Fall 2023 Campus Dining Today - 61

Station Takeovers
add variety
Partnership with popular restaurants
delivers special experiences
Julia Carney
communications
coordinator, marketing,
Cal Poly Pomona
Enterprises
Dining services at Cal Poly Pomona (CPP) created a new culinary tradition
on campus during the 2023 spring semester to increase recruitment and
engagement efforts by means of new food experiences.
Introducing: Takeover Thursdays. This initiative welcomed popular franchise
partners of CPP Dining Services to their award-winning residential dining facility,
Centerpointe Dining Commons, for special food station takeovers. Takeover
Thursdays offer all guests of the Dining Commons a unique dining experience
by incorporating the flavors of brands
guests love in an all-you-care-to-enjoy
(AYCTE) campus dining hall.
This idea was sparked by a frequent
Centerpointe guest who approached
Thomas Sekayan, chief operating officer
(COO) of Cal Poly Pomona Enterprises
with a question: " Why can't we eat
Panda Express inside the dining hall? "
This question intrigued the COO and
the CPP Dining Services team; however,
breaking away from a traditional AYCTE
campus dining hall experience and
incorporating a retail brand into the mix
was unheard of. After all, the economics
of a campus dining hall operation is
predicated on culinary efficiencies and
scalable production to feed thousands
at a time, supporting a healthy costper-plate.
Adding a retail brand can be
difficult to coordinate and impacts food
costs. With that in mind, the CPP Dining Services team set out to investigate a
mixed service model for their campus dining operations.
CPP Dining Services approached Panda Express, known for its popular
American Chinese cuisine, and Hibachi San, specializing in Japanese teppanyakistyle
cooking. They were the first franchises to participate in this new initiative.
Additionally, their partners at Unilever, a global leader in food and beverage
products, rose to the opportunity by taking over a station and featured several
exciting new products served by the Unilever culinary team. With some finetuning,
CPP Dining Services and its partners figured out an efficient and costeffective
way to make this monotony breaker work, but what truly enticed the
partners was being able to showcase their product to a wholly new and mainly
residential clientele.
EXCITING EVENTS AND ENGAGING OCCASIONS
| CAMPUS DINING TODAY
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Fall 2023 Campus Dining Today

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