Recent initiatives

COVID policies are no longer in place at IU, with food service and safety being the top priorities. The all-you-care-to-eat program has take-out options at a couple of the smaller locations and GrubHub continues to operate on campus. 

Recent initiatives

In the fall of 2020 ISU Dining transitioned a smaller AYCTE dining center to a grab and go location, then returned it to dine-in the following fall but found that students desired a portable option to utilize their dining center swipes, so the program resumed the grab and go model of service for the current academic year.

ISU Dining utilizes the GET app through CBORD for mobile ordering for around 10 locations on campus from around 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. with the app providing a mobile ID option in place of swiping a card. Guests can pre-order items like specialty beverages, smoothies and meals, and the platform also is used for ordering from GET & Go retail locations, which have bundled options for meal plan holders to use up to two dining center swipes per day. By ordering through the GET app, the department can control the number of orders it can service over a 15 minute period.

Going forward, ISU’s largest dining center, Union Drive Marketplace, will be undergoing its fourth phase of a renovation. Due to its size and the short amount of time for construction over summers, the approximately $6.5 million project is being conducted over four summers with phase 1 (involving the mezzanine level where the Admissions team brings prospective students), phase 2 (the large dining room) and phase 3 (the seating areas and three venues) completed and phase 4 this coming summer targeting the three remaining venues. Following the completion of this project will be a renovation of the Seasons Marketplace—which was last renovated in 2008—over the summers of 2024 and 2025, with minimal changes already starting this summer. 

Also coming up is a transitioning to NetMenu with CBORD. The program has already implemented a self-checkout at one of its market/c-store locations and is moving to a cashless dining program starting in mid-May.

Recent initiatives

While there are no remnants from COVID-era policies still in place at KSU, the dining program has increased its take-out options post COVID while struggling with both student and hourly employment numbers, which has limited any new initiatives. Also, residential numbers have been low post-COVID, for various reasons, though they were up about 200 residents for fall semester. While there are no new dining initiatives this school year, the program is in the beginning phase of reimagining and reopening a closed dining center.

Recent initiatives

KSU has adopted the Ozzi system for its residential takeout program while COVID-era Q&I space is still active and managed through catering operations. Also, most retail outlets have adopted and changed to the contactless payments and self-order kiosk model.

The dining program also offers mobile/pre-ordering on campus at limited locations between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Meanwhile, a self-operated Grill concept opened last August and one for pizza followed in November 2022 while a commission based community restaurant for Mediterranean food opened in September. All three of these concepts are in retail dining and a downtown dining dollars program to partner with local restaurants began in August 2022.

Other recent additions have included a Sick Meal (acute illness) pick up program instituted last September in residential dining and an Indian BBQ themed community restaurant concept that debuted after spring break in early April in residential dining with a permanent location at a station in one of the meal plan locations. An in-house commissary cold kitchen production and delivery initiative is planned to open June 1.

Recent initiatives

Campus dining at Miami University has moved beyond the takeout options of the COVID period though it still has plenty of attractive on-campus options for students to grab a to-go meal using their meal swipes. The dining program offers the convenience of mobile/pre-ordering through the Grubhub app throughout the entire Armstrong Student Center and both Starbucks locations. Additionally, there are Grubhub kiosks in place within the Student Center where guests can place their order. 

In Fall 2023, Panera will become the newest dining destination inside the Student Center, while a locally rooted coffee café along with Farmer’s Fridge fresh vending will debut within the walls of the recently built Clinical Health Sciences & Wellness facility. 

Last, but most certainly not least, will be the unveiling of Bell Tower, said to be one of the first-of-its-kind large ghost kitchens on a college campus. With cutting-edge food lockers and delivery robots, Bell Tower will showcase rotating food concepts from which ordering will be made easy with state-of-the-art Grubhub kiosks or the Grubhub app, allowing customers to conveniently pick up their meals from a food locker in Bell Tower or have it delivered right to their locations by Starship robots. 

Recent initiatives

A number of changes were made during COVID that are still included in MSU Dining’s operational plan currently. They include the Combo-X-Change (CX) meal exchange program that allows students to use their dining plan at retail operations and foodservice partners, which have been augmented with concepts like Panera, Panda Express, Subway and the program-operated State Room restaurant in the campus hotel. Additionally, the dining plans that previously included six CXs per week with usage limited to one per day have been increased to 12 per week with unlimited usage per day. Also, takeout from the dining halls was introduced during COVID and it still remains as an option at all of the residential dining halls. There is also mobile order available at two locations from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m, seven days a week

In fall 2023, MSU will be converting one of its retail locations in the main library from a Sparty’s to a newly designed full-service Starbucks and it is also bringing in 10 Farmer’s Fridge vending machines to support dining offerings in areas where food options are limited. The program is also currently setting up the Avenue C self-checkout vending market in one location with hopes to expand to more locations.

Recent initiatives

OSU Dining has fully resumed pre-COVID operations with all dining halls open. Mobile/pre-ordering is offered at all retail locations and some potions of all you care to eat locations and the program has increased the variety it offers students by partnering with local restaurants. In addition, the dining program has been very successful with the autonomous rover food delivery program it launched in 2021.

