Future Restaurateurs Get Seasoning Here

With its elegant linen tablecloths, elaborately folded napkins, gourmet menu and impressive wine list, the Restaurant at Kellogg Ranch seems much like any other high-end eating establishment in Southern California.

But the restaurant with a view of the picturesque San Gabriel mountains is on the campus of Cal Poly Pomona, and it is run by students. They cook the food, wait on tables and manage the place as part of earning their degree from the university’s School of Hotel and Restaurant Management--consistently ranked one of the 10 best in the nation.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s a school at all,” said diner Gayle Henrotte, who brought a party of seven women for lunch recently. “I just wanted to have something fine, something with elegance in it. The prices are incredible, the food is well-chosen and served in large portions. And the staff is very courteous and well-trained.”

The school, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, regularly lures celebrity chefs, including Julia Child and Wolfgang Puck, as guest lecturers. It now is gearing up for a major expansion that will allow for more students, additional classrooms and a new wine tasting center--all made possible by a recent $10 million gift from James and Carol Collins, franchisers of Sizzler Restaurants worldwide.

“We can do so many things because we have so much support within the industry,” said Gil Brum, associate dean of the school.

The school began in 1973 as a small department within the College of Business Administration at Pomona. A short time later, the School of Hotel and Restaurant Management was founded and was the first such program in the California State University system. (San Francisco State, San Jose State and several private schools also offer restaurant programs.)

Tuition is about $1,500 a year for the four-year program, which requires the completion of 200 academic units, 116 of which are classes in restaurant and hotel management.

The Pomona program began with 34 students but now has more than 500. It boasts a 90% job-placement rate after graduation.

“I’m 25 and I’m running my own restaurant,” said Chris Yea, a 1996 graduate who manages a Marie Callender’s restaurant in Anaheim. “There’s not many industries that will allow a 25-year-old to run a business.”

Many of the more successful graduates say that while a four-year education isn’t a requirement to become a restaurant manager, it has proved essential when it comes to trying to scale the industry’s higher ranks.

“Traditionally in the restaurant industry, college degrees have not been a priority,” said 1990 graduate Mark Augarten, a regional manager for Irvine-based Claim Jumper Restaurants. “But that degree gives you a certain acceptance level and gives you a certain amount of credibility.”

Augarten, who supervises eight Claim Jumpers in the greater Los Angeles area, said his experience working in the school’s restaurant was the most valuable.

“It’s real guests, it’s real food, it’s real world and it’s real dollars,” he said. “It’s about as close to being out in the business world as you can get, and it prepared me pretty well.”

Yorba Linda resident Steve Skoien, regional vice president of operations for the Orange-based Marie Callender’s chain, said his experience as a student at the school has led him to recruit heavily from there. Indeed, Cal Poly graduates now manage 24 of the 164 Marie Callender’s restaurants.

“When it comes to the administrative part of things, it really helps if you have that school background,” Skoien said.

Advantica Restaurants executive Tony Falls, this year’s recipient of the school’s distinguished alumni award, said the degree “opened many doors,” but he had to work hard to convince his parents that his choice of a major was legitimate.

“My parents wanted me to be a doctor and my mom was in an uproar,” he recalled. “She said, ‘Are you kidding? You don’t need a degree to be in the restaurant business!’ But it has served me well.”

Falls, a 1976 graduate, began as a busboy at a Charlie Brown’s restaurant while in college and now oversees international operations of Coco’s and Carrow’s restaurants. He is also in charge of training for the two chains.

The current staff at the school’s restaurant are in their junior year of a four-year program, and during one 10-week quarter, they run the restaurant, as part of either the lunch or the dinner crew. Customers often are teachers and students from campus, but the restaurant also gets traffic from the general public in the evening.

During the quarter, the students spend a week at various positions ranging from manager to server to chef. The students aren’t paid for their work but receive academic credit.

The restaurant has an annual budget of $200,000 and breaks even in most years.

Although the menu was created by a chef-instructor, it is the students who must prepare and serve such lunch dishes as corn-wrapped salmon with ancho-orange sauce and dinner entrees such as roasted lamb sirloin and sauteed red snapper.

“What we do here is replicate as much of real life as possible,” said Barbara Jean Bruin, a longtime instructor at the school. “The only way they are going to learn how to do things is by doing it. They are empowered to handle their own problems.”