In this episode, we will find out the details of the Hotel, Restaurant, and Tourism Management program and the Culinary Arts program.
Achieve More with Athens Tech, the official podcast of Athens Technical College.
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S1: Welcome to achieve more with Athens Tech, the official podcast of Athens Technical College. This is where you'll discover how the programs and Athens tech can connect you with in-demand and high paying careers. Today, we're going to look at hotel, restaurant and tourism management and culinary arts.
S2: If you don't know what you want to do with your life but you love people, hospitality is for you.
S3: If you work for the right place, work for the right people, you will make you make a lot of money.
S4: You can always get a job anywhere as a cook or even a head chef, or even create your own bakery or your own restaurant. And so it will never hurt you to have that experience.
S1: People will forget what you said, forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Maya Angelou. In today's episode, we're going to talk to a graduate of the hotel, restaurant and tourism management program.
S3: My name's Aaron Mubarak. I am currently assistant manager of food and beverage operations at the Ritz-Carlton, Reynolds Lake Oconee in Greensboro, Georgia.
S1: We'll talk to a culinary arts student.
S4: I'm Morgan Pulse. I'm a mother of two. I've been married for. We'll see. We're going on seven years now. I'm currently going to Athens, Turkey. I started out as an accounting major. I've finished all my Céline classes and then switched over to the Culinary and Baking Program, and I am currently in that at the moment. And I'm possibly throwing the idea round of graduating this year with the accounting and then coming back to finish up the culinary and then eventually starting my own bakery.
S1: And we'll hear a story of triumph, of overcoming adversity to achieve a lot more.
S2: I come from a background where I grew up on the west side of Chicago, and so I didn't know if I would make it. And when I say I'd make make it. It was pretty violent back then in the eighties.
S1: Batman is very important to these programs. I'll let him introduce himself.
S2: My name is Dr. Alfonzo Boyd. I'm the program chair for Culinary Arts, as well as hotel, restaurant and tourism management. And if you put both of those together, I cover anything in hospitality, so that could be anywhere from owning your own business. You could own your own travel agency, your own restaurant. You can work in these empty seat entities. It could be hotels, convention and visitors bureaus as well as event planning. So anything dealing with putting on events for the general public, I, I would say that we're covered, you know, so anything that's disposable income that people love to do so and sometimes people forget what those are, even sports arenas like, it's endless because people love having a good time, right? So when we cover all those, there is I come from a background where I grew up on the west side of Chicago, and so I didn't know if I would make it. And when I say I'd make make it, it was pretty violent back then in the eighties. So for a young black person to like graduate from sixth grade, eighth grade or high school was was pretty slim because crime was just so bad. It was is more than likely you were going to join a gang or end up dead somewhere. And so for me to make it out of that and achieve everything I've done in my life, I look for more individuals like me or anyone who just wants to do more with their lives. And I get a lot of students who are just like by time they come to me, they're just kind of like lost and beaten down. And I encourage them that they can achieve more. You can earn your degree. You can have a better life. You know, I have one student graduate, and now she works for a pretty prestigious hotel making pretty good money. You know, she never thought that she would make them, you know, for her life. And so I just want to be able to give people make their dream a reality. That's what I want to do.
S1: We'll hear more from Dr. Bui about his background, qualifications and his journey in a bit. But first, that student he just mentioned, that's Aaron.
S3: My name is Aaron Brock. I am currently Assistant Manager of food and beverage operations at the Ritz Carlton, Reynolds Oconee in Greensboro, Georgia. I graduated from Athens Tech in May and started my job two weeks later. Already I. I had a job before I left, thanks to my professor. And that's about it. Been working really hard ever since. I learned a lot about the industry, perfecting my craft and just focusing on growing my career. I'm a nonexempt manager, so I have a salary, but if I work outside the means of that salary, I get compensated, meaning I make overtime and I work overtime every week. So my starting salary was 45 a year, 45,000 a year, which I was like, Oh my gosh, it's so amazing. But after overtime, I, I would imagine I'll probably make a lot closer to 60,000 a year. So it's definitely it can be very lucrative, but a lot of people don't don't really want management and want to stay in more like a typical position, like a bartender or server and servers at my and my property. They they make a lot of money. They easily make more money than I do. Just because it's expensive, we turntable so quickly, you can really make a lot of money. So a lot of people look at hospitality as kind of a industry. You don't really make a lot of money, but if you work for the right place, you work for the right people, you will make you will make a lot of money, especially if you're young, like I'm young, I'm not married, I don't have kids. This is a great amount of money for me. And I live very comfortably live by myself. I have my own house, but a lot of people live very, very comfortably working in hotels and working in restaurant management.
