Kenosha Kingfish food and beverage intern Alexsis Kempin-Ellis has found her home in the field of hospitality, but she the scenic route at the University of Alabama to land there.<\/p>\n
She started off her collegiate career wanting to follow in her grandmother\u2019s footsteps and become a nurse.<\/p>\n
Then, the Alabama sports culture moved her to switch her major to athletic training.<\/p>\n
After realizing the medical side of sports was not for her either, she took advertising and communications classes to try to find the right fit for her.<\/p>\n
Finally, she found a major she loves in hospitality management last August.<\/p>\n
And what better place to learn about hospitality than the South?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been amazing, just going to \u2018Bama and living in the Dixie State and just having that Southern hospitality realm already created for us,\u201d Kempin-Ellis said.<\/p>\n
Kempin-Ellis works with an Alabama football program that had the fourth largest revenue in college football last season at $127 million, so her experience with an admittedly smaller organization in the Kenosha Kingfish has been valuable for her in terms of resource management.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey say, when you\u2019re trying to work in sports, it\u2019s better to work with a smaller organization with half the budget than what I come from,\u201d Kempin-Ellis said. \u201cI\u2019ve gained a lot of experience how to budget out things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kempin-Ellis works alongside fellow food and beverage intern Seth Heiligenthal on the budget and the ordering of ballpark amenities under director of food and beverage Jake Zappa.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are gaining the experience of taking in orders and making sure we having things planned out for a week-long of games or when we only have one game in a week,\u201d Kempin-Ellis said.<\/p>\n
Though she wears many hats within the department, Kempin-Ellis enjoys her work with the organization\u2019s premium seating areas (the Fish Bowl, 4-Top Tables, Founders Club, etc.) most because it relates most directly to her desired career.<\/p>\n
That being said, all aspects of the job have taught her lessons and helped prepare her for the field of hospitality.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be in the hospitality realm, which food and beverage does fall under,\u201d Kempin-Ellis said. \u201cThis (internship) has definitely given me the experience of stress management and time management.\u201d<\/p>\n
And there is a lot of time to manage. Kempin-Ellis, like many full-time staff members and interns, typically arrives at the ballpark at 9 a.m. and often does not leave until 1 a.m. on game days.<\/p>\n
She could not endure the wear and tear of multiple 14 hour days doing just anything, though.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t even do four hours as at retail job,\u201d Kempin-Ellis joked. \u201cI didn\u2019t really have the best work ethic throughout (college), but now being here and being in sports makes me realize how much I truly want to be in sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust knowing I can make it through 14-hour game days kind of shows that sports is the realm for me,\u201d Kempin-Ellis said.<\/p>\n
A popular adage says that if you do something you love for a living, you never have to work a day in your life, and Kempin-Ellis has been rewarded with just that as she enters her final year of college after sticking it out for six years despite multiple major-switches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kenosha Kingfish food and beverage intern Alexsis Kempin-Ellis has found her home in the field of hospitality, but she the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-team-news"],"yoast_head":"\n