My last semi-relevant experience, I stressed, was dropping fries at McDonald’s while in college 40 years ago.
As Dan Ramella noted in the July issue’s Publisher’s Letter, this is the 100th issue that has been published since Club & Resort Business came on the scene in April 2005. Outside of Dan, Bill Donohue and myself, no one has had more involvement with those 100 issues over the past eight years than Jerry Schreck, Executive Chef of Merion Golf Club, Ardmore, Pa., who has written dozens of his popular “Chef to Chef” features for us since he first interviewed Scott Rowe of Pinehurst Resort in June 2005.
And of course, in addition to making it possible for all of us to “listen in” to the many interesting Q&As he has had with leading club and resort chefs since then, Jerry’s also been instrumental in helping us expand the Chef to Chef concept into a fast-growing and very successful conference that will now be held for its sixth year in San Antonio next March.
So, given all the work that Jerry’s done for us, I told him a year or so ago, knowing that he was going to need to line up all the extra hands he could find to help handle all that hosting the U.S. Open at Merion would involve, that I’d be interested in being part of his kitchen team to get a “behind the scenes” perspective on the tournament—but only if he really needed me, and didn’t think I’d hamper his efforts in any way. And, I stressed, “hampering” could very much be an issue, given that my last semi-relevant experience was dropping fries at McDonald’s and washing dishes at the Faculty Club while in college 40 years ago.
Pretty much the next thing I knew, Jerry sent me an e-mail with no message, just an Excel file attached named “U.S. Open Kitchen Staffing”—and down near the bottom, “Joe B.” was listed as “Utility” and scheduled for seven straight 6 a.m-4 p.m shifts for Monday through Sunday of Open Week.
So it was that C&RB ended up having an “embedded editor” during the Open—and, even though they were the hardest writing tasks I’ve ever had to do before collapsing each night, I did manage to post online reports throughout the week. If you missed them and would like to read the gory details, they can all be found here.
Also, in the July issue, we present a post-Open Q&A with Jerry (“Open Season”), which I definitely do recommend that you read and share with your staff—Jerry provides many valuable insights from the experience that can help all clubs with their event management, even if you’ll never host a major tournament.
All in all, it was a great experience—even if one Merion member who’s been my neighbor for 25 years couldn’t get enough of seeing me furiously slapping sandwiches together in my chef’s togs and turned me into his personal daily amusement act, bringing a steady stream of people we both know back to the kitchen to point, take pictures and get a good laugh.
But I will now be happy to cross being a “utility” worker at a major off my bucket list—and just as happy to go back to cranking out the next 100 issues, rather than another 10,000 or so burgers and dogs.
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