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It?s 6 o?clock on a Friday night, and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students fill the lobby and front steps of Sandburg Hall, making weekend plans.
Not long ago, many students would have packed their bags after the last class and gone home for the weekend. But the longtime commuter university gradually is enticing more students to stick around campus by offering a better quality of life. That includes appetizing caf? menus in residence halls, such as Sandburg, and at the Union Station caf? in the student union.
This generation of college students expects to eat as well on campus as off-campus, and as well as they ate at home before leaving for college, said Scott Hoffland, director of UWM restaurant operations, including dormitory dining. ?They?re very sophisticated consumers.?
The same is true at other Wisconsin universities, which compete with off-campus restaurants for student food dollars. Universities offer food courts in dorm cafes and more dining choices in student unions. They post nutritional information for health-conscious diners. Employees in chef?s coats whip up stir-fries and pasta dishes, made fresh to order, while students watch.
Locally produced vegetables and specialty foods, healthy options, international flavors, gluten-free choices and food allergy awareness are the trends of the day. Farmers markets on and near campuses, including a new fall market at Marquette University, offer fresh vegetables to students during the growing season.
A vibrant food scene is a selling point for colleges, said Ken Gaschk, vice president of enrollment services at Concordia University Wisconsin, a private Lutheran university in Mequon.
When Gaschk was a freshman at Concordia in 1977, campus dining typically offered two choices: beef or chicken, kept warm on a steam table.
Today, ?when we have a prospective student and their parents visit campus, we want them to have lunch here,? Gaschk said, as students gathered around tables in a central caf? on campus one recent lunch hour. ?We want them to see the square, colorful plates, that this is like a restaurant with many options. Students select a college; parents validate it.?
Food is especially important for students who live in residence halls, where cooking is prohibited in rooms that don?t have kitchens.
Food matters to students
About 44% of college students polled in a national trends report released in August indicated that their school?s dining program was at least somewhat important in deciding where to enroll. However, only 32% said their school does a good job of making sure students are pleased with the overall dining experience.
Sixty-two percent of college and university students purchase food or beverages from on-campus food service at least once a week, and 20% do so at least once a day, according to the report by Technomic, a Chicago-based food industry research firm. The nation?s 16 million college and university students command more than $300 billion in spending power, the report says.
Universities try to capture as much as they can by keeping dining facilities open much of the day, and by offering options late into the night for those who grab a fourth meal of the day after 7 p.m. (Breakfast still is the least popular meal for students.)
A new sushi bar in the Union Caf? at UWM has students lining up to buy create-your-own sushi rolls. Students choose the protein (tuna, smoked salmon, bulgogi Korean-style marinated beef, imitation crab or tofu) and vegetables (shredded carrot, spinach, pickled radish, cucumber) to build a $4.95 roll. It?s made fresh, right in front of them.
?It?s cool to have a sushi bar here,? said Levi Miles, a sophomore from Black River Falls. ?Now we don?t have to leave campus for sushi? ? something Miles said he did often last year.
Miles moved off campus this year but remembers the challenge of deciding what to eat in the dorm with so much food available. ?I really like junk food, so I have to be careful.?
Fighting ?Freshman 15?
Twenty-one percent of America?s college students are overweight, and nearly 12% are obese, according to a 2010 National College Health Assessment by the American College Health Association.
Freshmen living away from home for the first time still face the legendary Freshman?. That?s the amount of weight commonly believed to be gained during the first year of college due to lack of exercise, eating late at night, eating carbohydrate-rich cafeteria-style and fast food, and drinking alcohol in excess while maintaining a hectic, stressful schedule.
Recent studies show that on average, most freshmen gain five pounds, not 15, according to www.freshman15.com?www.freshman15.com, a website devoted to preventing the Freshman?5.
Miles said he actually lost weight as a freshman because he has high metabolism.
?You do a lot of walking on campus,? said Michaeleen Wilmsen, a UWM senior from Appleton, who acknowledged she had to be careful about weight gain freshman year. ?My advice to freshmen is if you?re going to drink a lot of beer, cut down on the carbs.?
