Kennedy Frazier

Major: Culinary Food Science
Minor/option/emphasis: Nutrition
Company/Organization: OSI Group
Company/Organization website: https://www.osigroup.com/
Destination: Aurora, Illinois
Timeframe: Sumer 2022
Advisor/Coordinator Email: ebeirman@iastate.edu

Responsibilities

During this internship, my responsibilities included working on presentations for customers, making formulas and samples, and assisting my coworkers on existing projects. For presentations, I would help prep and serve customers that came in. When working on projects I would assist with making and editing formulas and then creating samples from those formulas. I also got to experience visiting some of the local plants and other companies in food service that we worked with.

Accomplishments

I think my greatest accomplishment this summer was being able to adapt to the environment. In this company and the food service industry, in general you tend to have a lot of things come up suddenly. I had to learn how to go with the flow while also learning so I could work on my own after learning. It was a great accomplishment because although there is a lot going on I learned how to be efficient and learned so many new skills and information.

Learning experience

One of the greatest lessons I learned is that no matter what you are working on you are always learning. You can learn a lot from the people that you work with on a daily basis. It also is great being able to have an experience in this industry because when you focus on a specific project you can learn a lot about a food product that you did not know much about before and you can apply this knowledge for future projects. Another lesson I learned is that communication is one of the most important things in any business. I witnessed how often you send emails, have team meetings, and converse with other people within and outside the company. Communicating with each other is the only way to succeed efficiently.

What advice would you give?

Some advice I have for future students would be to try to find as many part-time jobs or internships over the semester or summer as you can because each experience is going to be very different. Not all companies are the same or will teach you the same things so you need to keep your options open before you can find what you really want. There are so many options out there, so do not be discouraged if you do not love every experience. Being in this company and getting to see how the corporate is different from the plants and getting to visit other companies and see how they work is an experience in itself. Therefore, you should try to take up any opportunity you have because it will create many fun experiences.

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