Tuffy’s and its Toasted Roll, a signature dessert. At bottom: Don King, assistant director, catering and retail rales; Marijo Nootz, senior director; and Tina Rotundo, executive manager of Haines Food Court, Tuffy’s and Spring Street Market.

Located at the center of MU's campus, the Shriver Center serves as the school's student center, offering students a variety of dining options at the Haines Food Court. The facility provides meeting facilities, a student credit union, bookstore and lounging areas. Tuffy's and the Spring Street Market, a c-store, are also located there, as is the 1809 Room, a seated-service dining area.

The food court and market together do about $7 million in annual sales, about $5 million of that coming from meal plan dollars, according to Marijo Nootz, Shriver's senior director. Shriver is also the home for Carillon Catering, an important service provider both to the campus and to the neighboring community.

“Oxford is a small town and this is the largest venue in the area for special events like conferences, banquets and weddings,” says Nootz.

Catering, once a modest program doing about $300,000 annually, now provides the school with about $2.3 million in annual revenue. Much of that growth came in the last eight years as Carrillon Catering sought to develop its own identity and hired Don King as its catering manager (King is now the Center's assistant director). The Center also runs a catering subset, Direct to You, that provides dropoff food without service options.

Among other initiatives, Shriver recently began providing dining services to one of the off campus fraternity houses. It is also re-creating the 1809 Room to a separately branded foodservice with a more contemporary service model. Meanwhile, a new student center is nearing the end of the planning stage and is scheduled to break ground in 2011. Once opened, the food court will migrate to that facility.