Foodservice

Xavier combines self-service with attendants to ensure a safe foodservice operation

The university is betting that self-service in combination with manual staffing will provide a sanitary meal experience for students.

July 15, 2020 by Elliot Maras — Editor, Kiosk Marketplace & Vending Times

When students head back to the campus at Xavier University in Cincinnati next month following the COVID-19 shutdown, they'll be in for a whole new dining experience.

Since the majority of students left the campus in March because of the coronavirus pandemic, the school's auxiliary services has been busy working with its vending and foodservice providers — Chartwells Higher Education, AVI Foodsystems Inc. and Pepsi Beverages Co. — on making sure students can dine and snack in a safe environment.

Jennifer Paiotti says Xavier is offering a 'hybrid' foodservice approach to better ensure safety.

"We want to cater to our community and allow them to have the experience of what dining at Xavier is in the safest and healthiest way," Jennifer Paiotti, marketing director for auxiliary services at Xavier University, told Vending Times in a phone interview.

"We're working on going completely contactless and cashless for the safety of our students and our community and our associates," she said.

The staff expands

The university has expanded the dining staff so that attendants will individually hand students most of their meals and reduce the need to touch food and utensils. Twenty full-time associates have joined the staff, with possibly more to come. At the same time, self-service won't be eliminated. Attendants will serve students beverages from fountain drink machines, and vending machines will still be available in residence halls under a more intensive cleaning schedule.

Paiotti described the new operation as a "hybrid" approach.

"We are going to require all meal hall plan holders to make a reservation through the mobile app to eat in our residential dining halls for eat-in and carry-out purposes," she said. Students will be able to order and pay for their purchases before they enter the dining hall.

"That way we can make sure that we're following social distancing guidelines on how many we're able to have inside the building at any given time," she said.

A pickup station for mobile orders will be available in the atrium outside the dining room.

Self-service fountain machines such as the PepsiCo Bubly machine have proven popular, and will be manned by attendants.

Associates to serve orders

Students will no longer select their own entrees, sides and condiments at the serving stations. Instead, associates will hand out wrapped plates, cups and utensils. The school had already removed trays from its dining halls.

"An associate will pour the coffee for you, hand you the cup, pour bowls of cereal, toast bagels for you," she said in describing the coffee, juice and cereal station. "Chartwells felt it was a really great opportunity to provide fresh ingredients, fresh local produce and turn them into really nice composed dishes."

Individually wrapped servings

The self-serve salad bar will be replaced by a station offering packaged salads with fresh proteins and fresh vegetables. The deli station will offer daily rotating selections of individually wrapped hot and cold sandwiches. The pizza and pasta stations will similarly serve pizza and pasta.

Attendants will also pour and serve beverages at the self-serve fountain dispensers. Chartwells, which manages the dispensers in partnership with Pepsi Beverages Co., will clean the dispensers every 20 minutes the dining hall is in operation.

"It's in a position that we'll be able to make it a served station," she said for the beverage dispensers.

The staff will not be serving drinks from the Pepsi Spire machine, a touchscreen-enabled, multi-beverage dispenser, only because there is not sufficient space for a server near that particular machine. Paiotti is hopeful this will soon change.

"As we're finding out more about COVID, our hope is that we'll be able to turn it back on some point in the fall," Paiotti said regarding the Pepsi Spire machine. "We're not going to remove them."

The pizza vending machine will continue to serve students.

Vending, micro market service to continue

All buildings on campus will continue to have unattended snack, cold beverage and hot beverage vending machines which still accept cash in addition to debit, credit and campus cards.

Pepsi Beverages Co. and AVI Foodsystems, which services the snack vending machines, are following CDC sanitation guidelines.

"We will still have all of our vending machines, including our pizza ATM," Paiotti said. "It's a completely cashierless system," she said for the pizza machine located outside one of the dining halls which bakes pizzas in three minutes.

AVI Foodsystems also manages a micro market called the Musketeer Market that was installed in January in a recreation center. The micro market — which serves snacks, beverages and fresh and frozen food – accepts credit cards, debit cards, campus cards and mobile payments. Students will pay by swiping payment cards against a bar code scanner.

AVI Foodsystems will also have an associate onsite to oversee cleaning in addition to stocking the micro market.

Catered events on campus will also have more servers and use more disposable serveware Paiotti said. Served stations will replace self-serve buffets.

Cash will be accepted in the beginning, but the goal is to eventually remove it from transactions. "We're actually going to promote going contactless and cashless," Paiotti said.

Students will still be able to use cash to load funds onto their campus payment cards at kiosks, however.

"It's a safe way for students to be able to utilize that cash without having to come in contact with social distancing," Paiotti said.

The university is clearly betting that self-service in combination with manual staffing will provide a sanitary meal experience for students.

For an update on how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting convenience services, click here.

Images courtesy of Xavier University.