Weybridge Alters Weekly Meals to Conserve Funds

This fall, residents of the Weybridge Environmental House altered the frequency with which they serve meals to the campus population, veering away from a three-year long tradition of providing meals four nights per week. Starting this year, dinners will be held two nights a week, in addition to Saturday brunch.

The Weybridge House, which accommodates 18 Middlebury students this year, is the Environmental Studies and Local Foods Interest House on campus.  Every week, this small cohort of students cooks meals from food collected and bought over the summer for dinners open to the entire school community.

The meals, prepared in Weybridge’s kitchen and served in its living room, allow students the chance to experience what former resident Annie Ulrich ’13 describes as an, “oasis of tranquility” that defines the house.

“I feel like it’s part of the culture at Weybridge to just sit down over a good meal in the kitchen and just sort of talk about whatever’s on your mind,” said Ulrich. “It’s kind of a different pace of life.”

Though the Interest House was founded pre-1990's, its dinners are a relatively new event.  The meals were started three years ago, separate from any kind of college mandate and so entirely student-run.

Starting this year, the house’s student leaders have decided to economize by shifting weekly meals to Monday and Wednesday dinners at 6:30 p.m. and Saturday brunch at 11 a.m.

“We have the same budget that we had last year but we felt like some of the meals last year weren’t quite as complete as we wanted,” house leader Katie Michels ’15 explained. “Both because we didn’t have enough food to stretch that far and also because it was just a lot of time that was required.”

Weybridge house residents hope that the new meal plan will prove to be more cost and time effective. Over the summer, the house has two preservation interns who work to buy, collect and store all of the food that will be used for meals for the rest of the school year. This limited amount of food poses a challenge for the House residents who must estimate the weekly sizes of meals and ration their supplies accordingly.

Michels explained that fewer meals will not only allow the House to more accurately predict attendance and therefore lessen the probability of left-over food, but will also save the student cooks some time.

“We will be serving fewer meals, but the quality is going to be better,” said Michels.

The new change has brought more students to Weybridge house. Saturday brunches, which allow for a wider variety of foods, have been especially popular.

“I think that there is enough of a range of options,” said Ari Lattanzi ’13, a former summer resident of the House and frequent diner. “[The cutback] still keeps the open atmosphere without overburdening Weybridge.”

Both dinner and brunch are open and free for the entire school community. Michels commented that anyone interested in cooking is welcome to join Weybridge residents starting at 4:30 p.m. on dinner nights.  “We’d love to see even more new faces,” she said.