by Alex Kinderman, December 8, 2020

 I recently had an internship at Great Wolf Lodge in Gurnee Illinois! This is a hotel chain with properties across the US and a focus on its indoor waterpark. They have a ton of other activities as well inside the hotel and are very kid focused and friendly. I was hired as the supervisor for Barnwood which is their breakfast and dinner restaurant. My role as a supervisor primarily entailed ensuring the safety of my guests and employees as well as making sure service standards are met and daily tasks are fulfilled. I also deal with customer complaints, comps, schedule corrections, and end of day reports. I have also been learning all of the different restaurant positions, bar recipes, and menu items as part of my training.

This has been a great experience for me to learn more about the FOH and financial side of restaurants as well as really take charge in my first true job leadership role. Overall, I think my time at Great Wolf Lodge has really helped me to grow as both a leader and learn more about myself and what I really like about the F&B industry. I worked a lot of shifts as a bartender and I really liked it so it might be interesting to see where a passion in bartending can take me and I really like that I found something I might like a tad more than food which to be honest I didn’t think was possible.

I also have learned that there is so much travel opportunity within hotels. I was offered to go to Traverse City Michigan, Grapevine Texas, and Kansas City Kansas in my short time there. I was set to go to Michigan for a few weeks but then both Michigan and Illinois shut down. Unfortunately, we have shut down for the foreseeable future, but I was able to learn and perform a full shut down of all the food and beverage outlets in the hotel. This was a great learning experience on what needs to get done in terms of throwing away product, inventory, deep cleaning, turning off equipment, and so forth. This is also a process that is great experience especially in these uncertain times of COVID where shutdowns and restrictions are inevitable. I hope we get to open back up soon as this is a company I really like and see a lot of growth in!