Reserve unit wins national competition

[

The 375th Quartermaster Company, a Wilson-based Army Reserve field feeding unit, was named the 2024 Best Army Reserve Field Kitchen at the 56th annual Department of the Army Philip A. Connelly Competition.

The competition was sponsored by the National Restaurant Association and the Joint Culinary Center of Excellence. The award was presented May 19 during the Armed Forces Food Service Awards Banquet at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago.

The 375th Quartermaster Company is part of the 518th Sustainment Brigade, 143rd Sustainment Command-Expeditionary.

Company Commander Daniel Boyette, a Wilson native, said it was “a huge accomplishment.”

“The best field kitchen in the Army Reserves competed against 11 teams,” Boyette said. “It took two rounds of evaluations. The evaluation is a lot more than just how we perform in the field. It’s our organization and administration as well as the competition in the field. It is a whole-company effort, not just the team.”

Staff Sgt. Shellyann Thompson, a training noncommissioned officer in the unit, said the company’s members are “ecstatic.”

The Army Reserve stood up the 375th in 2021.

“The team worked very hard, and I am very proud. We were just over the moon that we got to that level,” Thompson said. “The week prior to the competition, we were here at the unit preparing, opening up the MKT (mobile kitchen trailer), timing the team just to make sure that we make that time during the evaluation and also preparing the meal that we were going to cook out there.”

For the competition, the team turned Buffalo-style chicken into an adobo chicken dish.

“We had to use a pantry item and make it our own,” Thompson said. “So we turned that item into another dish.”

The MKT had to be set up in under 30 minutes.

“We just had to make sure that we were communicating with each other as far as opening up so that everybody knew where their placement was and that they were all in sync with each other,” Thompson said. “Our soldiers are very hardworking. We just have to let them know what the mission is and they go out there and execute. They make us proud. They do an awesome job.”

1st Lt. Graceanna McCray said, “It is a lot of work to win a Connelly.”

“For a unit this small and this young, it really is a testament to the kind of soldiers we have,” McCray said. “Sgt Thompson and her whole team did a fantastic job and were committed to the goal from the moment that we knew we were competing and every step along the way. They were like, ‘OK, let’s do it.’ They were never in doubt that they could get this done, and they proved that.”

Thompson singled out Spc. Andrea Villalon as a key part of the team.

“I think she is a natural leader,” Thompson said. “She always steps up to the front and takes charge and makes sure everything gets done.”

Villalon, a native of the Philippines, said team members were “shocked” to hear that they won.

“We came in and really did what we were supposed to do, but at the end of the day, it is just kind of a shock factor that we won,” Villalon said. “We wouldn’t be able to do what we do if it were not for the way our people worked together on accomplishing every aspect of the competition. As long as we have got the team, we can do just about anything.”

The 375th has training sessions one weekend every two months. The unit has grown to 93 members since it stood up.

Thompson said the Army’s mobile feeding stations are critical to mission success.

“Food is morale,” Thompson said. “If you don’t have food, you are not going to have people wanting to work. That’s your energy, and that’s what keeps you going after a long day out working in the hot sun. Most of our annual training is during the summer months, so it is hot out there. So to be able to get a hot meal, it is like you are fed, you are happy. So it is a morale thing.”

Next year is a mission year for the 375th Quartermaster Company. The unit is headed to Europe for its first deployment in May.

“It is good to get some more visibility of the reserve center in Wilson so they know who the hometown soldiers are,” Boyette said.

The post Reserve unit wins national competition first appeared on Restoration NewsMedia .