Lab Coats in My Life
A Lab Coat is a Food Technologist’s Best Friend. Mine always seemed to attract tomato sauce and strawberries (at separate times).
It started early in a chemistry class at Eastern Michigan University when my professor highly suggested I wear one due to some unfortunate Laboratory experiments.
I was always in high style with a matching white hair net and shoes ready to go into the production plant. Most of the lab coats were embroidered with my name. But another way to stand out in a production facility was to have a Harley Davidson Sticker on the back of my hard hat and later on a bright pink hard hat so everyone knew Gail was in the Building to supervise a new product start up or to size up what was coming off the production line. I miss those days!
My Tony’s Pizza lab coat went through many days of a new bakery and total crust product redesign for Schwan’s. then came Little Charlies (now known as Red Baron Singles Deep Dish)
Onto to my Stouffer’s lab coat. I really was pretty much in the test kitchen lab and earned a lot of culinary experience. But some exciting projects for Nestle gave me the chance for some pilot plant testing.
ConAgra Frozen Foods was my next lab coat. It travelled with me to the production plants and co-packers throughout the U.S. Usually travelling with QA, Packaging and Engineering.
Cherry Central wore out a few lab coats. Cherries, blueberries were also attracted to my lab coat. Huge vats of fruit to dry or kettles filled with flavored applesauce or juice was always rewarding to see what would come out the other end of production and into the package.
A lab coat became my style in Germany for training when I worked for Zentis to learn all about Fruit Compotes that were used by yogurt companies. Bringing home this training and lab coat for a U.S. start up a production facility and state of the art lab.
Sara Lee bakery became my last real wardrobe style with a lab coat. Working in the Private Label refrigerated dough group (think biscuits, cinnamon rolls and crescent roll in a tube). Lot’s of flour and oil on those lab coats scaling up new products and watching the high speed production.
I’ve never put my lab coat days behind me. I wear many hats; although from my kitchen lab and regulatory computer along with Sales. I look forward to many more exciting days of putting the whole picture together; lab coat and all.