After the Heilman Dining Center introduced the Text and Tell program on Feb. 6, a wide range of comments led to a new parfait bar, which opened Saturday, March 24.
The Text and Tell program allows students to text suggestions or comments they have about the food to the dining hall, said Jerry Clemmer, director of residential dining.
Before Text and Tell, dining hall had UR Heard comment cards, said Dave Bevan, production manager and chef at dining hall.
The problem with the comment cards was that the workers would not see any comments until later, and they could not respond to food problems immediately, Bevan said.
So far, Text and Tell has generated 470 texts, Clemmer said. On average, Clemmer said he had received about 10 texts per day.
Bevan said one of the initial comments they had received was about the lack of variety that dining hall offered.
"The parfait bar is a direct result of the lack of variety [comment]," Bevan said.
The parfait bar offers steel cut oats, Greek yogurt, granola, raisins, sliced almonds, grapes, pineapple, honey, brown sugar, cinnamon and a variety of berries.
Clemmer said the dining hall staff was combining all the things that were healthy in the parfait bar. For example, the steel cut oats contain five grams of protein, can contribute to stable blood sugar, are 150 calories for half a cup and have fiber that can lower cholesterol, Clemmer said. He said the sliced almonds were healthier than normal nuts and that the berries were a good source of antioxidants.
Clemmer said the addition of the parfait bar had cost an extra $800 to $1,000 a day. The dining hall has enough room in the budget to have the parfait bar available to customers every Saturday and Sunday for the rest of the semester, Bevan said.
Kimberly Drygas, a senior, said she had been jealous of her friend at Villanova since freshman year because of the parfait bar at the school's dining hall.
"I am happy to see that it has finally been added to weekend brunch," Drygas said. "It has a lot of options, so you can make it exactly how you like it."
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Bevan said the dining hall had also received many requests for corn dogs. Because of this, he said they had added either corn dogs or hot dogs to the burger station every day.
"There are a lot of small things that [customers] probably wouldn't notice that we have changed," Clemmer said.
He said they had tweaked some recipes they had received comments about, and they had added different dressings to the salad bar.
"We are doing what people want," Bevan said, "and the more [texts] we can get, the better."
Text and Tell used to be a complaint board, but now people are recognizing the positives, Clemmer said.
Based on the text responses from February to March, the dining hall has seen a 16 percent increase in food ratings and a 25 percent increase in menu-variety ratings, Clemmer said.
Clemmer said that he had responded to every text he had received about the service and food at dining hall. One thing he noticed was that people did not respond back to his comments, he said.
He said some texts were so vague that it was hard to sometimes figure out what students were saying. He said that he would receive a comment about a food that tasted "bad," and he would respond by asking what about the food made it "bad," but he wouldn't receive a response. Clemmer said he hoped students would start responding to his texts so he could improve whatever problems they might have.
Bevan said that no other changes would be made to the dining hall menu for the rest of the year, but there were some things the staff was looking forward to for next year.
In the fall, Clemmer said dining hall was going to try to make the vegetarian area more vegan-oriented because he had noticed more people were choosing to become vegan. He said he was also going to try to incorporate more gluten-free items.
Clemmer said: "We will do whatever students want us to do. If they have ideas and want us to do things, we will be happy to accommodate that."
Contact staff writer Marie Jayme at marie.jayme@richmond.edu
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