S1: What type of things do you need to know? What type of things do you learn in Athens Tech?
S3: I remember in one class, I think it had to have been business etiquette. Dr. Wilson, the professor, was teaching us things to say and things not to say. So like when? When a guest says thank you, the response is not no problem. You never say no problem. So every time I say it or I catch myself saying it like, stop, don't say it. Or Every time one of my employees says it, I want to say, I like you. Don't say that. It's my pleasure. It's absolutely. Of course, things like that. Stronger words. So we we were taught to to to use better verbiage. And I think that that's translated well into my career now, because I do work at a five star resort and I need to say the right thing. I can't just be casual.
S2: I think the one course there is and one thing that crosses over to even the culinary side is hospitality law. So not only do we teach legalities of it, we teach other things such as how to look for human trafficking. You know, what are liability issues for, let's say, someone doing something illegal in a guest room, in a hotel. So let's say someone is selling your paraphernalia or substances. Can you just go in their room? And so we teach how to properly handle these situations. Case in point, in one of the classes we teach, you know, privacy laws, and there's a scenario where we say, hey, what if a husband walks up to the front desk, shows a wedding picture and say, hey, my wife is staying here? I don't know which room can you give me a room key? Can't, you know, should you give them Urumqi? And then the answer would be no, because somebody could be fleeing from a situation where there was domestic violence and they're seeking safe refuge. So the next class, one of my students went through that exact scenario and she her mind was blown and she said, I never would have thought so. It actually happens quite often. And a coworker wound up giving the husband the key. And then they had a whole scenario where she had to be rushed to the hospital. And I don't know how that all turned out, but unfortunately, you know, there were some legal issues behind that repercussions because you gave the husband turnkey when you should now. So these are some of the things that we teach within the program that a lot of people may not even have thought of prior.
S3: It's it's it's common sense. But at the same time, you need to know. It's nice to see it all writing and see it'll all come together. It's my thing because I really like I know how to serve a table. I know how to talk to a guest. I know, I mean, I know back of house things. But for everything to come together and orchestrate in one class to really focus on a specific subject and take that and like, like roll with it like hospitality law study accounting for an office management back, house management, things like that. The classes are hyper focused on, on a specific thing. So. By the end of the semester. You're an expert on that. And so by the end of your entire course of study, you're an expert on everything. And you can do any career path and do anything, which I think is super cool. But it's, it's simple, but you still have to work hard, if that makes sense. Like you have to try.
S1: How about Morgan? She's studying culinary arts so she can tell us a little bit about what that entails.
S4: It's been awesome. They're very hands on. They're there to help. And so we go in. You're pretty much in the kitchen all day with Jamie. It's fun. It's a lot of people like, oh, all day class. No, but no. It's actually a lot of fun. We all have. We're small class, so we enjoy each other's. All the classmates time in the structure. He's there to help us and guide us to make sure that we're learning and knowing how to do things properly so. But no, every instructor that I've had so far, it's been wonderful and has really helped me learn and find my skills. With baking, there is a science to it. You have to do things in a certain order or else your cake may be flat or maybe dense and hard. So you have to do things in a certain order, in a certain way. And some people think, Oh, well, it's a cake. I can just toss it all in and mix it all up. We really can't. It's kind of like putting the cart before the horse. You have to figure out and learn the order.
S2: And that's probably the the the first thing that a lot of students in the culinary program don't know they need is, of course, safety and sanitation for safety. Sanitation, same thing with team. It basically it teaches you how to properly handle food so people don't become sick from food poisoning, how to cook food properly, how to store it. It could be simple things such as hand-washing techniques or complex things such as the internal cooking temperature of beef versus fish versus poultry, chicken products, how to store things, where to store. So it's so many things that they learn within the program. And just that course, it's like an eye opening course, like, whoa, this is this is serious. Like, yeah, you, you are responsible for people's lives.
S4: Coming out and say, it was my first time ever cooking in a commercial kitchen. I've always been a home baker. I've never used a commercial oven, anything commercial. So it was very nice to actually learn the different equipment and using as a commercial. Erin does cook differently than the actual home oven. Does it cook so normally a little hotter than home oven does. And so. Being able to use these different equipment and machinery and learning all these different things. As far as like did you learn how to do safety in a commercial kitchen, which is a very big, important thing because you could save someone's life by not having a disease from washing your hands, washing dishes properly and everything like that. So it's neat to learn these different things. So if you ever need to go work in a kitchen or something, you do have all those in the background. But then we also when we make bread. Jeff Ponder over at the pizza oven, which is really cool because I've never seen it or used one before, so it was neat to be able to do that. And then they do have like a laminate or to make Christians and puff pastry and different things like that, which is neat because not many people in their life will ever get to use one. And so because doing it by hand is not fun, it is not fun at all to roll cold the cold butter into, though it's hard. Even some of the strong guys had a hard time with it, but just the different pieces of equipment is just really neat because things you would you see, you're like, Oh wow, I didn't know they did that or me, I didn't know they made those. And so it's a very neat experience.
