Novem­ber has been a very busy month and in prepa­ra­tion for the hol­i­days our focus for the meet­ing was alco­hol aware­ness. If I’ve lost you already, I under­stand. We know drink­ing and dri­ving do not mix, .08 is the blood alco­hol level, insur­ance goes up, peo­ple have died yet peo­ple still drink and drive. What made our meet­ing dif­fer­ent is hear­ing about two reg­u­lar guys hav­ing just enough in their sys­tem to push them over the legal limit and into Tent City.

Ari­zona has the tough­est DUI plenty’s in the coun­try and in Guilty Con­tents, David Ulysses Glute JR shares the real­ity of what that means and what a trip to Tent City was really like. David met Chris Pawlowski dur­ing this time and they are work­ing together to get the word out focus­ing on shar­ing infor­ma­tion about their expe­ri­ence. Chris shared with us infor­ma­tion about pre­ven­tion to the process of the real­ity of a DUI in Arizona.

Jackie Bell with Dis­cov­ery Detec­tive Acad­emy also gave a pre­sen­ta­tion about alco­hol aware­ness focus­ing on Ari­zona laws, liquor train­ing for restau­rant staff and liquor law cer­ti­fi­ca­tions. With the infor­ma­tion Jackie and Chris shared with us helped us all pre­pare for this hol­i­day season.

Another topic of the night was “Check Yes for Chimi”; Macayo’s run for Ari­zona State Food. Macayo’s founder, Woody John­son cre­ated the Chimichanga in 1946 and much debate has sur­rounded the birth of the Chimichanga. Macayo’s is claim­ing it and has been serv­ing Chimichanga’s ever since that faith­ful day when he acci­dently dropped a bur­rito in the fryer. What a great mar­ket­ing cam­paign and menu item.

The Ari­zona FCCLA held their Fall Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence at the Phoenix Con­ven­tion Cen­ter where 1,500 stu­dents and their teach­ers had an oppor­tu­nity to talk with ven­dors and to learn more about the many mov­ing parts of food­ser­vice. There are a lot of hun­gry minds out there search­ing for infor­ma­tion and sup­port; I look for­ward to help make connection.

I attend the Ari­zona Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion Fam­ily and Con­sumer Sci­ences Advi­sory Com­mit­tee meet­ing to learn more about Ari­zona Career & Tech­ni­cal Edu­ca­tion and how the can help sup­port these efforts.

Women chefs through­out Ari­zona shared their tal­ents at the 2011 Get­ting Our Just Desserts to ben­e­fit C-CAP, Careers through Culi­nary Arts Pro­gram which sup­ports high schools culi­nary stu­dents. Pro­ceeds from this event will fund schol­ar­ships for high school stu­dents. Amaz­ing tal­ent, infor­ma­tive demon­stra­tions and a silent auc­tion pro­vided a busy and fla­vor­ful after­noon. A job well done by all.

I also attended social con­fer­ences; Pod­Camp (chang­ing to Tech Phoenix in 2012) at the of Advance Tech­nol­ogy and Social Media AZ con­fer­ence at the Mad Hat­ter The­ater. Phoenix has a very strong tech­nol­ogy com­mu­nity and always good to brush up on social skills. One tip I’d like to share is in ref­er­ence food pho­tog­ra­phy. Make sure the pic­ture you’re tak­ing to post online reflects the hard work and pride a chef puts into their work; watch the light­ing, take close up’s and make the pic­ture look nice.

Our new board mem­bers were announced for 2012 & 2013 and would like to thank those who have served in 2011 while wel­com­ing our new mem­bers at the same time. There is no meet­ing sched­uled for Decem­ber how­ever the board will be meet­ing on Decem­ber 6 to dis­cuss our plans for 2012–2013.

Wish­ing you all a happy and healthy hol­i­day season.

madonna@restaurantmarketingpartners.com
@restaurantmkt
voice 602.492.8419