By Eve Persak
Student Dietetic Assocation
Every day hundreds of students, faculty members, campus workers and visitors pass through the turnstile to the Waves Café entrance. They search earnestly for a hearty meal to fuel the day’s activities, a cup of coffee to make up for lack of sleep, a light snack to tide them over through their next class or a tasty treat to satisfy their sweet tooth.
Their specific intentions are diverse, but they share a common goal: food.
While many frequent the food service facilities offered on campus, few pause in their day-to-day errands to consider the formidable task the men and women of Sodexho Marriott, whose job it is to meet the needs of such a large and hungry group.
Pepperdine wasn’t messing around when they contracted Sodexho Marriott to supervise all of its food service establishments on campus. Sodexho is a multi-billion dollar company, hailed as the world’s largest food service and facilities management corporation.
Just beyond the swinging doors at the rear of the Café, beyond the eyesight and earshot of their many customers, is a staff of close to 100 Sodexho employees dedicated to providing meals of the utmost quality.
From a food sanitation perspective, to say that the Waves Café’s performance is praiseworthy is a severe understatement.
In order to receive and maintain an “A” grading, a restaurant must repeatedly pass rigorous inspections by the Los Angeles County Health Department. Insufficient performance on these inspections results in an inferior grade or even closure of the facility. Despite the fact that more than 5,000 meals are served each day, the Waves Café has never received less than an “A.” Furthermore, on their most recent inspection, the Waves Café received a perfect score, an achievement rarely attained in the foodservice industry.
Every Waves Café employee is trained and supervised by professional executive chefs and some have more than two decades of culinary experience with Sodexho alone. Each chef carries his or her own calibrated thermometer to monitor the temperature to which each food item is cooked and to ensure that the proper holding temperature is maintained until it is served. Should the temperature drop only 1 degree Fahrenheit below the proper range, it is discarded immediately.
If an employee so much as touches his or her face during the meal preparation, they remove their rubber gloves and put on a fresh pair. Fresh produce is delivered daily and the same fruits and vegetables on display in the areas surrounding the various stations are used in the following day’s recipes.
Every ingredient in the salad bar and the fruit salad is cleaned, cut and prepared fresh by the kitchen staff, not shipped in prepackaged form. Every cookie, croissant, muffin and cake is baked in the Waves Café ovens before it is put out for purchase. Even the soups are made from scratch each morning to be ready for lunch.
Beyond its impeccable cleanliness and extraordinary culinary expertise, what is most impressive about the Waves Café is the pride each person on staff takes in their work and their sincere desire to meet the needs for each customer on campus.
They welcome student concerns when something needs attention and embrace the opportunity to improve upon their services. They encourage students to specify how they prefer their food cooked and to combine items from different stations to build each meal to their liking.
Attempting to please the palates of hundreds of students from all over the country, each homesick for his or her mother’s cooking, is no easy job, but Sodexo does it remarkably.
So, in the future, when ordering breakfast, lunch or dinner, consider for a moment all that went into the food on your plate. And if you’re happy with your meal, show the Sodexho workers gratitude for their efforts. They will definitely appreciate it.
September 18, 2003