Recent initiatives

OSU Dining has fully resumed pre-COVID operations with all dining halls open. Mobile/pre-ordering is offered at all retail locations and some potions of all you care to eat locations and the program has increased the variety it offers students by partnering with local restaurants. In addition, the dining program has been very successful with the autonomous rover food delivery program it launched in 2021.

Recent initiatives

OU Culinary Services locations are all still cashless, accepting only meal plan flex, debit, credit, Google and Apple Pay, and the Bobcat Cash reloadable debit account as forms of payment. Also, mobile ordering on OHIO EATS through the Transact Mobile app is available from nine on-campus retail locations, with pickup as early as 7:45 a.m. and as late as 10 p.m. These retail locations include two campus cafes—The Front Room Coffeehouse and Steeped and Stirred—campus markets Jefferson Marketplace, Boyd Market and Nelson Market; campus eateries Brick City Deli, the West 82 food court and the Latitude 39 full-service restaurant; and The Hungry Cat food truck. Using the OHIO EATS app, students, faculty, and staff gain points redeemable for food, beverages, and merchandise, as well as having access to participate in ongoing contests and promotions.

Among recent initiatives, the current academic year saw the debut of OH! yOU Cookin? a new comfort-food concept in the Nelson Dining Court, and Life is Sweet in the Baker University Center student union that features house-baked sweet and savory treats and locally roasted coffee brewed to order.

OU Dining also partnered with the Restaurant Hotel & Tourism program to provide experiential learning opportunities and reinstate its Student Leader program to a college credit course. In the 2023-24 academic year, it plans to debut a new Grab and Go chicken concept as well as a second food truck.

Meanwhile, in the current academic year, OU Dining introduced…

• enhanced digital signage in its resident dining courts that display menu items, nutritional information, allergens and announcements of upcoming events;

• implemented nearly 400 new recipe items in the resident dining courts based upon students wants/needs, focusing on local, international and vegan/vegetarian foods;

• hired a professional marketing and design manager and created a marketing team of students to spearhead its social media, video and print media marketing;

• partnered with Green Dot and the Ohio Hockey team to create a winter wonderland in the Nelson banquet space that included an iceless ice-skating rink, a s’mores bar, a hot chocolate bar, interactive cookie decorating, the OU hockey team skating with students and representatives from Green Dot to support the OU community to step up when people are in need or in distress;

• engaged with students through its Culinary Services Development Committee to develop special events for spring and fall, implement new menu items, rebrand the Fresh Take convenience foods made in the department’s Central Food Facility, and develop the grab and go chicken venue that is coming this fall;

• partnered with its prime vendor to host a spring food show that featured new items from vendors for students and their parents to sample and give feedback for possibly adding to fall menus;

• partnered with a College of Business Human Resources class where students created a project using transferable skills to promote Culinary Services employment;

• hosted a job fair to provide employment opportunities to members of the community for the well-being of students during which two radio stations broadcasted remotely and the Hungry Cat food truck gave away free food, resulting in hiring 42 full-time employees to help serve OU students;

• held an event at Nelson featuring foods from Ghana in support of the Outlet Affinity group’s effort to focus on the BIPOC student community, cultivating wellbeing, building stronger connections to campus and supporting all aspects of being a BIPOC student; and

• hosted numerous culinary events at the Culinary Studio in Jefferson Marketplace,  including a traditional Japanese maki roll cooking demonstration.

Recent initiatives

Illinois retained its Good2Go carry-out program that allows guests to purchase a reusable container to take a meal from the dining center using a meal plan swipe from its COVID-era policies but is otherwise back to normal operation. It offers online ordering via its app at its two largest retail locations—57 North between 10 a.m. and 9 p.m. and at TerraByte between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.—and continues to explore further online ordering opportunities. It also had a successful series of “Cooking with Chefs” events in its training kitchen, which provides students the opportunity to interact with chefs while learning culinary skills.

M Dining to Go continues to be available to meal plan holders as the one remnant of COVID era policies at UM Dining, which also offers GET mobile ordering during regular business hours for retail locations on campus, when students can order from their mobile device or through the GET website. Among recent additions to the program is Residential T-9, which offers one dish daily at lunch and dinner that is free from the top nine allergens. Coming up is a new point of sale system for retail outlets in late 2023.

Recent initiatives

M Food Co., powered by Chartwells Higher Education, has been UMN's dining provider for nearly a year. It offers mobile ordering through the Boost app, a free pre-ordering pick-up app for all campus retail dining outlets that allows students to use their Dining Dollars and Gopher GOLD tenders to order food at hours are consistent with retail dining operational hours, and even offers specific limited-time-offers available only on the app. As of March 2023, just under 7,000 students had downloaded Boost. For takeout, students can utilize reusable food containers at all dining halls through a once-per-day takeout option.

