When students and administrators join resources to improve the food on campus, cafeteria is no longer a dirty word.
It’s steak week at the Creelman Marketplace, a food-court style of cafeteria at the University of Guelph. The chef at the grill station is sizzling up steak fajitas to order for a long lineup. The featured pizza, also cooked on the spot, is steak and blue cheese. The cafeteria’s always popular 100 Mile Grill has added Philly Cheese Steak Poutine to its usual selection of locally sourced burgers and homemade fries.
Mark Kenny, procurement coordinator for U of Guelph’s hospitality services, bought the 1,200 Canadian AA steaks the school will use this week, including 134 ribeyes sold at one dinner hour. “When we do steak week,” says Mr. Kenny, “it’s crazy.” After his own lunch – the pizza, which he photographs and posts on Twitter, then savours while pondering whether it needs more blue cheese – it’s a chat with Gordon Cooledge, an executive sous chef, beside the meticulously labelled salad bar. Mr. Kenny is excited about next week’s theme: food truck week. The chef corrects him: it’s actually street food. “I don’t know how that got out there,” says Mr. Cooledge.
So, there’s a bit of a broken telephone at U of Guelph over food. This can happen when you communicate about the subject so much to the team, to students, via social media and at conferences. Mr. Kenny’s core job is bringing in the raw goods to feed the school’s 23,000 students, faculty and staff (in particular the 5,000 first-year resident students on a mandatory meal plan) as well as for hospitality’s full-service catering business that does all events on campus and some around the city too.
Diane Peters
University Affairs
March 11, 2015
