UA News

Celaya is responsible for keeping 27 campus locations stocked with food and goods.

Name
Kim Celaya

Position
Material Supply Keeper, Student Food Service

Number of years at the UA
25

Favorite part about working at the UA
"It's always changing, it's definitely not boring. And at the (Student) union, they really think about the family. I have a son who's pretty much grown up here. He'll be 13 next month and they've allowed me to bring him in when I'm working on weekends or with special functions. It allows me to spend time with him and not lose out when I have to come in to work."

---

Few people on campus stop to think about how the bottle of Coke they grab at the U-Mart got there, or where the On Deck Deli gets all those meats and cheeses. Kim Celaya, however, thinks about these things all the time, since it's her job to keep food on the shelves in the Student Union Memorial Center.

As material supply keeper for Arizona Student Unions, Celaya is charged with ordering food and supplies for most of the union's restaurants and convenience stores. From placing orders, to managing inventory, to coordinating deliveries across campus, the ultra-organized Celaya works to keep up with the needs of 27 different locations with the help of two full-time employees and 10 student workers.

Her office: a spacious warehouse in the union's basement that houses everything from 50-pound bags of sugar to towering stacks of Coke bottles to gigantic jars of mayo.

Having always had an interest in food, Celaya toyed with the idea of becoming a dietitian when she was a freshman at the UA. But when she realized science wasn't her thing, she decided to go for a degree in food service management instead. She began working at the union as a student in 1982 and came on board full time after getting her degree in 1984.

She took time to talk with Lo Que Pasa about what goes on behind the scenes in the union and let readers in on what on-campus diners are eating most.

Who do you do purchasing for?
I do all the purchasing for the Student Union (Memorial Center) and for most of the satellite locations located around campus and some for the Highland (Market) and Park Student Union. ... We have 27 different locations – that's restaurants, production, catering, the hot dog carts that are out on the Mall, convenience stores.

How do you know what to buy?
We have a computer system, and each of the restaurants forecast (what they will need) and then I have par levels in the warehouse, and I try to keep those levels up.

How much inventory is kept in the warehouse at any given time?
Dollarwise, we have between $250,000 and $300,000 depending on time of the year, and we have over 1,500 different items. It's about two weeks worth of inventory that we keep.

How much does it cost a year to stock all those locations?
We spend a little over $5 million on food and paper products a year.

What do we buy most of?
Twenty-ounce water bottles and chicken tenders. We go through a lot of chicken tenders. And three-gallon (tubs of) vanilla ice cream.

What's the most expensive thing we buy?
Coffee. Seattle's Best coffee – 20 pounds of whole bean coffee costs $160.

How often do you get deliveries to the warehouse?
We have trucks come daily, Monday through Friday. They start at 5 in the morning, and most of our deliveries are here by noon.

Where do you buy from?
Right now we're buying (from) prime vendor Shamrock Foods out of Phoenix. The majority of our items come down from Phoenix. We have some local vendors, but there just aren't any big warehouses down here in Tucson.

What's the hardest part of your job?
Definitely keeping enough inventory for all the different locations, because each location is unique, they each have their own demands, and they each feel like they're the only one that I'm buying for.

What interested you in this line of work?
I've always been really interested in food. ... Not eating the food, because I'm pretty picky and I don't eat a lot, but just seeing the whole process – watching it being made and sold to customers and the whole turnover.

How has your job changed since you started?
The computer (has changed things a lot). The computer purchasing module has made my life so much easier. It tells me exactly what I have on hand ... so it allows me to spend my time actually figuring out what we need versus figuring out what we have.

What's the most fun part of your job?
It's pretty interesting spending other people's money. When you think about buying $5 million (worth of supplies) a year, I mean, what's $5 million? I can actually see what $5 million is worth, so that's kind of fun. ... It's funny, too – we go in cycles. Things that were very popular 15 years ago, which died out, come back. (Frozen) yogurt's a really good example. In the old (student union) building, we had tons of yogurt. Then it just kind of died out, and we just sold it in a couple places. Well now you have Fro-Yo upstairs in the Cactus Grill and they have lines all the time, people waiting to get yogurt, and in the U-Mart they sell yogurt too. I've seen a lot of food cycles. 

Do you eat on campus often?
Every day. Supervisors (in Arizona Student Unions) are given a (paid) meal card (worth $7 a day), and we're encouraged to try the different restaurants out. So every day I eat here. My favorite is 3 Cheeses (& a Noodle). I love Italian food so I try to go there once a week. 

Has this job made you a more conscious shopper in your personal life?
It has. I'm definitely more aware of prices and package sizes and what the good value is. ... (I'm also) becoming more green and more sustainable, and I definitely attribute that to working on campus. I have a trunk full of reusable shopping bags, and my son and I recycle. A year and a half ago I probably did not recycle even a can, and now we have a huge recycle bin and it's almost full every week.