cook

steward

sous chef

cashier

food service worker

Sodexo Live!

Expected hours of work were inconsistent, and unbearably (sometimes 20+ hours daily) long. Expected amount of time standing was not true to what was agreed upon in interview. Management was a revolving door therefore it made it hard to ever find consistency with policies and procedures. There was absolutely no training, no training plan in place, no type of SOP, and the upper management being a revolving door there was no time for anyone to put in the effort to train. Policies and procedures were changed based on the upper management style at the time, nothing was ever set in stone, there was a lot of grey area so that depending on the employee's "worth" at the location the employee receiving disciplinary action or counseling varied daily. This took away any authority management had and allowed the hourly employees to "run" the building. HR was a nightmare and more of a mental health counseling session to hourly employees verses HR supporting upper management. This also made management "give up" on discipling hourly employees due to the lack of support and grey areas. People in upper management positions were known pathological liars, therefore all other upper management had to be "on board" in order to maintain the revolving door, and that is when policies and procedures began to change unknowingly and then held accountable to adhere to. This lead to an environment of managers leaving sooner or being pushed out due to unfair or false write ups that HR also supported and documented in corporate file and a "lose/lose" scenario for management. Upper management was being hired without correct interview processes, without any form of Microsoft background or way of testing these skills, over employees who were highly recommended and capable with 5+ years experience and with Centerplate and solely based off resumes that had been fluffed. Once hired simple daily tasks such as Microsoft Outlook and Excel were completely foreign to them, and past work experience showed the lack of knowledge for a company with expectations of the demands of business. Meetings with probation type of discipline was being held with managers by upper management without HR approval or knowledge. When managers asked for help after being told if help was needed to ask, it was intentionally ignored and then managers were disciplined for not asking for help after them asking for help was blatantly ignored. HR allowed hourly employees to harass managers numerous times due to HR feeling threatened by hourly employees threatening to file false law suits, corporate claims were never followed up by HR, and some hourly employees were given more hours as a disciplinary action for harassing managers. HR ignored almost all of complaints by management about the way hourly employees were treating managers, aggressive behaviors that were documented and sent to HR were never filed and HR never kept an accurate log of disciplinary action for hourly employees. The GM was non existent and very unknowledgeable about what type of hostile environment was right in front of him. The GM had no voice and allowed senior management to speak for him and make ALL decisions for departments they didn't work in nor had any knowledge of. Senior management was allowed to degrade and belittle managers, question managers work ethic outloud in front of hourly employees, and openly curse managers with other management copied on emails.

No typical day in event planning, as it always changes! Sodexo was the contracted food service and event planning company at a non-profit aquarium, and had been the sole provider of top level service for 17 years. Events ranged from weddings & props to non-profit fundraisers, family friendly church night outs to corporate parties and conventions…all within the walls of the aquarium, which meant an extremely challenging space, a tiny kitchen that doubled as the daytime cafe for guests, and an almost impossible set up time of 30 minutes post facility closing to the public for all evening events, no matter what size or complicated set up was required.

The tightly knit team worked amazingly well to pull off every event, so our small events team of 2 planned everything, alongside the kitchen and FOH staff with regularly scheduled BEO meetings, and constant contact as needed in between when new customer needs (after the original order) arose. I learned new planning software, how to work with large staffing needs and pricing/budgeting for large parties. The management was solid and incredibly supportive, and created a fantastic environment where people felt  valued as a part of the team and the clients always felt well taken care of care of. We were all saddened and deeply disheartened when the aquarium chose to try a new company for service, and all of the top level people left, including myself. There has been a revolving door there for staff ever since, and I’m certain the events there are suffering for the decision to remove Sodexo and go with another lesser company.

This culture was geared to Sports and Entertainment.
Main client were the New Jersy Devils.
On a game night our main kitchen produced 8,000 pounds of food for Cetering, Team dining, A La Carte restuarant, Premium Clubs, and meals for 500 union consession workers
we had a seperate kitchen for the Suites, and concession stands.
The management team workes very closely with employees to main quality and standards as well as proper food sanitation guidelines. I was in charge of the daily operation of production,ordering, and food cost par levels, recipe research and implementation.
The managemant team would go out every a few months for dinner and some down town~~ average wotk week in season was 90 hrs a week~~
I was the Chef de Cuisine and worked hands on with the kitchen staff.
My main responsibilites was the production for the Premium Clubs/
Season ticket holders of 2200+, the food was made from scratch and was served in all you can eat buffet and action stations type service.
I also expedited for the 2 hr busy dinner service at the Ala Carte Restaurant. I worked closely with Executive Chef in all he need assisstance with.
I love my career as a chef and I have great passion, teaching m training creating.
In my 25 yrs as a chef I was privileged to work with the most talent staff I have in all my years as a chef!!
This was a great place to work a fun place.
This arena is number 8 in the world for highest gross profits.
I was very proud to be part of this company.

My health absolutely plummeted while working at Centerplate at the Salt Palace. I had over 5 years of serving experience before I started working there and I was confident I could do the job well. The pay was really good, I loved my coworkers and the culture. 

However, the turnover rate is high for a reason: EMPLOYEE BURNOUT is so high. 

This place is SEVERELY short staffed for how many events they cater - to the point where they were putting three captains in charge of 15,000 + people events, or putting each captain in charge of 10+ events in a single day. 

One day the sales managers brilliantly decided to book nine buffets in a single day. NINE BUFFETS with THREE captains and the only servers we had were temps who didn’t know the building. 

