As Hurricane Florence came through North and South Carolina last weekend, University Dining faculty and staff prepared campus dining halls for the students who decided to remain on campus during the storm.
Throughout Hurricane Florence, Fountain, Clark and the Oval Dining Halls remained open during the entire weekend. According to Keith Smith, Director of Board Operations and Sustainability for NC State Dining, employees from campus coffee shops, the Atrium and resident advisors (RAs) helped to keep Fountain, Clark and the Oval running.
“It’s this great partnership that we have with housing where whenever there’s something like this, they will come in and help feed,” Smith said. “The RAs were also a great support in putting together the bags of food and also helping serve those students on the line. Because of all the planning, we were able to reach out and coordinate all those efforts and get everything planned out, so it went really smoothly the whole time.”
Keith said that in order to prevent food waste, University Dining brought in food that would have been utilized the following week for hurricane preparation.
“Basically, we brought in the food that we would use Monday and Tuesday,” Smith said. “That way, it was in the menu so we could just bring the truck over here on Monday and Tuesday instead of bringing in food that we might not otherwise utilize.”
Lisa Eberhart, director of Nutrition and Wellness at NC State, said Fountain was also prepared to use the backup generator in order to keep food production going for students, faculty and staff.
“We were committed to providing food for them if they had issues during the time because we had generators here to run the dining hall and make sure that we could keep going,” Eberhart said.
According to Eberhart, while many universities closed their residence halls and dining options during the storm, NC State kept its open.
“We take it really seriously- the stewardship of these students,” Eberhart said. “Making sure we are taking care of the students, even during an emergency, the best we can.”
Smith said the University Dining also prepared bags of food for students to take back to their dorm rooms in case the weather made getting to the dining halls difficult. Fountain had enough bags to hand out to 3500 people and Clark had enough for 1000.
“We handed out 1,700 bags here on Thursday night and then at Clark we handed out [bags] to about 600 people on Thursday night,” Smith said. “And I also ran some supplies over to North Hall and Avent Ferry because it’s a little bit more isolated over there.”
Fountain had about 2000 people per meal period Thursday, but a lower count per meal period on Friday and Saturday.
“I think students really appreciated having somewhere to come because they didn’t have classes and stuff, they came and hung out,” Smith said. “I think that made the parents and the students feel better, especially the parents. They knew that their students were being taken care of and fed and that NC State is a safe place for them.”
Fountain Dining Hall also fed students from University Towers, who have a different meal plan, for a meal period when the building’s elevator system went down. Eberhart also said that Fountain fed university staff.
“And we fed facility workers and other workers, police, that were around because of the emergency,” Eberhart said.
University Dining will also be utilizing the extra food left over, to prevent from accumulating waste.
“I think some of the food that we got that was shelf stable, we’re going to use for other events on campus,” Eberhart said. “And some of it went back to the company that we buy our food from and they’ll probably utilize it for helping people on the coast.”
Smith said that making decisions prior to Hurricane Florence’s arrival helped University Dining in planning and executing their plan.
“We’ve been through a lot over the years,” Smith said. “It just helped us refine a better plan for providing the food and providing a safe way for our workers to come in as well, I think it just helped us refine our plan.”
