Overworked staff. Competing commitments to sustainability and convenience. Complex dietary needs and restrictions. And very long lines of hungry students.
These are just a few of the challenges faced by college foodservice directors… and here are the campus dining trends that are arising in response.
Convenience
Students, as a rule, would like to expend the least possible amount of energy and time to feed themselves. Thus convenience has become the number-one college dining trend — and the driver of innovation in how food is made and delivered.
- Aramark just launched a mobile ordering platform for college campuses called The Drop. Students can order from several virtual brands, such as Tenders Love Chicken and Jack*s Burritos, which use a university’s existing kitchen space, equipment, and staff.
- Sodexo has rolled out food delivery with Kiwibot on more than 25 U.S. college campuses. Customers use an app to order their food, track its progress as the smiley-faced robot rolls their way, then open the lid to retrieve their meal.
- Food lockers became popular during the pandemic as a contactless pickup option and continue to be used on many campuses. Flow-through lockers open onto a food-prep area for speedy service from kitchen to customer. Front-loading lockers can be placed anywhere, which helps alleviate traffic in busy dining areas.
- Reusable food containers may help reduce the environmental impact of the huge campus demand for delivery and takeout food. Several U.S. schools are beginning to use ReusePass, an app-based program that allows students to check out and return reusable containers.
Automation
Lehigh University recently unveiled its Convenience Corridor, an area dedicated to high-tech, high-speed dining. There, you’ll find a Yo-Kai Express robotic ramen maker; a self-service Starbucks drink maker; and vending machines for salads, sandwiches, and sushi. You won’t find an on-site worker.
More schools are likely to adopt such staff-less solutions in the years to come. Universities have a pressing reason for adopting foodservice automation — saving money. Their motivation is “the looming enrollment cliff,” according to a recent survey by foodservice software maker CBORD. Declining birthrates will cause a drop in undergraduate enrollment beginning in 2025, experts say, and campus dining revenues will decline as well.
“The dining rooms aren’t getting as much traffic; students are going off campus and living off campus more,” Lorena Harris, CBORD’s chief marketing officer, tells Inside Higher Ed. “The kiosks and food trucks and everything else come into play when schools are trying to keep that revenue … they want to make more services available to keep that money flowing.”
Many universities position this shift toward automation as easing the burden on workers. In practice, it doesn’t always work that way. As one Oberlin student notes, “I’ve observed long lines at all of the newly automated facilities, orders coming in faster than ever, and AVI [Foodsystems] workers still struggling to keep up.”
Accommodations
It’s getting harder to find college students who eat anything and everything. The number of Gen Z individuals who describe their diets as “unrestricted” decreased from 66% to 58% between 2019 and 2021, according to research by YPulse. Increasingly, young people eat diets that are gluten-free, dairy-free, carb-free, vegetarian, vegan or pescatarian. Add the fact that nearly 11% of U.S. adults have a food allergy (of those, 45.3% are allergic to multiple foods), and it’s clear that the need to accommodate special diets on college campuses has never been higher.
One college foodservice trend that’s picking up steam: dining concepts that work for multiple dietary restrictions. Examples include a food truck that’s both vegan and gluten-free, or dedicated dining stations that are free of all the top allergens.
Hamilton Beach Commercial supports allergy-safe foodservice with cross-contamination container bands: bands that easily affix to the handle of your blender jars and match your HACCP color code system. Our well-loved line of kitchen dishers are color-coded as well.
Community
Many of the college dining trends we’re seeing in 2024 and beyond present an entirely new paradigm. Where students once sat together and socialized in busy dining halls, they now have the option to eat meals alone. Where students once smiled at their favorite foodservice workers, they now get their meals from faceless kiosks or lockers. How can colleges restore that sense of community in their dining programs?
Take inspiration from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), which won a Best Concept award from Food Management for its remodeled Selleck Food Court. Once a typical buffet-style dining hall, Selleck turned to takeout-only during the pandemic. It now features mobile ordering from seven ghost-kitchen concepts for counter pickup (instead of lockers, which were deemed too impersonal).
“Since all food was ordered and paid for on the mobile app (using meal plans or credit cards), the venue no longer needed a front desk or cashier to serve as access control,” Food Management explains, “so the newly renovated dining room was opened to all students without restriction. With this change, it became a community center, an area where students can eat, study, or unwind between classes.” The result: a 23% reduction in full-time staff and a 110% revenue increase.
Hamilton Beach Commercial is a leader in foodservice innovation. Browse our line of commercial kitchen equipment for schools and universities to speed service, reduce food waste, and give students the fresh and delicious meal options they crave.
