Team UAMS Celebrates with Holiday Meal, Virtual Festivities
| The holiday spirit was alive and well as thousands of UAMS employees across the state enjoyed a holiday meal prepared by Nutrition Services staff.
The celebration stretched over five days – Dec. 8-12 — to allow Nutrition Services employees time to create more than 10,000 holiday meals, which were consumed by employees at the Regional Campuses, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, offsite clinics, Headstart locations and the Little Rock campus.
Workers in the UAMS Cafeteria slice turkey for the celebration. More than 10,500 turkey slices were served during the week’s festivities.Evan Lewis
Nutrition Services prepared 10,666 slices of ham, 10,560 slices of turkey, 6,400 fruit cups, 4,125 slices of cheesecake, 1,763 red velvet cupcakes, 1,372 slices of pecan pie, 7,000 rolls, 1,578 pounds of potatoes, 1,680 pounds of sweet potatoes 2,000 pounds of green beans and 600 gallons of gravy during the week, said Tonya Johnson, executive director of nutrition and hospitality services.
Food arrived in two refrigerated semi-trailers that were parked at the dock for seven days, Johnson said. “We started prepping food on Sunday at 4 a.m.,” she said. “The cooks worked daily from 3 a.m. to 7 p.m. – they came in early to work on the holiday meal because we still had to feed patients and prepare food for the retail outlets.”
“I really can’t praise my staff enough,” said Johnson. “Putting out the food for this celebration is an all hands on deck situation – none of this would be possible without all of our amazing Nutrition Services employees.”
Annabeth Johnson, special events and employee appreciation coordinator in Communications and Marketing, agreed.
“Nutrition Services employees have the hardest job each year with putting on this celebration, and they all do it with smiles on their faces and absolutely wonderful attitudes,” she said.
Chancellor Cam Patterson, M.D., MBA, chats with employees at the holiday celebration.Evan Lewis
This was Johnson’s second year to plan the festivities.
“The COVID-19 pandemic definitely introduced some complications into putting on this celebration, but I think everything went well,” she said. “We took additional precautions that required more prep work and volunteers, but we managed to give our employees a free meal, provide a fun virtual experience and get everyone through the line quickly.”
One major COVID-related change for the kitchen involved individually plating each meal headed to offsite locations, said Tonya Johnson. “We were concerned about the additional labor this might take, but it ended up working so much better. We had less food waste, and we were able to ensure every location got the right amount of food. We will definitely continue to plate individual meals in the future for delivery and pickup.”
Kendra Henderson, assistant business manager in UAMS Parking, said she really appreciated that the meals were dropped off at the Distribution Center. “People in my department don’t have time to get to the Cafeteria on our lunch breaks. The delivery option allows us to enjoy the meal too.”
On-campus employees also were asked to pick up their meals and head back to their offices. Tables in the Cafeteria were reserved for those employees who don’t have individual workspaces.
Volunteers load vehicles making off-campus food deliveries on Dec. 9.
This year, a “to go” meal option also was offered for clinical staff, Tonya Johnson said. “With nearly 1,900 requests, the response for this offering was higher than we expected, which resulted in some people having a longer wait than we’d like. We already have identified ways to streamline this process next year.”
About 70 volunteers helped put on the celebration, said Annabeth Johnson, noting they did such tasks as “individually packaging rolls, loading cars that came to pick up meals for their clinic, greeting employees and even working on the kitchen assembly line packing up food for clinical staff.”
“We couldn’t do this celebration without the help of these wonderful individuals,” she said, a sentiment shared by Tonya Johnson.
Another major change was the move to online festivities, Annabeth Johnson said.
The virtual experience took place over four days, thanks to the efforts of the UAMS AV team – Ernie Bailey, Jef Ferguson, James Arledge, Todd Hunt and Nick Harris, she said.
Mark Hagemeier, vice chancellor of institutional compliance, emceed the trivia contests, while Mark Williams, Ph.D., dean of the College of Public Health, hosted the live caroling event, which featured Janean Hardister and Melisa Clark.
An ugly mask contest on UAMS social media channels rounded out the festivities, Johnson said. The winners were Rosa Partin, Karen Bolding, Janean Hardister, Tiffany Haynes and Tim Taylor.
“In all, I think our celebration was a success,” said Johnson. “We heard great feedback from employees saying they were glad the institution still kept this tradition, albeit with precautions. Every year we do this, we learn and take notes to make it even better for the next year!”