Nutrition and Hospitality Management Become State-Of-The-Art at Colorado State Through Gift from Computrition

Colorado State University food science and human nutrition students will have the opportunity to use state-of-the-art software this fall through a recent gift from Computrition valued at $133,284.

The gift of the innovative Computrition Hospitality Suite® Foodservice Operations Management software will allow students studying restaurant and resort management and nutrition and food science to learn menu planning, purchasing, inventory control, production planning, recipe management, forecasting, costing and control, nutrition labeling and diet management.

The software is used widely in a multitude of hospitality and health-care industries. Colorado State’s Housing and Food Services currently uses the software to control costs and streamline production while providing nutritious and diverse food selections to many people.

"The installation of Computrition means we could become a regional training site for users," said Ken Smith, coordinator of the restaurant and resort management program at Colorado State. "Along with industry training, approximately 1,000 students studying nutrition and graduate-level restaurant and resort management will learn how to use the software this year."

The software will provide valuable industry training for students. In restaurant and resort management, the software will teach students how to anticipate specific needs of individual

guests while implementing meaningful cost controls at the same time. By automating daily food-service functions, students will have the necessary tools to control costs and increase efficiency while maintaining guest services.

"The Computrition Foodservice Operations Management software will provide a tremendous advantage to Colorado State students," said Marty Yadrick, marketing manager for Computrition. "Currently, only 90 universities across the nation offer this training package as part of their students’ educational experience. Colorado State students will be better prepared and have the know-how to operate successfully when entering hospitality or nutrition-related industries."

The software also provides benefits for students studying nutrition at Colorado State. Nutrient analysis and nutrition fact labels are included in the menu and nutrition management portion of the program. The software also provides Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Point guidelines. HACCP is a prevention-based food safety system designed to prevent the occurrence of potential food safety problems. The program assesses the inherent risks attributable to a product or a process and then determines the necessary steps that will control the identified risks.

"Computrition provides our students with the opportunity to learn a professional software package used in hospitals and institutional food services," said Mary Harris, associate professor of food science and human nutrition at Colorado State. "The suite of programs integrates all phases of food service from inventory, purchasing and production to evaluation of nutritional composition of diets and menus."

Headquartered in Chatsworth, Calif., Computrition has provided innovative software solutions to the hospitality industry since 1981. With over 4,000 customers throughout the United States and Canada, Computrition offers a variety of software options to meet the needs of any size or complexity of operation.

For more information about the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition in the College of Applied Human Science at Colorado State, visit the Web at http://www.cahs.colostate.edu/fshn. For more information about Computrition, visit www.computrition.com.