Food Safety crisis training, Training 'sweetness', Awards for young chefs, Using the Iron Chef phenomenon, Software training resource, 'Generation Tech', Using podcasting in teaching, Training to run meetings, Water usage calculations, Free Learning Styles quiz...

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Use a Food Safety Crisis for a quick training update

When a Food Safety Crisis happens, use the story for your training purposes - it's most effective if you do it while the story is hot. The poisoning sabotage of salad bars at two Brisbane Sizzler restaurants highlights the perils of buffets and inept handling by management. Show staff 'how you do it differently' and, of course, review the security of open food displays.

NRA's Food Safety Resources are great, and there are mountains of information on the web.

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Understanding sweet flavours

SuG2R Here's a great resource - the Periodic Table of Dessert that connects flavours together by taste similarity. Good for training and arguing!

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Awards for young chefs

Reading through the application for Lexus Young Chef of the Year had me thinking about the judging criteria for these events. Lexus have obviously selected this as an event to add cachet to their brand through the association with high-profile chefs. A high-res digital photograph must also be attached to the application.

I'm wondering how these events connect to strategies for encouraging more young people to enter the industry... Cynical? Moi?

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How useful is an Iron Chef Competition??

Whether it's organised by an event management class, run as an Organic Iron Chef event, or just doing some version of the US Iron Chef TV Show.

This is the way to create some excitement about cooking careers. Not as 'real' as the Young Chef Competition mentioned in the last post? I wonder...

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Almost unlimited software training online

Lynda.com is a great resource - software tutorial movies on everything from basic Word and Excel through to high-end graphics programmes. Just-in-time training available 24/7.

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'Generation Tech'

So there's a new social and educational division - between digital natives (under 25) and digital immigrants (over 25). And so much hospitality training is presented by the migrants talking to the natives.

See the article and the books by Marc Prensky, educational writer. Gotta keep up...

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Podcasting in teaching Here's a pile of good resources and examples from the University of Winsconsin on how to use podcasting in education.

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'How to run better meetings' training

Tedious meetings are a waste of time, but never meeting may mean important issues aren't addressed. I remember having to coach a head chef in 'a better way' than him speaking for 55 minutes in a 1-hour weekly team session.

Assume that the role of chairing is unfamiliar to most participants, and the only model they may have seen showed what to avoid. Also assume that the skills of summarising and concise minute taking are unknown, so demonstrate.

Here's a good 'what to do list' for better meetings - applies to training sessions also. Out of this could come your own 10 Do's & Don'ts for Meetings.

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Hotel water usage as a training exercise

Use water consumption and charges as a practical example for 'trade maths' and cost-control exercises. And it has a side-benefit of making staff aware of the real cost of business.

With hotels using up to 45 litres per customer (!) in this Sydney Water Study (full of useful facts and figures), students can compute costs, comparisons and how many 'swimming pools' are used each week (based on an average suburban pool holding 57,000 litres or 15,000 gallons).

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What's your learning style?

The BBC and the Open University have produced an interactive learning styles questionnaire, which you can play with. Free.