S2: No one really teaches you how to cook properly, right? Like you learn how to cook at home. But did anyone teach you? Oh, food needs to be done to a certain temperature. What's the degree of done this? You know why it's safe to eat a rare steak? These are things that no one teaches at home. So once again, in the course, they're just their minds are just blown and it's always great. I love that course. It's one of my favorites.
S1: If you're considering the hotel restaurant in Tourism Management or culinary arts program at Athens Technical College, you're going to be learning from very experienced people. Dr. Pou His knowledge is extensive.
S2: Well, I started off probably in high school was my first job in hospitality. I worked at a piece of place. Auto Pizza in Chicago was a great place. And the guy there in the owner and I developed a wonderful report to the point where I was opening the place on Sunday and I'm just in high school. I'm not realize I'm developing actual life skill sets then and now. I'm just trying to get my little paycheck in and take home free pizzas. And so from there I went off to college and I became a server and once I was doing my masters, I was almost done my masters. And now when I got done with my bachelor's, I actually worked for a convention and visitors bureau. So that's one area of hospitality. And so we were put on and then some things in nature and help direct people, whether it was weddings or government events just and then from there back to serving. And they asked me to be a manager, so I moved Chicago as a manager, move back to Chicago after college. And I was a manager for Longhorn Steakhouse, Montana Grill, as well as Cheddar's Casual Cafe manager, if you're familiar, any of those. But I work for all three of those concepts. That is my I took a break to finish my dissertation. That's why I worked as a overnight concierge. That was a crazy experience. I had some you know, the one thing by working overnight is very quiet until it isn't so is one or two extremes. You're going to have a crazy night or a very quiet night. And so to me, most of them were quiet nights. And then I'm in between. I work for a Virgin America, so I work for airlines. I kind of work all over the place in hospitality. And it wasn't until probably I actually became program hear someone say, Oh, you have a really expensive career in hospitality that you built. And I do. I do have an extensive career. I didn't do that great was probably my my most interesting experience when I worked over in China for four and a half years. And so I was a business professor and while living over there, I did a lot of restaurant consulting. And so that was a pretty cool experience. I did a little bit of hotel consulting on the side, but mainly was restaurants. So I was able to help teach serving practices, whether front of house or back in the house. And even though I'm grading a kitchen back in the house for some reason, it just took me longer to get the rent from the house. But once I got it out, you couldn't stop me. So that's kind of my, my all around overall, everywhere experience and in hospitality.
S4: I grew up, I've always loved sweets. That's me. But my grandmother, she was a well-loved woman in the community who loved to bake. Everybody loved her cakes. Everybody loved her parts. And over the years she has taught me about baking and everything on that. I started looking into the culinary program because I did love to bake and so I did want to just do a little something, I guess to say I wanted to spruce myself up to fine tune my abilities. So I wanted to learn just a little bit more where you can't really teach yourself more to the breads, the pastries and different things like that. And so that was my main goal as to going into the culinary program. Is to learn things that I've never been told. And so and that's why I'm in it now, is to just get that on to to help better myself and then also to better my bakery.
S3: App tech has given me a lot of obviously number one opportunity my employment but you know I have a resume and it says I went to Athens Tech. I can use my professor as a reference a job reference. There's so much to do and and in life and there's just a lot that you can do and a lot that I want to do. So I achieving more would be is my only option. I'm going to achieve everything I want to everything in life that I'm going to get. I'm going to get. You have to have drive and power and and and really want to be successful. And you will.
S2: If you don't know what you want to do with your life, but you love people. Hospitality is for you and if it's not, will direct you in the right direction. But I'm pretty sure it's for you. So if you love people, we're definitely the program for you. Sign up. We'll get you in culinary or hotel, restaurant tourism minister and also go after your dreams. You know, don't let anyone tell you that you can achieve because you can you can achieve whatever you want to in life. I promise you you can.
S1: Thanks for listening. To Achieve More with Athens Tag, the official podcast of Athens Technical College. For more information, visit Athens Tech Dot Edu.
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