A.L.P.H.A. is the acronym that encompasses Campus Cooks’ ideology, driving all the decisions we make when engaging with our employees and clients. The ALPHA acronym was cemented around 7 years ago, but the values it contains have been with Campus Cooks from the very beginning. The ALPHA acronym was created by President Bill Reeder to express the values that Campus Cooks already had in place in a memorable way. The goal of the ALPHA is to ingrain these core values in our entire company, from our President to our hashers. Our ALPHA is displayed proudly in all of our Greek kitchens across the country.  

Our ALPHA goes as follows:  

Always growing personally and professionally. 

Living a healthy work and life balance. 

Passionate about food and service. 

Honesty and Respect. Do right for our employees, clients and vendors. . 

Actively enhancing the Greek Experience. 

This week, ALPHA HQ in Wheeling hosted 20 regional supervisors and 5 sales representatives for our winter meeting. This means we had our full operations team at HQ! The purpose of this bi-annual meeting is to connect with our remote employees to team build, discuss Campus Cooks’ vision and build upon already held practices in the company. With employees all across the country, it is sometimes difficult to fully connect with our whole team, making it essential to hold this meeting to foster a community with our employees. Between lots and lots of food, laughs, some Whirlyball and a few presentations, our operations team discussed our ALPHA as a group and broke down what It truly means to them. They had a lot of ideas (see photo below)! 

 Here are some thoughts that truly resonated with our team that we would love to share: 

A: Always growing personally and professionally. 

Our team defined our “A” as always moving forward and learning something new daily. With that, they emphasized that every interaction has meaning, and going through the motions day-to-day is not effective for the individual or the ones around them. In order to grow, individuals must be self-aware, admitting that they don’t know everything, and that they can learn from others to constantly improve themselves within and outside of their position. The ops team emphasized that one must challenge themselves to work outside of their comfort zone, trying new methods or takes on previously held practices. Always learning, always improving. 

L: Living a healthy work and life balance 

The operations team said the “L” is all about leading by example. They stressed that employees must be transparent regarding boundaries for communications. Healthy work includes utilizing the Campus Cooks support network and ensuring that all employees feel included in the “big picture”. This is done through demonstrating your role, supporting through action and not just words, practicing inclusion and transparency. Healthy life encompasses being able to be fully present in non-work-related situations, being able to reset and fully enjoy things in life outside of work. Being present at work so you can be present at life. And vice versa. 

P: Passionate about food and service. 

Our operations team believes that the “P” in our ALPHA ties it all together. Obviously, we wouldn’t be here if we weren’t passionate about food and service. They pointed out how this passion is unique to Campus Cooks as we put our clients and our food above all. It includes finding the best value for the client, the highest quality products and elevating the client’s needs with our services. This passion runs in our company from top to bottom, as our team collaborates to instill this unique passion within our chefs by challenging, motivating and celebrating. 

H: Honesty and respect. Do right for our employees, clients and vendors. 

The “H” of the ALPHA is fairly simple, and our ops team said it follows the Golden Rule: Treat others the way you want to be treated. Honesty and respect are enforced through transparency, loyalty, sincerity, listening, fairness, politeness, among many other things that the ops team mentioned. It includes interacting with anyone, including students, house corp, house directors, advisors, guests, etc. We see the “H” in action through interacting with our clients in on-boarding, menu meetings, owning and solving issues and openly communicating. We see the “H” through interacting with employees and vendors as well. Coaching and training, having tough conversations and being present and transparent with our employees. Treating people how you’d like to be treated really pays off, and we see it within our company through many different mediums. 

A: Actively enhancing the Greek Experience.  

What our company was founded on.  The operations team talked about how being actively enhancing and engaging is about being involved daily (with purpose) in the chapter houses. This includes assisting with planning and implementation of events, as well as being proactive by making the impossible, possible. Here at Campus Cooks we do not like to say no. Our Greek roots have given us the tools to provide education throughout our entire company on what it means to be Greek. How does Campus Cooks play a part in that? It is beyond creating a reason to get together through food. It is about going above and beyond to ensure that students thrive while in school and develop fond memories of their entire Greek experience, motivating them to become involved in their chapter beyond their 4 years. We strive to create an experience as incredible as many of us at Campus Cooks HQ had, and more. 

Our ALPHA runs deep within our company, and it is the ideology that we pride ourselves in. Our operations team really crushed this deep discussion. We are grateful that we get to have frequent conversations like this to ground our employees and remind them that even though they live all over the country, the ALPHA runs through us all! #LivetheALPHA