Dining on NC State’s campus is housed within the Campus Enterprises, which is funded by a $97.39 Student Center Operations fee. The fee, paid by all students, goes toward the public availability of hospitality and retail organizations on campus.
Technician spoke to Randy Lait, an alumnus and senior director of hospitality services, which oversees NC State Dining, to talk about the state of dining on campus.
What are some goals that dining wants to accomplish in the upcoming school year?
We have a lot. One of the things I am really proud of about NC State Dining is that every day we are working to do something new or better or special to make our campus experience better for students. I am really focused on plans to upgrade the experiences in the dining halls. We have been doing lots of good things this year to add special events, offer more fresh fruit and lean proteins and do more display cooking stations.
I have plans in the works to expand and improve the interior space of Case Dining Hall in the summer of 2018, and we will begin moving forward on a major renovation of Fountain Dining Hall in 2019. Clark will receive a new serving area and remodeled kitchen in 2020.
We are working on a new program for casual catering items for student organizations based on Tapingo. More details have to be worked out, but I plan to have a program in place by fall. We have also worked with our friends in Student Government to introduce meal credits for Howling Cow at Talley Market.
What are some of the pros and cons that have come along with implementing the Tapingo service across campus?
The pros are that students can pre-order from wherever they are at their convenience, which is a great benefit. I was able to see a geomap of where orders were placed from for Jason’s Deli and Starbucks for a day, and it was fascinating to see students ordering from the residence halls, from the bus line and from 10 feet from the service counter.
The cons have been the impacts on the units from the overwhelming popularity of the program. There are times the Tapingo program has negatively impacted in-person customers when a unit like Jason’s Deli has a line and many Tapingo orders come in at the same time. We keep working to balance these two to provide the best customer experience, but the popularity and use of Tapingo at NC State have been remarkable, beyond what many schools see.
In what ways are you ensuring that on-campus dining keeps a balance between quality and price?
Some feel that collegiate dining programs are running up the cost of education and student debt. I feel very strongly that we need to provide outstanding value to our students. If you compare our dining program costs to NC State’s peer institutions and other ACC schools, you will find our meal plans are a great value, and we offer more options and features like meal credits that many schools do not offer. We have significantly upgraded the culinary talent in our operations and have some amazing chefs with a passion for food. We do lots more scratch cooking, using fresh and local ingredients. We believe in food transparency, so students can know what is in the food and the nutritional content. We buy quality ingredients and leverage our purchasing power to get best pricing nationwide, keeping costs down which allows us to buy better quality. We want our food to be great and affordable, and we think we help make NC State a nationwide leader in value.
What is Dining doing to diversify the options available for students who are vegetarian and vegan?
We have offered vegan and vegetarian options at every meal in the dining halls for 30 years, but we see more interest in these dining preferences than ever before. We are reviewing our menus in a variety of locations and targeting areas for development of new recipes to fit this need. Our 1887 Bistro, for example, needs vegan and vegetarian choices.
Many students have expressed concerns about the prices of meal plans increasing next year. How do you respond to these concerns?
My hope is that students will find value in the new meal plan choices. We tried to address perceived shortcoming in the other plans. For example, with the 10, 12 and 14 meal plan options we have this year, students have often felt ripped off when they only eat eight meals in a week, and those meals disappear on Friday night. Using a meal to enter the dining hall makes students wait until they are hungry enough for a full meal before coming in. The new plans offer anytime access to the dining halls, so students can come in for a snack or a meal or anything in between, or just to come visit with friends, all without worrying about spending a meal.
I know that some students are not around on the weekends, so we added a Monday through Friday version of the Freedom Pass plan, called the “Weekday plan.” We did keep a 150-block plan option for students who don’t need to eat on campus as often, and we offered this as a low-price option.
It is also important to note that dining dollars are now included in the price of the meal plans, so the prices did not go up as much as it might appear at first glance. This made getting the plan simpler when selecting a plan for the first time.