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At this year’s Holiday Celebration on Dec. 16, 5,568 people came through the cafeteria line for a no-cost-to-them holiday lunch. Image by Evan Lewis

UAMS Holiday Celebration Gains Efficiency While Bringing Cheer

Dec. 27, 2021 | Smiling faces and the satisfied appetites of thousands of members of Team UAMS showed that university organizers have learned how to efficiently and cheerfully serve holiday meals to about 10,000 employees.

“It was our best year yet for the Holiday Celebration,” said Tonya Johnson, MS, RD, executive director of Hospitality & Nutrition Services. “This was our fourth year to do it. I think we’ve developed a lot of efficiencies. Our first year was really good, but we had some learning curves.”

Johnson said the operation had a bump or two in 2020 because so many departments opted to pick up the meals to take back to their offices. The Nutrition Services team had to use chip boxes and other food containers to accommodate the demand. Providing that many meals while abiding by the safety measure required by the COVID-19 pandemic also necessitated stretching the celebration out over five days.

This year, the team not only ordered boxes specifically for the Holiday Celebration meals, they carefully measured and tested them first.

“Complete game changer, we were able to crank out meals for to-go orders, our pickups, very efficiently,” Johnson said. “We had boxes and tape, and all the things we didn’t have last year. We set up five serving lines, and we had a line stretch out to Parking 2 at the peak, but no one was in line more than 15-20 minutes. You can spend almost that much time in line on a busy day in the cafeteria for regular service.”

That’s even more impressive given that at this year’s celebration on Dec. 16, 5,568 people came through the cafeteria line compared to last year’s 3,000.

Additionally, UAMS provided 775 meals to its pediatric clinical staff at Arkansas Children’s, 1,000 meals to different Regional Campuses on Dec. 15-17 and about 1,250 meals to off-campus clinics and offices in Central Arkansas.

From this year’s menu, that meant cooking and serving:

• 270 turkeys or 1,620 pounds of turkey
• 154 hams or 1,660 pounds of ham
• 470 gallons of gravy
• 1,720 pounds of veggies
• 1,824 pounds of sweet potatoes
• 1,786 pounds of green beans
• 570 gallons of mashed potatoes
• 6,720 slices of cheesecake
• 2,880 slices of chocolate cake
• 2,880 slices of caramel cake
• 190 gallons of hot chocolate with 8112 marshmallows

“Greg Roberts, our head chef, would come in at 1 a.m. to start cooking,” Johnson said. “He and his crew, they cooked all the food. He pulled most of the weight himself to make sure everything was done, everything was fresh. He was a rock star.”

Another of Johnson’s “rock stars” was Crystal Abel, UAMS Nutrition Services catering manager, who oversaw the desserts, making sure all the cake was cut and packaged properly.

Annabeth Johnson, special events manager in the UAMS Office of Communications and Marketing, planned the celebration along with Tonya Johnson and the Employee Appreciation Committee. The committee is made up of people on the main campus, Regional Campuses and Arkansas Children’s, start planning this event in early September.

The Holiday Celebration is the biggest event of the year given its size, and it takes more than one or two departments to make happen.

“It truly takes a village to pull off, most of that being Tonya’s staff, but many other people also help out and make this event such a success each year.” Annabeth Johnson said.

The AV team helped to set up a live video stream so off-campus employees could participate in online holidaytrivia.

Shelly Young, Program Manager of Accreditation & Regulatory Compliance, coordinates and organizes all the off-site clinics and locations for delivery or pick-up of their holiday meals.

Lara Woloszyn, social media manager in the Office of Communications & Marketing, provided a photo booth so that everyone could get a photo if they wanted.

“We also had almost 100 volunteers from all around campus help to direct traffic flow, hand out desserts, utensils and water, greet employees as they entered and perform countless other tasks,” Annabeth Johnson said.

Both Annabeth and Tonya Johnson also said they were grateful for assistance from Diana Johnson and Julie Russell for bringing decorations from home to decorate the cafeteria.

Diana Johnson is UAMS assistant director of UAMS Hospitality, and Julie Russell is hospitality and health screening manager. Tonya Johnson also contributed her own decorations to the event.