Dining hall cutbacks disgruntle students

Author: Rachael Jennings

Students at Middlebury have plenty to say concerning dining services and many methods with which to get their voices heard. Perhaps the most popular are the paper comment cards that are posted on bulletin boards outside each dining hall.
The specific requests may vary, but all of these entries showcase the student body's passionate stance on food, as reflected by the liberal use of capital letters. "PLEASE bring back the vegetable cream cheese," begged one Proctor patron. Another was quick to compliment an entrée that was delicious, if somewhat hard to pronounce: "The chicken à la lu(?) dish today was AMAZING." A third wished there was more consistency in her dining routine, noting that "sometimes there is corn at the salad bar, sometimes there is not. Please corn ALL THE TIME!"
Middlebury Dining Services also offers the comment feature on its website and is ever exploring the possibility of an online blog in the future.
This additional resource would "produce a real time tally of what people are feeling," said Bo Cleveland, the Executive Chef at Proctor.
Cleveland stressed that the chefs and the rest of the Dining Services staff care about students' satisfaction with dining facilities. In fact, Head of Dining Matthew Biette and his board meet, on average, once every two weeks to discuss current complaints, ideas, and methods for making the College's dining halls progressively better.
So what were the main complaints voiced during fall term and how does Dining Services plan to address them?
In one word: granola. The disappearance of this delicious crunchy snack confused and upset many students. It was M.I.A. for all of J-term, and has just recently returned to the breakfast scene.
However, it has reappeared in a different form. In the past, the dining halls have made their own granola, but this fall they were relying on the Nutty Steph's brand. After Nutty Steph's decided to increase its prices, the dining halls withdrew the product from its cereal counter.
The College attempted to work with the locally-based company, suggesting less expensive substitutions for the pricier ingredients. These substitutions initially kept the granola at consistent levels but the negotiations eventually fell through.
At that point, the dining halls searched for a flavor profile in various granola recipes that matched the popular brand. Student feedback sifted back in when the chefs experimented with different compositions. Some tasters preferred sweeter varieties to more traditional ones, others desired dry oats over sticky, and still others enjoyed whole nuts as opposed to slivered almonds.
"We have to try to filter through and land on something to satisfy the students," Cleveland explained.
The dining hall staff finally settled on a recipe and started toasting the oats and making new 100-pound batches of granola. To help manage this task, four or five student workers produce the granola twice each week. It takes three people two hours to complete a full batch, since the granola condenses in volume when the moisture evaporates from the mixture.
Cleveland noted that there was a "dry spell" in the production of granola right after January, which was due to these students' leaving campus for February break.
Another frequently asked question appearing on comment cards concerns the lack of juice at dinner. Balancing the costs in any kitchen involves constantly looking for ways to conserve funds and juice is an expensive item. If the dining halls had continued to provide juice at dinner, they might have had to cut back on their purchase of proteins, which makes up another large portion of dining hall expenditures.
"The notion of the juice embodies our frustration with managing students' money effectively," commented Cleveland. "Many students ask, 'What are you doing with all the money you are saving?'"
As Cleveland explained it, the College is not actually "saving" money in the dining halls. Instead, the Dining services staff made these cutbacks in an attempt to "expand the students' dollars." Buying fuel, grain, and other expensive supplies adds up. The dining halls spend a lot of time balancing what students want with the expense of those particular items to provide the best quality dining for the funds available.
Given that all of the money is so precisely allotted and stretched, the dining hall staff wishes that with the all-you-can-eat platform of dining, students were simply more responsible and selective about what they choose to put on their plates.
"Our hope is that we are trying an initiative to raise the awareness among the student population about the food waste," said Cleveland.
With the money saved from cutting back on waste, the dining halls could provide more to satisfy the students. Those pounds of food sneaking back into the compost are wasted dollars that could better spent on juice at dinner, or more granola.
So try to reduce your waste and once in a while, try jotting down a positive comment: "Hey Proctor/Atwater/Ross: THANK YOU for all that you do for us!"