by August Kissel, Web Editor

Gourmet Dining is an essential piece to the Manhattan College experience. They serve the student body for breakfast, lunch and dinner and even celebrate holidays with us. Gourmet Dining is now expanding their services to include an internship program open to all students who are interested in the world of food service.

“It’s a way for students to get real life experience in the food service and hospitality industry where they can use that experience in whatever their industry of emphasis is … but I feel that being in food service teaches you a lot of life lessons and skills, how to build character, a lot of people say that it’s really important to work and feel at least once in your life because of that. To me, I love it. I want to give that opportunity to college students to give it a try, and see if they like it,” said Nick Valinotti, Resident District Manager of Gourmet Dining.

The program has three available positions. The first position is a Catering and Event Planning Internship, where the intern will have the opportunity to work directly with catering clients to coordinate the details of their events including but not limited to menu selections, tastings, linen rental, set up and floral design. This student intern should be interested in planning and organizing events, be confident in building relationships and have excellent written and verbal communication skills.

The next position is the Marketing Internship. This role involves research to understand the needs of the target market, planning and brainstorming, promotions and advertising through various platforms, and implementation.

Gourmet Dining is looking for students who are knowledgeable of social media platforms and graphic design programming and encourage prior marketing related experience.

The last available position is Community Wellness Intern, which includes work in areas such as food service operations, nutrient analysis, marketing and promoting of health foods, nutrient education campaigns, menu planning, food safety, planning and implementation of innovation and client relationship skills. The applicant should be enrolled in a nutrition, dietetics or food service related field, along with a GPA above 3.25.

“There’s no real hospitality major here, so anyone is welcome to apply. The Community and Wellness position would be really geared towards science majors that want to become a dietitian or want to go into you know, a PA or other Pre-Med positions like that, having a nutrition background may be beneficial. But outside of that, you know, whoever would like the opportunity is more than welcome to join,” added Valinotti.

“If they have an interest in it, that would be super helpful over just hiring someone just to hire them so that it could build their resume. It would also help us out too, because it just helps to educate someone who’s also interested, as opposed to not so especially for community and wellness… it’s open to everybody. But you know, the more interest they have in marketing, catering, going into food service, and wellness, then that would be super helpful for us as well,” added Registered Dietitian & Sports Nutritionist Sara De Luca.

The goal of this program is to bridge the gap between Gourmet Dining and the student population on campus.

“I just thought that it would be a really interesting way to enhance the program and make it more of a community, by bridging the gap between the food service in the college and the students. We interact with the students every day upstairs in Locke’s and a lot in Kelly but I thought it’d be nice to have some of the students be part of the team,” said Valinotti.

This program is open to students with junior and senior level credit hour minimums. The positions are paid $15 an hour and will require about 10 hours a week depending on the position. The job descriptions and applications will be available on Jan. 15 and will close on Feb 1. The application process will be online and there will be interviews on campus to narrow down the selection process.

If you are interested in the position or have any questions, reach out to Nick Valinotti and Sara De Luca.