Best of Show: Stanford University

A New Training Table

Arrillaga’s suite area also serves as a custom training table for Stanford athletes. A significant upgrade over the previous training table program, it also brings Stanford athletes in closer contact with the broader student body, fostering campus community.

The success of the new facility can be seen in the numbers. Over a third of students on meal plans eat at Arrillaga daily, including an increasing number of graduate students, whose numbers patronizing Arrillaga climbed from 3,000 in its first month to 5,300 by March. Arrillaga has also boosted voluntary meal plan purchases by university staff, from less than 500 before its opening to over 1,200 by this past spring.

Originally slated to serve 500-600 transactions a day, Arrillaga has hit as many as 1,500 in a single meal period and about 3,000 a day. At the same time, Arrillaga has not displaced the existing residence-centered communal dining culture but complemented it. After an initial burst of curiosity about the spectacular new dining facility, counts have stabilized at a point where Arrillaga offers an alternative instead of a replacement for student socializing spaces.

PROJECT MEMBERS:

Shirley Everett
Senior associate vice provost, Residential & Dining Enterprises

Stanford Dining:
Eric Montell
Executive director
Gary Arthur
Director of operations
Cynthia Liu
Administrative program manager
Matt Rothe
Sustainable food program manager
Elaine Magee
Wellness & Performance Dining nutritionist
David Iott
Central production kitchen executive chef
Michelle Lagana
Central production kitchen general manager
Mark Bonino and his team from Stanford’s Land, Buildings & Real Estate department were the project manager liaisons between R&DE, Vance Brown Builders and other outside organizations including RIM Architects, Hoover Architects, Hanbury Evans Wright Vlattas + Company, Cini-Little International, Duray Duncan and Black Box Network Services.