Written by Blake Mathews
At this university, there are certain people, places and things that make up what the Admissions Office would call “The Harding Experience.” Some parts of the Harding Experience may cause a good deal of groaning, like the front lawn swings or the bell tower. Yet, there are questions and mysteries surrounding these objects that Harding students are so familiar with. Will the third swing indeed produce a ring? Why can’t I bring myself to walk under the bell tower alone?
But nothing symbolizes the Harding Experience quite like the cafeteria, almost universally known as “the Caf.” No place on campus produces quite as many student groans, and few places are as misunderstood. Terrie Smith is the Catering Director for Aramark, and she knows the stories behind where our food comes from and where our “Caf swipes” go. She sat down with the Bison and helped us work through the mysteries behind the Harding cafeteria, one question at a time.
Why is it so hard to eat healthy in the Caf?
Students who feel this way need to try thinking entrepreneurially, or at least look a little harder, Smith said. If the vegetables at the front of the comfort food line aren’t what you’re looking for, there’s always a wok station with relatively healthy stir fry ingredients. But not many students have the time or patience to stir fry. If that’s the case, she said, start mixing and matching. One station or line may not have everything that you’re looking for, so grab some basic veggies from the salad bar, some salsa from the international line and some sour cream from the omelette bar.
“You just kind of have to go around and shop for what interests you based on what you’ve got,” Smith said. “If you think about it and you work at it, you can eat healthy. You don’t have to eat pizza.”
By staying creative and not surrendering to pizza and cookies, Smith said she has lost 50 pounds this year, and that’s with two-thirds of her meals eaten among students in the Caf.
How responsible is the Caf for theFreshman 15?
A lot of factors contribute to the dreaded semester of weight gain, food definitely being among them. The Caf offers young men and women who are likely living away from home for the first time a wide variety of drinks, dishes and desserts to choose from. Smith said students that gain weight do so because of the choices they make; we’ve already established that students can eat healthy in the Caf if they want to. Unfortunately, “the things that we want to eat are not the things that are most healthy for us,” she said. “Pizza, corn dogs, ravioli, chicken nuggets … I once said we could serve burritos, corn dogs, ravioli, chicken nuggets and pizza every day and that’d be enough.”
Other choices contribute to the Freshman 15, such as the decision many freshmen make to drive to the Caf rather than walk. That adds up over time, Smith said.
What’s with the international line? It’s just the same ingredients under different flags.
Specialty lines like the international line are managed by the cafeteria manager, production manager and operations manager. They decide what goes into each dish to make it one nationality or another, but realistically, Smith said, a lot of the decision is already made for them.
“Rice is popular practically everywhere. It’s only the seasonings that change,” she said. “Think Asian and you think rice, so you think teriyaki sauce and soy sauce. If you’re thinking Mexican you’ve got rice, but you’ve got salsa and cayenne pepper. If you think Indian, you’ve got curry.”
But it’s not just rice. Smith said that, when serving hundreds of people, there are only a few foods that will please everybody: green beans, carrots, potatoes, broccoli (slightly risky) and corn. Suitable meats are beef, chicken, pork or fish.
“There are only four meats. That’s it. It’s just the sauce that’s different,” she said. But that sauce, along with seasonings, can turn chicken into Mexican chicken, Asian chicken, Cajun chicken or southern fried chicken.
Smith said the Caf’s policy is to use ingredients in as many ways as possible. That’s why students will see diced ham cubes in the salad bar, in their omelets and on their “Hawaiian pizza.” Not only does this allow for more food combinations, but it also minimizes the amount of food that sits around until it goes bad.
“We buy very few items that only have one purpose,” she said, describing how resourceful the Aramark staff can be with its food. “If I run out of bread for something, I can grab pizza dough, brush it with butter, run it through the pizza warmer, slice it and I’ve got breadsticks.”
How often do dishes repeat in the Caf?
Even using the same ingredients, Smith said it normally takes three weeks to cycle through the repertoire of dishes. But when Aramark caters a banquet, as it did with President Bush yesterday evening, the leftovers get brought down to the Caf. And that’s a reason to get excited, Smith said.
“People make fun of leftovers,” she said. “Those leftovers are actually from $15-16 banquets, but we have the ability to use that out in the Caf.”
After the banquet food’s intended recipients are full, there is usually plenty left. This is intentional, Smith said, because Aramark has no way of knowing which dish will be popular, so they prepare enough food to cover every possibility. The leftovers get put back into cold storage and then reheated for the Caf, usually later that day or the next day.
According to Smith, that means the leftovers from President Bush’s dinner should be in the Caf by lunch or dinner today.
When asked about the best time to visit the Caf, Smith smiled and said 4:30 Sunday afternoon, when the leftovers from Harding’s Sunday brunch are reheated and ready to eat.
Smith emphasized that, after a food has been reheated once, it’s thrown out to prevent food-borne illnesses. However, the vast majority of food doesn’t make it that far.
What happens to all those unused Caf swipes at the end of the semester? And all my DCB?
The easiest way to explain why students don’t get to reclaim the leftovers of their meal plan at year’s end is to say that they aren’t worth anything.
“At the end of the semester, you’ve lost your swipes. Those meals don’t actually exist out there somewhere,” Smith said.
She compared meal plans to a season pass, one that guarantees students 100 entries into the Caf. Students pay a flat amount at the beginning of the year, and whether or not they use all 100 entries is entirely up to them. But once the season is over, the entries are gone and the pass doesn’t mean anything.
As for DCB, it does roll over from fall to spring, but at the end of the spring semester it disappears as well. However, the unused DCB actually goes toward keeping the Student Center and the Caf running over the summer semester, when Aramark employs a skeleton crew and actually plans to lose money.
Not enough students buy meal plans over the summer to make operating the Caf profitable, but the unused DCB, however little it may be, takes some of the edge off the loss, Smith said.
What’s next for the student center?
Aramark tries to update the restaraunt selection in the student center once every other year or so, Smith said, in the interest of keeping things fresh. Students are consulted through surveys about what kind of food should be brought in, and the latest round of surveys made it “overwhelmingly” clear that students want “some type of Asian station.”
Whether that means a Panda Express or its Aramark equivalent, Smith said nothing is set in stone yet. There are still space and money issues to resolve; a Panda Express would not fit into the space currently occupied by the weak-selling Freshens.
