Onsite Foodservice

High Expectations

I have recently developed an interest in Hospitality Management. Hospitality seeks to provide shelter and care for travelers of all sorts. I learned a lot about this when I walked El Camino de Santiago, a 550+ mile pilgrimage hike that relies on the kindness and hospice of others to complete it. I know the importance of Hospitality and the value it has on a day to day basis. In this blog post I will be examining the food and business side at the North Dining Halls as well as explain the ins and outs of Onsite Food Service.

 

There are two kinds of operations for Onsite Site Food Services:

  1.     Self op: An organization that exists for a purpose other than providing food services to the public or to internal clientele, and chooses to manage their foodservice operations themselves (rather than contracting with a management company).
  2.      In self-op, each operation has to “reinvent the wheel.”
  3. But, we get to invent it any way we want to…
  4.     dominates School Food service, Healthcare and Senior Services
  5.    Contract: Using an outside provider to provide services that are not part of the client’s primary business.
  • Onsite Food Service operations are located in organizations that do not have food service as their “primary” business or purpose and may be “for-profit” or “not-for-profit.”

 

Penn State Dining halls works as a self-op Onsite Food Service, and that comes with many benefits and disadvantages. As noted one disadvantage is that they have to “reinvent the wheel” meaning they have to start from scratch. Penn State need to balance the cost, accessibility and quality of their service and product to insure maximum participation.

 

Millennials are categorized as:

  • Confident
  • Connected
  • Open to Change
  • Food Knowledgeable

The hospitality industry is trying to adjust to these shifts in the population by creating niche markets for younger customers (who have greater discretionary spending than previous generations), young families, and aging customers at the other end.

As a result, new concepts are being offered such as “fast casual’ dining (Fast Casual: Full-service quality in a quick-service format; Hybrid that combines convenience with higher-quality ingredients).

Millennials are food savvy. We are not easy to fool. In a globalized world the diffusion of idea and different cuisines flows freely through society. Not only do we expect good food but we expect to be surprised by what we are eating. The thrill and experience over caloric intake.

The reason they Penn State is able to subsidize the cost is because they are banking on the difference between points bought and participation. Meaning, Penn State wants you to waste those points at the end of the year to balance out the cheap cost of food. Naturally Penn State chose self-op so they could squeeze out money from its customers, otherwise they would have to pay a company like Aramark.

Weekly Food Review

Breakfast: For Breakfast they had a buffet which included, eggs, mushroom swiss eggs, rice, french toast, english muffin egg sandwich, sausage patty and pancakes/waffles. Although sounding good the food was sub par. The eggs had zero spices what so ever and the egg english muffin was cold and seemingly petrified. Breakfast was disappointing but many times it is not. Breakfast is a hit or miss

Lunch: For Lunch they had cheese ravioli, smoke house burger slider, veggie paella, pizza, pasta, corn, carrots, and french fries. Lunch was pretty good, I had the ravioli and Corn. Itwas something that was not too hard to mess up.

Dinner: For Dinner I had Thai spicy tofu, rice, sauteed broccoli, and brussel sprouts. Again, it was pretty good but nothing had any damn seasoning and that sucks.