Northern Arizona University Hospitality Students Help Flagstaff Family Food Center | Local



Valentina Dettmer, a hotel and restaurant management student at Northern Arizona University, chops peppers during a demonstration kitchen at the university Wednesday while students worked to make fajitas for 400 customers at the Flagstaff Family Food Center. NAU students stepped in after the kitchen of the food center had to close as part of a building renovation.



NAU student rally for Food Kitchen

Valentina Dettmer, a hotel and restaurant management student at Northern Arizona University, is chopping sweet peppers during a demonstration at the university Wednesday while students worked to make fajitas for 400 customers at the Flagstaff Family Food Center. NAU students stepped in after the kitchen of the food center had to close as part of a building renovation.



Food center for families

Executive Director Monica Foos (left) and Development Director Carrie Henderson at the FFFC Food Bank on the east side of Flagstaff.



NAU HRM Covid Precautions

Mark Molinaro, Interim Associate Executive Director and Senior Lecturer at the School of Hotel and Restaurant Management at Northern Arizona University, demonstrates the new and improved cleaning practices the school should adopt in 2020 as a precaution against COVID-19. “We’re trying to be the safe kitchen of the future,” he said. “We teach crisis management, not just the prevention of COVID.”

ABIGAIL KESSLER Sun Staff Reporter

Northern Arizona University’s School of Hotel and Restaurant Management is representing the Flagstaff Family Food Center this week as the organization is closed for repairs.

The HRM schools curriculum is being postponed for the week to prepare around 400 meals a day for those in need in the Flagstaff area. FFFC sends trucks twice a day to bring rescued groceries from local grocery stores and restaurants to university kitchens and deliver ready meals for distribution to the FFFC site in Sunnyside and a local homeless shelter.

FFFC is replacing the floors in its building, installing new stoves, and upgrading the bathrooms to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Monica Foos, the organization’s executive director, said the repairs were long overdue and would help if FFFC can be fully reopened after COVID.

“All of these gatherings will help us reopen to the fellowship. We’re also looking forward to this new reopening when all customers come in and sit and dine at the same table, ”said Foos.

She added that in its 30 years of existence, the center has not closed “whatever the weather, whatever,” and so they are unsure of what to do about repairs.

“[We] didn’t know how we could do that [keep providing meals] on the verge of shopping for 400 people every day. That didn’t make sense, ”said Foos. “… We would not have made it from one place without this kind of commitment, because we needed this large kitchen and they have it [at NAU]. A restaurant that works hard to survive cannot give us that. “

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