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Hospitality and food go hand in hand at Points West Living

January 25th, 2021

In mid-January, hospitality and food service supervisors across Points West Living (and Connecting Care), gathered to talk about how to bring excellence to their communities. The annual Hospitality Conference is a place to catch up with colleagues, meet suppliers, brush up on techniques, and learn what’s new in the food industry. That’s what happened this year, except, rather than being together in a convention centre, everyone, including the hosts, took part sitting at their work or home computers.

Everyone together - online

The conference was organized by Jea Sandahan, Manager of Hospitality and Supply Chain Management. She, along with Brent Hughes, Food Service Supervisor at PWL Lac La Biche co-hosted the conference; Jea at home in Edmonton, and Brent at his work computer in Lac La Biche.

Fancy fruits and veggies

Spanning January 13-14, the conference heard from major vendors, like High Liner, Maple Leaf and Sysco. Of great interest was a presentation by PWL Prince Albert’s Food Service Supervisor, Wilbert Bolotano. Wilbert has worked on cruise ships for years and is gifted at carving garnishes. He demonstrated his skills sharing simple garnish presentation techniques. There were also presentations involving management, culture, working relationships, and safety.

“We recorded 184 participants of the conference coming from different parts of the province and outside of Alberta,” Jea says. “That’s the highest registered attendees for any Connecting Care virtual meeting.”

Great responses

“We received overwhelmingly positive feedback from attendees,” Jea says. Here are some of the comments she received:

  • I have been in several webinars or virtual conference, but the hospitality conference is so far the best, very unique and engaging
  • All topics are interesting; I can’t turn my head away from my screen as I do not want to miss anything
  • he most organized conference I had been in
  • (My team members) got a great deal from this conference. They are both fired up about so many things discussed and shown over the two days. It was difficult giving them the time to attend, but certainly well, well worth it.

Photo: (Top) Wilbert Bolotano demonstrates garnish carving, and (bottom), Co-hosts Brent Hughes and Jea Sandahan share the same digital background even though they are more than 200 kilometres apart.

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