Dining Enters a New Era At Princeton

Mar 1, 2008 12:00 PM

Change does not come easily to an institution that is more than 260 years old. Nevertheless, Princeton University — which was chartered in 1746 when the American head of state was a George from England, not Texas — has boldly embarked on a fundamental restructuring of its residential college system, a change with deep implications for many campus departments, not the least dining services.

This past fall, Princeton kicked off an ambitious program that will establish a series of four-year residential colleges, a first for a campus where two-year colleges have been the norm. The change is designed to keep more third- and fourth-year students in the same residential facilities as freshmen and sophomores, where the different classes could socialize and take many of their meals together in the residential dining facilities. If successful, it would represent a dramatic change from Princeton's current culture, in which most students leave the residences and stop frequenting dining halls following sophomore year.

At A Glance

Name: Princeton University Dining Services
Annual Revenues: $23 million
Meals Served: 2 million/yr.; 13,000/day
Staff: 200 hourly full-time; 60 management; 50-75 temp/part-time; 150-175 students
Top Management: Stuart Orefice, director; Fred Pierson, ass't director-retail; Susan Pierson, ass't director-residential; Robert Harbison, culinary concept coordinator

Princeton's Department of Dining Services (DDS) is responding to the challenge by completely overhauling the way it operates residential dining, both physically and philosophically.

The physical changes are most dramatically reflected in a capital improvement program that unveiled its first fruits last fall — two new dining halls (one actually a renovated consolidation of two previous facilities) bristling with fresh food stations, to-order meal choices and front-of-the-customer food preparation.

But as transforming as the physical changes are, it is the way the department has changed its approach to residential dining that is most striking.

EYES ON THE PIES. Rockey-Mathey staffer Johanson Ugalde shows off one of his creations.

Gone is a top-down approach where the dining halls were cookie-cutter reflections of menus determined centrally. In its place is a system in which the onsite chefs are in charge.

Chicken breast with grilled vegetables ready to be served.

“When I started in 1992, we had one chef; now we have 14, with as many as three in one dining hall, depending on its size,” proudly notes Dining Director Stu Orefice. “And those chefs are in charge of the menu, so that instead of five dining halls all serving the same thing at the same time, the chefs in each determine what they will serve each day.”

In the process, the role of Executive Chef Rob Harbison has evolved. As culinary concept coordinator, he now concentrates on retail and catering operations, oversees all construction projects and has authority over all equipment purchases.

The Big Idea

Fostering Competition With Fiscal Responsibility

AN EXPANDING ROSTER OF CHEFS. (seated, l. to r.) Chef Doug Stehle, Sous Chef Christeen Griffiths, Chef Rob Harbison, Chef Brad Ortega. (back, l. to r.) Chef Michael Gattis, Chef Larry Frazer, Sous Chef Manny Sierra, Chef Alex Trimble, Chef Manager Dan Slobodien, Chef Gary Bowlsbey, Pastry Chef Heather Minnich.

The key to Princeton University's new approach to residential dining lies in encouraging a spirit of competition among the dining halls, says Stu Orefice, director of dining services. Orefice took as his model the retail-style dining environment implemented some years ago at the University of Washington in Seattle, where individual dining outlets were managed by chefs who determined daily menus based on what they perceived their customers wanting. In effect, the chef managers run their own “restaurants” and compete for business in a quasi-commercial business environment.

“We took the Washington model and added not one but up to three chefs, per unit,” says Orefice. “I feel it gives us better balance, more checks and balances. For example, I think it's a good idea to have separate managers doing the inventory and checking the food in at the dock. If you don't separate the person doing the ordering from the one checking it in, you can end up repeating the same mistake. I think this is one reason why we not only are doing well with food quality but financially as well.”

The chef empowerment approach does have its pitfalls, and Orefice was determined to minimize them while retaining the advantages. One major issue was purchasing. At UW, chefs initially got considerable freedom to buy the products they wanted, sometimes resulting in cost overruns.

At Princeton, Orefice says that purchasing freedom is curtailed somewhat so that the department can still leverage its considerable volume to get favorable pricing.

“We've come up with lists of approved vendors and approved products,” he explains. “If a chef wants to add a product not on the list, he can, but he has to let us know so that we can meet our auditing policies for the campus. We give them freedom, but also want to make sure we have some structure. We tell the chef, ‘You can write your own menus and be entrepreneurial, but there are some standards you have to maintain.' So far it's worked. The first semester we are performing extremely well financially in the residential college program.”

Orefice has emphasized hiring chefs with commercial business experience to run the new-style dining halls, and is incenting them by offering bonuses that the chefs can invest in their operations.

The bonus is based on the operation meeting a series of target numbers like food cost percentage, customer counts and overtime expenses. There are also numbers promoting department goals like sustainability — the amount of paper goods used, for example. The target numbers are tailored to each operation, taking into account its resources and location. Operations with greater potential have steeper targets to meet (Orefice compares it to a “handicap” number in golf that evens out the different skill levels of a group of players).

“We consider only numbers they can control,” says Orefice. “If they meet their targets they can get $10,000-20,0000 a year to spend on equipment they'd prefer to have but that we wouldn't necessarily purchase for them. A chef might decide to purchase a new immersion blender, while another one might go with a shawarma machine to make gyro sandwiches.”

The spending latitude even extends to aesthetic areas like uniforms and servingware that can distinguish dining halls from each other even further. “Chefs are free to spend their bonuses on new uniform designs for their staff, though we would have to approve it,” Orefice notes. “Once it's approved, we'll maintain it for them in their regular budgets.”

As for servingware like plates, “they can pick out a pattern as if they were opening a restaurant. We want it to look and feel like a restaurant service in an all-you-can-eat environment.”