In addition to the Boost mobile ordering platform, M Food Co. brought to UM the Dine On Campus app, which provides real-time information on dining hours, events, feedback, and more, and uses it heavily to provide information to students. Also, UM dining halls now feature new "Happy Or Not" kiosks, which give customers a quick and easy way to give feedback on their dining experiences while the Foodie Feedback student-oriented feedback system has been deployed campus-wide to offer quick feedback responses in the retail environment.

In terms of recent upgrades and additions, all of the dining halls received visual rebranding and face-lifts as part of M Food Co.'s debut on campus. In addition, several new retail concepts opened, including the Crave banh-mi, bowl and sandwich location at the St. Paul campus, with a second location planned for a Fall 2023 opening on the main campus. Also new is Shake Smart, a brand aimed at fitness-oriented individuals that opened in the Health & Recreation Center last September, and Minnesota Mu, a special coffee brand developed in collaboration with the university that now has four locations open and one more on the way this fall. In addition, M Food Co. opened the Bistro at Northrop and the Eatery at the Arboretum in 2022 and has a new contract for residential dining on the Rochester campus to commence this summer.

The account now also has a devoted Marketing & Sustainability Manager who promotes Chartwells sustainability initiatives and works closely with the UMN Office of Sustainability for event programming. M Food Co. appears at the Sustainability Action Fair, among many other sustainability and wellness events.

As part of the Chartwells dining program, M Food Co. runs several events per week, especially in residential dining spaces, with the events promoted via new social media channels, especially Instagram and Tik Tok. As a result, Chartwells says student engagement has grown steadily since its debut on campus last summer.

Recent initiatives

UM Dining added a to go container to its largest AYCE location during COVID and students are not wanting that to go away. Meanwhile, all other locations already provided to go options. The program also has seven locations that offer mobile order and two that are mobile order exclusively with the latest taking mobile orders until 11:00 p.m.

One major recent change in the dining program has the switch last fall semester of an AYCE lunch to an a la carte, which has been very successful. Meanwhile, the program is hoping for a renovation at one of its locations to begin in December this year once the semester ends. The project is currently in design and awaiting campus approval. UM Dining is also trying to bring back sustainability initiatives that went by the wayside during COVID. It is currently doing limited pre-consumer waste composting and hopes to add all locations along with post-consumer waste composting this fall.

Recent initiatives

Things have pretty much returned to normal with regards to COVID restrictions at UNL, though the dining program has kept and currently offers many more to-go options than it did prior to the pandemic. Meanwhile, Selleck Dining was converted to a venue with seven different restaurants from which students order with a mobile app and can then pick up their food to dine in or carry out.

In fact, the mobile app has become very quickly integrated into UNL Dining’s services with not only all seven Selleck restaurants offering mobile ordering but the option is also available at the three campus Husker Heroes Sandwich shops and at the Subway, Steak n Shake and Starbucks in the Student Union. Late night services at Harper and Abel Dining centers are also available through mobile ordering as are weekend services at Harper and East Dining. Of the average 12,000 daily transactions across campus each day, about 5,000 are mobile orders.

Among recent debuts are Moxie’s Gluten Free Restaurant in Selleck Dining, the late night American Grill in Abel Dining and the Tazza Coffee Cart at the University Medical Center. The program also added the Yes Chef Café in the College of Business to dining meal plans and mobile ordering, introduced Godfather’s Pizza into the Herbie’s Markets and Selleck Dining and introduced the program’s first food truck, Harper’s Smokehouse, to campus with meal plan, cash, and credit card sales.

UNL Dining is currently testing Nutraslice in Cather Dining and looking to deploy Happy or Not by the end of the Spring semester.

Recent initiatives

In August 2022, Notre Dame Dining introduced a new retail concept, The Gilded Bean, to the newly renovated Hammes Notre Dame campus bookstore, which proudly serves Starbucks Coffee, bagels, bagel sandwiches and pastries. 

This February, it launched its autonomous food and beverage delivery service via Grubhub with the robot delivery offering being part of its ongoing effort to innovate and and it has already provided significant benefit to the community by conveniently providing a food delivery service to customers, filling a service void. The robots increased operational productivity, expanded omni-channel retail strategy and provided flexibility and accessibility to students, faculty, and staff as well as being a fun addition to campus. The service launched with six locations and has already expanded the dining program’s service offering due to their overwhelming success.   

In April 2023, Notre Dame Dining is planning to leverage an underutilized kitchen space to trial a ghost kitchen concept with autonomous delivery. Scheduled to only be available during select late night hours, new concept is designed to provide a solution to the demand for late night food options.

Other recent initiatives include updating the food allergen policy to reflect the latest standards and include sesame in labeling protocols and offering Grubhub kiosk pre-ordering for select food stations at all campus dining halls and most campus retail units.

Also, all Covid era policies and restrictions have been eliminated.

Recent initiatives

UW is back to 100% normal after the COVID experience. It offers both mobile ordering for pick up and delivery via autonomous delivery vehicles at all of its facilities, with the operating hours matching those of the dining operations. The Fall of 2023 will see the launching a Shake Smart concept at one of the newly constructed recreational facilities and discussions are in process to look at launching an autonomous c-store location as well as implement automated turnstile entry into the two largest dining facilities.