By Jake Dowling, Icon intern
The Icon intern recently talked with Patricia Arendorf, Food Service Coordinator at Maple Crest Senior Living Village, and with Andre Hawks, Food Service Director at Mennonite Memorial Home. We've combined these two interviews into one story.
PATRICIA ARENDORF
Eight years since graduating from college and working various culinary jogs, Patricia Arendorf has finally found what she has always intended to do.
Arendorf, a native of Findlay, has joined the Maple Crest Senior Living food service staff in Bluffton. She is the Food Service Coordinator at Maple Crest.
"I started at Maple Crest at the end of March this year," she said. "There is a set breakfast offered to the assisted living residents and I plan menus for lunch and dinner. I love every minute of my job."
It has been a long journey that has helped her get to where she is today.
"My culinary background started when I took two years of food service vocational program at Findlay High School," Arendorf said. "It was at that time that I realized I had a real passion for cooking and from there I enrolled at Johnson & Wales University."
Johnson & Wales, a well-known prominent culinary arts college in Providence, R.I., has had graduates such as Chef Emeril Lagasse.
Before attending college, she worked as a line cook at the Bistro on Main in Findlay.
"Right out of high school in 2001 I was offered a job at the Bistro on Main as a grill and saut? cook until I started college in February 2002," she said. "That was a great experience for me to learn a lot from the chef there before I even started college."
Arendorf received her associate degree in culinary arts in 2004 from Johnson & Wales.
"After college, I had various jobs in the east coast, such as food service manager for a conference center in Connecticut and a catering cook at a catering facility in Rhode island," she said.
A few years later, she returned home to Findlay where she worked as a sous chef, someone who is second in command and direct assistant to the chef, through Sodexho at Marathon Oil Co., and then a position opened at Birchaven Village.
"My first experience cooking for seniors started when I got a job as a cook at Birchaven in Findlay," she said. "I was there for three and a-half years before becoming Food Service Coordinator at Maple Crest.
Arendorf typically cooks breakfast and lunch, but there are even some days where she works other hours, depending upon what is on the agenda for that day, including administrative responsibilities.
Arendorf does more than just cook. She plans the menus each week and at the beginning of the week, passes out the menus to the residents before lunch. Residents then choose what they want to eat each day of that week.
"This gives us an accurate number so we know how much to prepare for that meal," she said. "I can plan menus more based on what I think the residents will enjoy eating not so much based on restricted dietary needs."
The difference with working at Maple Crest is her leadership role, but she still gets to do what she has always wanted to do: cook.
"Even though it is always from home, I am very glad that I made this decision," she said. "Everything that I have done in the past has lead me here to where I am today."
ANDRE HAWKS
After ordering his coffee and finding a seat at Bigby's Coffee Shop in Findlay, Andre Hawks, food service director for the Mennonite Home Communities of Ohio, sits back and reflects on long days like today.
While thinking back, long days is nothing new to Hawks as it has been a constant theme over the course of his life working in food service.
His first job was at a ski resort in West Virginia where he obtained his first extended experience in the food service field. Later, he worked at Red Lobster and eventually owned a steak and seafood restaurant for a couple years before he took his current position at Mennonite Memorial Home, Bluffton.
"I grew up in a family that owned a nightclub and a restaurant," Hawks said. "And whenever I tried to separate myself from that, I found myself coming right back in that direction."
Since the age of nine, Hawks began washing dishes and busing tables. In college, he oftentimes helped run his family's business.
Hawks returned home to Illinois and bought his own business. It was a lifelong dream that had finally come true.
"I owned a restaurant called Andre's in De Quoin, Ill.," Hawks said. "It was a fine dining steak and seafood restaurant where I planned the menu; sometimes I became the staff in the kitchen and other times I entertained our guests. Being there, I was able to see both inside and outside the kitchen."
"When my business closed, my friend came to me and told me, 'how many people get to live their own dream?'" Hawks said. "Not many and I am thankful that I was able to."
After eight years working for the US Food Service, Hawks applied for the food service director position at the Mennonite Memorial Home.
"I was looking for a position instead of a job when I applied," Hawks said. "Being somewhere that is respected by the community is important to me."
Hawks, who started working at the Mennonite Memorial Home two months ago, says he plans to finish his career here as he now looks into the future.
Hawks said. "It is close enough to my home in Findlay, so the drive is not long and Bluffton is just a great town."
At the Mennonite Memorial Home, Hawks does much of what he has always done: Manages the kitchen, plans menus, takes care of employees, gets the right food supplies and pays the bills.
"I have learned over the years that you have to be able to coach and train your staff and if you do not take the time to help your staff, then you make your own life miserable," Hawks said. "I think I have brought a sense to my workers that they can come to me when they have a problem. When I was younger I was a terrible communicator, but you learn that sometimes you need to sit back and listen to what the issue is."
"In the end, it is always about the customers, or in this case, the MMH residents," Hawks expressed with a look of warmth and satisfaction.
"And I tell them that, too. If they don't like the meat or if the soup isn't the right temperature, I want to know. For some people, food is all they have to look forward to. I want food to be their best experience."
