STUDENT CLOSE-UP

MU Student Is
Manager at Cannes

By Tori Reneker

Growing up on a hog farm in Wellsville, Mo., MU student Nathan Todd never thought he would end up attending red carpet events in a foreign country. He never imagined serving food in the background of an Entertainment Tonight taping, or being an extra on the season finale of the HBO show Entourage.

“I grew up on a hog farm showing pigs in a town of 1,300 people,” Todd said. “The next thing I know, I'm working at an international film festival.”

Todd, a hotel and restaurant management major, found the opportunity through a friend to serve and be a bar manager at the 2006 and 2007 Cannes Film Festival. The job led him to be a part of the American Pavillion, or “Ampav,” set up on the coast of France, working 20 feet from the water as well as international stars.

Only the fourth American to work the Ampav in the 18 years of business, Todd received an invitation after his first year to come back a second time.

“The first year you kind of have to prove yourself, and they invite you back based on how you perform,” Todd said. “I thought it was pretty neat to be the fourth American. It's hard for a lot of people to get vacation time to work the festival, so luckily I've been able to work it out, and luckily I've been liked enough to have been asked back.”

The Ampav is the largest pavilion at the festival, and is the only one allowed to serve food. Beer, wine and simple dishes are available on two terraces. Working on the sand limits the staff of seven, but the 18-year-old tradition of serving American food remains.

“Because it's not a permanent building, we've got no ovens, no grills, no major equipment,” Todd said. “We've got two burger hot plates, two toaster ovens, and a few other things, but we manage to pump out an average of 400 to 1,000 meals, on top of the private parties we host.”

After his second year working the 18-day festival, Todd says the experience has not only given him an international outlook, but taught him a lot about the restaurant industry.

“The experience taught me how to work with bare conditions,” Todd said. “The parties we're hosting — they're not planned. We never know how many customers we are going to have. A lot of the student interns who work for us have never served before, so we have to learn how to train them and run the pavilion.”

Todd believes the MU class that helped him the most was Commercial Food Production Management, which covers how to run a restaurant, including such details as the cost of the butter on the table and the organization of the menu.

“That class definitely taught me what you need to know to effectively run a restaurant,” Todd said. “In France, every day was like opening a brand new restaurant. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. Everyone in the Hotel/Restaurant class is getting their feet wet. It felt almost exactly like that in France.”

Todd hopes to finish up his last 18 required hours at MU and dreams of opening his own casual, high-end restaurant. After two years at the University Club inside the Donald W. Reynolds Alumni Center, he plans on becoming the dining room manager at Hemingway's, a new restaurant opening in south Columbia.

“It was easily the experience of a lifetime,” Todd said. “I had such an unbelievable rare opportunity. It's definitely the one thing on my resume that always gets commented on.”

Archives | Comments | Home

SUBSCRIPTIONS
Subscribe | Change Your Address | Unsubscribe

Copyright © 2007 — Curators of the University of Missouri
DMCA and other copyright information.
All rights reserved. An equal opportunity/ADA institution.
Published by the Mizzou Alumni Association
Questions? Comments? E-mail comments@mizzoualumni.org

Last Update: November 15, 2007