Culinary and Catering Management Bachelor Degrees

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Catering Director

A catering director oversees food operations for a variety of occasions, including weddings, conventions, and charity events and may work for large companies, such as casinos and hotel chains. A catering director's job includes planning and preparation. First, the catering director meets with clients... see more to plan menus, event design, and serving options. Both presentation and style are important, and a good catering director knows you only get one shot at making a great impression. Next, at the event itself, the catering director must manage staff members as they prepare food, set up tables and decorations, and serve guests at an event. Catering directors must be able to plan menus and manage a large staff.

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Pastry Chef

A pastry chef applies culinary skills to the creation and decoration of desserts for restaurants, hotels, and special events. According to Roland Mesnier, the White House Executive Pastry Chef, a pastry chef should love baking everything from simple cookies to elaborate cakes. Baking and pastry arts... see more rely on chemistry, and a pastry chef often begins the exacting prep work well in advance of the actual baking. Because pastry chefs work with perishable ingredients such as eggs, cream, and butter, knowledge of food safety and sanitation is crucial to the job. Industrial bakeries make large quantities of baked goods for supermarkets and other retail outlets. In large industrial bakeries, bakers specialize in one aspect of the process. All-around bakers supervise and coordinate the workers while helpers perform unskilled jobs. Much of the work at the industrial level is done in an assembly-line fashion: for example, mixers weigh the ingredients and put them into blending machines; divider machine operators control the machines that shape dough into small balls; and dough molders operate machines that shape the balls into loaves. In some bakeries bench hands do the work of both divider machine operators and dough molders. Bench hands knead the dough by hand and form it into fancy shapes such as braided bread rings. Oven tenders bake the goods, carefully watching time and temperature. Bakeries that make cakes and pastries may also employ icing mixers and icers