Meeting News - August 11, 2008 - (Page 12)

Chef Talk From Palm Beach to Beijing: Olympics’ Main Dining Director By Emily Carrus For Jennifer McCrary, general manager of food and beverage for the Palm Beach County Convention Center, feeding thousands of people is no sweat. So, it was no surprise McCrary was tapped to serve as main dining director at the 2008 Beijing Olympics by Aramark, her employer at the convention center and the supplier of all catering services in the Olympic villages. McCrary will see to it that all Olympic and Paralympic athletes, coaches, ofﬁcials, media, and support personnel are properly and efﬁciently fed in a dining room that will seat 6,000 and be in operation 24 hours a day for 60 days. Aramark expects that by the end of the games, there will have been more than 3.5 million meals served, comprising of 130 tons of meat, 93,000 pounds of seafood, 20 million servings of rice, 936,000 bananas, and 16,000 pounds of tofu. Though much of the Beijing food and beverage team has been on site for two years, McCrary just landed in June. She has been working overtime to ready her team for the arrival of 65,000 diners but found time to talk with MeetingNews about her Olympic-sized responsibility. Q A What attracted you to the position? I have been interested in going to the Olympics with Aramark for several years, and I was very interested in these Olympics because I have not been to China. I was willing to go to the Olympics in any role; I just wanted to be part of the experience. I am glad that my knowledge allowed me to go in at a senior leadership role—but I was not going to be picky. discerning tastes and demand that even the smallest detail be addressed. My goal here is to work toward creating a main dining room that is efﬁcient— given the volume of meals served—but still leaves a good and lasting impression. Q A What was your ﬁrst reaction when you were offered the position? “I am going to Beijing!”That was followed by, “This is going to be hard.” McCrary will follow on this Moroccan lemon chicken bowl served at Athens 2004. You’ll be feeding people from all over the world, who have different cravings and cuisines. Athletes, in Jennifer McCrary particular, are known to have GM, Food & Beverage very speciﬁc nutritional Palm Beach County CC needs. What advice can you You don’t speak the lanoffer meeting planners who guage and have never led are also trying to satisfy a an event of this proportion before. So what did wide variety of attendees? you focus on in your preparation before you headed to China? Our culinary team has worked for years to develop a crowd-pleasing and nutritious Regardless of the size of the project, it is about world menu (i.e., an array of international dishmanaging people. I have nearly 50 managers es, including Asian and Mediterranean styles) of reporting to me in main dining here. They have to 800 recipes that are on an eight-day rotation be successful for me to be successful. schedule. My most important task is to ensure that we have accurate nutritional signage on each Is there anything you’re facing now in the and every item. My advice to planners is that you will never last few weeks before the start of the please all of your guests, so do take risks; it tires games that you didn’t anticipate? me to see meeting planners always choosing Everything takes longer here; there is more chicken. But don’t go overboard. red tape. Things that I think will take five minutes to do might take all day, so I have had to Will you have a chance to enjoy the work on assumptions. But I think that is true of games as a spectator at all? getting used to any new place. Yes. The “Bird’s Nest,” which is the 100,000Did your experience as director of food seat [Beijing National Stadium], is an amazand beverage for the Palm Beach Conven- ing building, and I am looking forward to getting tion Center prepare you for this role? in there. I like swimming and gymnastics. Q Q A A Q A Q A Q A One of the reasons that I was selected was my experience with large volumes of people. For most people, walking into a main dining room is overwhelming. However, coming from a large convention center, it is much more familiar to me. My experience has taught me that it is not just about delivering food to the masses; clients have QWhat A ’s your favorite food in China? I love the dumplings here, and I had donkey and didn’t hate it. But my favorite discovery might be a local winery called Great Wall. Its Red Table Wine is only $3 and quite good—it is the “Two Buck Chuck” of China. r www.meetingnews.com 12 MeetingNews August 11, 2008 http://www.meetingnews.com

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Meeting News - August 11, 2008

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