My hours were inhumane. For a month straight I worked 12, 13, 14 hour workdays with maybe a day off every week. I’d get there at 5am some days and work until 2am and have to be there again at 6am the next day. Then they’d get mad when we messed things up, or things weren’t perfect, but how can you be fully functioning when you have gotten 2 hours of sleep a night for two weeks? 

The pay was really good for all the overtime hours and I loved my coworkers. Those were the only two benefits from being there. Oh… and you could eat the leftover food from the buffet if you had time for it, which captains never did. 

The pace is fast because you gotta keep up with the orders the pay after one game is like 50$ or more it very easygoing all but you wake up early in the morning when the game doesn’t even start till 1 and I understand it’s because you got to check in and make sure your station of good all and it gives you some time to figure out your coworkers and all nice and friendly tips are go like your cashier should give you some money if your their runners and all but the job is inconsistent like the days they have games on some games are back to back while others aren’t and schedule is just kinda messed up like I said inconsistent and they’ll be day where u just don’t wanna go because like I said u wake up extra early to get there but transportation is included and it’s free you meet up at the location and it takes you there and back also the pay alright I believe it’s 9.50 an hour and then u get your tips or whatever you made that day oh and the paycheck hits like a week or so later as they do have pay periods and for an Highschooler that just wants or need money like it’s good and all but REALLY THE ONLY CON TO THIS JOB IS ITS INCONSISTENTLY AND SOMETIMES I mean probably ppls attitude because they’re drunk and all but yeah

I loved this job because each day it was something different that I had to look forward to.  I was the payroll contact person that worked with the field units to help the company with payroll issues and HR issues that needed to be updated or corrected. 
My work week : 
On a typical day, Monday - Wednesday, I was either faxed, emailed and sometimes mailed in paperwork for processing.
Beginning Wednesdays and finishing on Thursday was payroll processing which the field units would submit via the payroll dashboard, which was uploaded and them processed.  Once payroll was completed Thursday by 5 or 6 pm mostly. 
Fridays was working again on web maintenance (for hourly employee updates/changes).   
We processed checks in house, so I was the person who would receive checks, fold, sort and mail out.  Some of these checks had to be sent via Fedex to certain locations. 
I worked along with helping to train new comers to our department in payroll and web maintenance in Lawson and Apollo. 
I loved being able to talk to our field payroll personnel and helping them with any issues they may have had.   If I could not help them, I would find someone in the office who handled that specific area. 

Centerplate was a fun work place until the year they decided to end their contract with the establishment I currently work at. It was a nice friendly environment that was happy at first and then stressful at times. The last year with them they decided to not sign a new contract which put a majority of the managers on edge which came back to us. I still work at the stadium but would not like to work under Centerplate again. Some times there workers do not care a majority of the time and it reflects to the customers when talking with them. I try to smile and try and focus on the positives. I cried after working at Belmont horse track because the worker I was with expected me to do everything. The manager was never seen and the only person I could rely on and helped calm me down was the runner and warehouse guy. The place I work at now is no longer under Centerplate and I believe everything is now better.

From this I learned that I just had to keep smiling and do my best even when things got stressful and I made sure to learn different skills there so that I could be useful and it has helped me do more today.

When I worked at Centerplate, there was a lot of learning going on. Mass production would be taking place all the time, timing is everything. I've learned to have self discipline because things could change at any minute and not in your favor. I've also learned how to deal with people better, different food recipes, different ways to cook, different tools to use and everything else that come with culinary. Management was ok most of the time due to the fact that I was part of the management team I was able to see thing from the inside out and the outside in. My co-workers were sometimes great and some were very difficult to work with especially if they felt like they were more experienced than you in the culinary field. The hardest part about the job was satisfying the clients and the easiest part was preparing the foods. The most enjoyable part about this job is that I got the opportunity to travel to many different states to work with other all across the country.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The best part of working at this company is interfering and connecting with the customers and some of the great staff groups

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The most stressful part about working at this company is dealing with the managers. They play favoritism and pick on staff. They talk to staff horribly and like playing victim alot! They are horrible with team building and staying organized and professional. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
The work environment and culture is okay.  You have to be strong built to deal with the changes in the seasons. And prepared to walk while pushing/pulling carts full of items when you need to. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
A typical day is sometimes stressful dealing with misunderstandings and changes. Other than that a typical day is okay. It's normal work. When not working a game, I'm pulling back from stands, doing warehouse work, cleaning and organizing, which I do like. I also love working games.

Worked for Center Plate for about a year,was not told during interview that this position was on contact for a year. Supposing due to the fact that I travel a lot my appointment was held up for months. I spent the better part of the first three months working through an agency, where I had no benefits and lost the ones I had from my previous position. I was given two weeks training but a person who while did her job, thought that she had to be every ones friend. The place was filthy, and everything was old, Broken or just plain falling apart.No one it seemed knew what they were doing, no one cared. Senior Management did not want me to get the place back into any type of shape because they are horribly scared the workers would then vote for a Union. Along with some new workers and finally getting some of the older workers to do their job, was I able to start turning the place around, only to have another manager take over and the credit. I was let go shortly after.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Cook 14 salaries reported	$20.74 per hour
Steward 8 salaries reported	$20.23 per hour
Sous chef 3 salaries reported	$25.00 per hour
Cashier 3 salaries reported	$16.42 per hour
Food service worker 16 salaries reported	$22.17 per hour

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