t like free samples! One of my favorite events was “I love chia” where I set up a table in the Main Street Café area demonstrating how to prepare chia pudding with no added sugar by layering chia pudding, a mix of dates and dark chocolate and topping it with blueberries and blackberries. Yum! I also created a flyer with health benefits of chia, its use, its nutritional facts and I passed out chia pudding recipes to the RAND employees. They had an option of free tasting and to purchase a serving for $4.99 if they liked it. However, in my mind the greatest success came the next couple of days when people stopped me to share their excitement of making their own chia pudding at home and bringing it to work!
So the take-home message here is to have a lot of fun, open your mind to new experiences and possibilities, create strong relationships with the Sodexo team and your preceptors, and do the best you can because people believe in you!
First, I was not quite sure whether Food Service Management would be truly for me. However, my uncertainty was dissipated after one week into my rotation and here is why. Sodexo is considered a fee account for RAND, which means that the client pays for Sodexo to be a part of the RAND services and it is a not profit/loss account. Usually there are two budgets, the client’s budget and Sodexo’s budget. Sodexo Main Street Café is located on the second floor in the highly secure building and provides a variety of food options including a mindful menu as well as catering services. The food is available only to RAND and Sodexo employees and their guests. For example, just to name a few, events like “Safety in a World of Driverless Cars”, “Millennials and National Security” or “Security 2040: The Promise and Perils of AI, 3D Printing, and Speed” are held at the RAND. During those events, receptions, parties, lunches and dinners are meticulously organized by multiple teams. Executive Chef, Scott Yada, deserves a lot of credit for executing California Haute Cuisine but a strong team effort is also necessary for all around success. Learning about Food Service Management and catering as well as the importance of being an integral part of the team really opened my eyes and generated in me a strong interest for targeting positions in that domain.
My second rotation, which is my concentration in Wellness, I also did at the RAND. This time I teamed up with RAND Healthy Living Local Santa Monica and started a new wellness initiative at RAND. The pilot series focused on versatile nutrition topics, food demos, educational material, and healthy as well as easy to make home recipes. Those events we called Wellness Wednesday. My goal was to involve as many people as possible through unofficial informative discussion of their food preference and diets and sharing of nutritional values, health benefits and recipes of the varieties of food I was presenting on Wellness Wednesdays. Overall great experience! People liked it, especially the free samples! Who doesn’t like free samples! One of my favorite events was “I love chia” where I set up a table in the Main Street Café area demonstrating how to prepare chia pudding with no added sugar by layering chia pudding, a mix of dates and dark chocolate and topping it with blueberries and blackberries. Yum! I also created a flyer with health benefits of chia, its use, its nutritional facts and I passed out chia pudding recipes to the RAND employees. They had an option of free tasting and to purchase a serving for $4.99 if they liked it. However, in my mind the greatest success came the next couple of days when people stopped me to share their excitement of making their own chia pudding at home and bringing it to work!
So the take-home message here is to have a lot of fun, open your mind to new experiences and possibilities, create strong relationships with the Sodexo team and your preceptors, and do the best you can because people believe in you!