Concordia freshman Zach Fohr of Plymouth said he grew up eating healthy food at home. He was happy with a salad he recently assembled for lunch at a new salad bar in a central dining hall, dubbing it ?awesome.?
Universities offer advice to students on nutrition, and much of that advice is accessed through the Internet. Concordia emails its students a regular student life newsletter, readsh101.com/cuw.html?readsh101.com/cuw.html.
Concordia has seen a 7% drop in soda consumption in the past year, said Gary Quinn, general manager of Sodexo at Concordia, a national food service company that also has a contract for dining services at Marquette.
Flavored water, vitamin-enhanced water and juices are now the popular beverages of choice, Quinn said, though milk is holding steady.
Trayless
Concordia students can still get all-you-can-eat meals ? a throwback to decades past ? though the campus is fighting food waste by going trayless. Students can pick up a tray, but making the tray optional dissuades some from impulsively grabbing more food than they?ll eat, Quinn said.
The campus has been saving roughly 200 pounds of food daily since it went trayless, he said.
At UWM and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, students load their student IDs with food dollars, and their IDs are swiped at the cash register. But they pay a la carte. Each entr?e, side dish and beverage is priced separately. That allows colleges to make more money off big eaters and also to cut down on food waste.
And this way, a gymnast who grazes doesn?t pay the same amount for a meal as a football player with a big appetite, noted Joie Schoonover, director of dining and culinary services at UW-Madison.
UW-Madison has offered a la carte food service since the 1970s, she said. ?We were one of the first in the country to do a la carte.?
UW-Madison hasn?t raised its food prices in three years, Schoonover said. Students at UWM are paying 7.9% more for food this year, said Hoffland.
Students understand price-value relationships, Hoffland said. ?They?re willing to pay for quality.?
In the Sandburg Café, the main dining room in the Sandburg dorm, a Cooking By Design area offers daily specials. Friday features a chili cheese tater tot bar for $2.85; Wednesday?s special is a custom taco bar costing 37 cents per ounce. A chicken salad sandwich at the deli is $1. Burgers around campus generally cost $4 to $6.
To accommodate all students who want to live on campus, UW-Madison is adding residence halls and dining facilities, set to open next fall and the year after. The Gordon Commons dining facility across from the Kohl Center will be replaced with a new 97,000-square-foot building.
Some of the six buildings on campus that offer dining still have traditional serving lines. But they gradually are being replaced with a marketplace concept, like a food court, Schoonover said.
Multiple choices are important, Schoonover said, ?because we have to serve food that?s as high quality as State Street restaurants. They?re our competition.?
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Local-foods trend reaches campuses
One major trend in college dining is an emphasis on locally produced foods.
At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Sandburg Hall has a rooftop garden, and another dorm, Cambridge Commons, has its own garden, too.
At UW-Madison, fresh produce grown in the Allen Centennial Gardens at Observatory and Babcock drives goes to the salad bar for Frank?s Place at Holt Commons.
A Madison-area organic farmer may soon begin providing fresh tomatoes for the campus dining service?s signature organic pasta sauce, now made with canned organic tomatoes. Campus dining also buys some Wisconsin-grown food from Simply Wisconsin, including local mushrooms and cheeses.
?About 29% is locally produced,? dining director Joie Schoonover said of the campus dining service?s fresh produce.
One dining hall offers breakfast on Fridays that features locally sourced ingredients.
Additionally, a residence hall scheduled to open in fall 2013 with 150 beds will have a rooftop greenhouse.
It should come as no surprise that the largest university in America?s Dairyland also pays tribute to cows.
All milk served on campus comes from Dane County cows, Schoonover said, and the university?s popular ice cream is made in Babcock Hall.
- Karen Herzog
Article source: http://www.jsonline.com/features/food/130196748.html
Source: http://www.pbstavern.com/college-dining-goes-upscale/
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