The Fairmont Winnipeg

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The Fairmont Winnipeg
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Leaders at The Fairmont

• The Head Chef is Nicholas Beaumont. He was
  executive sous chef until 3 years ago when the
  Chef at that time left to pursue a job at The
  Fairmont Hotel in Lake Louise.
• The Executive sous chef is now Brian Thompson.
  He was just promoted a few months ago, when he
  was the restaurant chef. For a couple of months
  he had to do 2 jobs until another restaurant chef
  was found.
• The Restaurant Chef is now Kris Anderson who was
  Chef De Partie
• The Banquet Chef has been at the Fairmont for
  many years, his name is Robert Cecile and you can
  find him there everyday.
• The Chef who runs the Garde Manger section is
  Armando Garcia, he has also been there for many
  years.
• They are currently interviewing people to fill
  the Chef De Partie position.

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Orientation

• When you begin working at the Fairmont you must
  complete a 2 day orientation. You learn about
  all the policies and rules, and do a few
  activities. You get a history of all the
  Fairmont hotels around the world and a complete
  tour of the hotel. This year for the first time
  we got a free lunch in the Velvet Glove!

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Main Kitchen- Cold Side

• My first few weeks at The Fairmont I worked on
  the cold side, or Garde Manger section of The
  main kitchen.
• This section is responsible for all the
  sandwiches, salad dressings, fruit and vegetable
  trays, canapés, cheese trays, and any take out
  staff lunches that are ordered.
• Armando is in charge and he has four people who
  work with him. They are Leticia, Betty, Nestor,
  and Delfin.
• Everyday the Banquet Order forms are checked and
  everything the cold side has to make it written
  down 3 days in advance and crossed off as soon as
  it is done.
• Since there is so much to do everything must be
  separated into carts and labeled with the time
  and what room in the hotel the food is going to .
• When there are banquets where salad is served, it
  is plated on a conveyor belt and put onto carts
  that have special labels that must be signed by
  the Chef or Sous Chef after they check it. This
  is to ensure they are the right salads and there
  is the right number.
• Special salads or appetizers are kept and labeled
  separately.

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Main Kitchen- Hot Side

• There are 2 main cooks that work on the hot side
  besides the banquet chef, Robert. Sterling and
  Juan are responsible for all the hot food that
  goes to banquets and staff lunches.
• Usually they must start at 5 or 6 am because of
  breakfast. If there is a large breakfast
  everything should be prepped the night before and
  cooked in the morning. Usually breakfast was a
  buffet, otherwise more staff would have to come
  in early to help plate.
• After breakfast was done, prep had to be started
  on the staff lunch. Everyday the staff cantina
  had a soup, a salad, a sandwich (the cantina
  worker makes the salad and sandwiches) and entrée
  and a vegetarian entrée The first meal had to be
  ready by 1030 and another meal for 430. The
  cantina worker would come in and get everything
  and take care of it.
• When the staff lunches were done prep for that
  nights banquet had to be done. There was always
  a lot of stuff to do that was very time
  consuming. Chopping a mirepoix for a soup that
  had to feed 8oo people takes a long time and
  everyone would work together to get it done
  quickly.
• The hot side is responsible for making all the
  hot food, for example, soups, vegetables, sauces,
  vegetarian plates, special allergy plates, all
  food for banquets and all meat.

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Velvet Glove Restaurant

• There are many people that work in the glove
  restaurant. On the hot side there was Jeffery,
  Chris, Steve, Mike, Delfin and you could always
  see the Restaurant Chef Kris working the hot
  line.
• I only worked on the hot side a couple of times
  in the morning. You have to be fast, The Glove
  has a reputation for having there breakfast
  special out in a minute or less. The cooks that
  work there in the morning can do 100 breakfasts
  by themselves and still prep for the lunch and
  dinner cooks.
• The Velvet Glove does all the orders for the
  dining room, the lounge and In Room Dining, so it
  can be very busy. They also do the room gifts
  and the Amenities for Fairmont Gold. Fairmont
  Gold are the top floors in the hotel where the
  celebrities stay, or anyone who wants a nice room
  with a lot of benefits.
• The cold side in the glove makes all the salads,
  and plates the desserts as they are ordered.
  They also do the Fairmont Gold amenities and all
  the smoothies, milkshakes, protein shakes, fruit
  salads, sandwiches and some of the breakfast
  food.
• On the cold side there is Cora, Melissa, Delfin
  again, Nestor and Denise.

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The Pastry Shop

• Craig, Rod, Melissa, and Marisa worked in the
  pastry shop.
• They were responsible for all of the cookies,
  cakes, danishes, muffins, croissants, and all
  desserts for the Velvet glove and banquets.
• If there was a breakfast in the morning the first
  shift started at 430 am so that all the pastries
  could be baked off and put into baskets and ready
  to go usually by 6 or 630 am. The glove and In
  Room Dining always had freshly baked pastry in
  the morning.
• They also do all the desserts for the banquets.
  If a customer wanted a certain dessert for their
  event they had to make it work! They had to
  plate the desserts, put them on carts and label
  them.
• Every night the cold side of the glove sent down
  an order form telling the shop what they were low
  on and would need for the next day. This was
  done in the morning and the night person would
  pick up all the product when there shift
  started.

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Banquets

• Almost every night there was a dinner upstairs on
  the mezzanine floor. If you have never worked a
  banquet before it can be very confusing. But
  after a while it sort of becomes a routine.
• First thing first, all the food has to be prepped
  and ready to be plated.
• Next thing is plating the food and putting them
  into the hot boxes.
• We then have to pull the very heavy hot boxes to
  the elevator and bring them to the floor where
  the event is happening.
• An empty hot box is first, with the rest
  following and all having a table in between.
• If there is soup we dish the soup first and put
  them on large ovals and yell pick up! for the
  servers to take them away.
• Then if there is salad we use sauce guns to dress
  the salad as soon as the soup is out. The salads
  are usually on ovals already so as the servers
  are taking them out we have already begun to
  sauce the plates.
• There has to be four people at each table saucing
  the plates. The empty hot box is filled with the
  finished plates and then we move to the next
  table and so on until we are done.
• There is a special hot box for allergy plates and
  there are always vegetarian plates just in case.
• There is one person in charge of each hot box and
  when the servers are ready we put 8 plates on
  each oval for them to take out.
• After the entrée we tray the desserts and do any
  finishing touches, then all the wagons are taken
  back downstairs to be cleaned out so that we can
  go home!

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The Fairmont Rewards

• The Fairmont has a lot of rewards for the
  employees. There is an employee of the month. If
  you win you get a free dinner in the Velvet
  Glove, a free nights stay in the hotel and
  breakfast the next morning. They also have
  bravograms recognize people who go out of their
  way to help someone., or go above and beyond the
  call of duty. You can receive one from a
  co-worker or leader, and they can help you win
  employee of the month. There is also employee of
  the year and they win a free trip to a Fairmont
  Hotel somewhere in the world.

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Bravograms

• This is what the bravograms look like.

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End of Co-Op

• At the end of the co-op Marisa and I had to do a
  Black Box to show Chef what we had learned and
  how we had improved while working at The
  Fairmont. We did well, because of everything we
  saw and were taught while we worked there. It
  was a great place to do my first work experience
  and I would recommended getting experience in a
  large hotel, it is fast paced and it was a lot of
  fun.

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THE FAIRMONT

• Turning moments into memories for our guests