News Detail
01/20/2015
Starting in January, students will be able to try a brand-new residential dining facility, The Bistro Off Broadway, as well as purchase a redesigned meal plan that offers home-style meals and much more flexibility for a campus community on the go.
“Just like at home, the students will get a variety of healthy food at the best value and in a convenient location,” said William McNamara, director of dining services for the SUNY Cortland Auxiliary Services Corporation (ASC), which handles campus dining operations.
The Bistro, a 350-seat residential dining facility, is the first area to open its doors in the newly constructed, $56 million, 150,000-square-foot Student Life Center off Pashley Drive. The approximately 13,000-square-foot dining annex is scheduled to open to students returning for spring semester on Friday, Jan. 23. The facility will celebrate with the entire campus community during a grand opening on Wednesday, Jan. 28.
The Bistro becomes the second residential “all-you-care-to eat” — as opposed to retail-style — dining hall on campus, joining Neubig, located in Neubig Hall. For the 2,700 students getting their meals on campus, the operation brings the total number of large, dining hall seats to 680 and addresses a demand students had expressed on an ASC survey that more meal-time seats be made available.
The new, state-of-the-art campus dining locale will feature a cooking demonstration area and numerous on-site food preparation stations. Students will be offered a different approach to purchasing on-campus dining, called “unlimited access residential meal plans.”
 |
| Recently, one specialized food preparation area received its final touches in preparation for going into operation in January. |
“You come and go all day long, as many times as you want all day,” McNamara said, describing the meal plan at Neubig and The Bistro.
Whether they pick the Platinum Plus option for $2,390 during the Spring 2015 semester at the higher end of the four meal plan choices or the more budget-conscious Copper Plus meal plan for $1,990 that semester, students can eat as much and as often as they need at the two residential style dining halls during open hours and not worry about running out of weekly meals.
The essential difference among these dining options is that the more deluxe ones allow more declining balance dollars for students to use at the campus retail dining outlets than the less lavish ones. However, plan participants who chomp their way through all their Dragon Dollars can still pay as they go with cash, credit or a Connections account for greater flexibility in their dining options.
Over winter break student-athletes, residential assistants and international students will get to test run the new eatery situated in the wing closest to Broadway Avenue, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and for a few lunchtime meals.
To gear up for the grand opening, Dining Services analyzed several years’ worth of National Association of College and University Food Services Customer Service Benchmark Survey results completed by students, faculty and staff.
They also reviewed food service planning and design specialist Porter Khouw’s 2003 facility master plan and completed their own internal dining service master plan in 2010. This information helped them to design the new facility, develop its new five-week menu and develop the new meal plans.
To promote and test the unlimited access dining menu, Dining Services hosted a two-week long “Taste The Bistro” event in October at Neubig. In addition, ASC has featured several “unlimited access days” so students could try the new plans without counting meals and provided feedback to staff. ASC also advertised the meal plan changes through informational tables, open forums, email and social media.
“With this testing we were able to identify items that students enjoyed as well as take valuable feedback to change or enhance certain recipes,” McNamara said.
Student survey information helped identify the top student dining needs: seating, value, hours, variety, healthy menu options, speed of service and nutritional information. The data also indicated how the new dining facility, the new meal plans and the new five-week menu rotation will improve students’ quality of life:
- Seating — With more seating added at The Bistro, students at every facility will have more opportunities to enjoy a relaxing meal with friends instead of eating on the run.
- Value — In addition to what was noted previously, the Unlimited Access Meal Plans make it easy to snack and get a balanced meal containing all the food groups without the stress of “losing value through lost meals and nickel-and-diming.”
- Hours — The Bistro’s extended hours — until 11 p.m. seven days per week — provide students with more scheduling flexibility.
- Freshness — The Bistro will emphasize “from scratch” cooking as well as “made-to-order” stations where the food is freshly prepared in front of students.
- Variety — Students will find their daily favorites but they’ll also see new recipes not found anywhere else on campus.
- Healthy — With an emphasis on whole grains, vegetables and lower fat cooking techniques, The Bistro will offer an abundance of items that meet dining’s “healthy” criteria.
- Speed of service — Students swipe their cards to get in, so they don’t have to wait in line to pay for their food. With more seats available across campus, lines will be shorter for everyone, including those waiting at the more leisurely retail dining outlets.
- Nutritional information — The various eateries already post a dining digital menu board that provides nutritional information about calories, select nutrients, allergens, gluten and symbols designating vegetarian, vegan, gluten friendly and healthy choices. The signs will begin providing information on menu items produced “locally,” that is, in New York state.
Since introducing a retail approach to campus dining services in the early 1990s, ASC has been gradually returning to an earlier model of universal student access, starting with Neubig in 2005, according to McNamara. That year, students no longer used only the straight declining balance plan called Dragon Dollars to purchase their meals at any campus food outlet. Instead they combined a reduced Dragon Dollars allocation for retail purchases with a “meals per week” plan at Neubig or other dining outlets around campus.
Now, according to McNamara, with the opening of The Bistro the campus has enough seats at the dinner table to complete the relatively seamless transition.
Students had complained about a lack of value, running out of money on their meal plan and standing in long lines to charge their meal credits.
“We needed to find a way to feed students from their first day to their last day and not have to add money to their meal plan,” McNamara said. “For the plan with the $25 in Dragon Dollars, we wanted to make sure that everyone is fed, say if you’re one of those who is struggling to afford college.”
Nor will a student be as likely to end up with wasteful, unspent Dragon Dollars at the end of the semester, according to McNamara.
 |
| Empty at present, next semester the spacious dining area in The Bistro Off Broadway will seat up to 350 students. |
With the opening of The Bistro, Dining Services will close the Friendly’s Ice Cream Shop in the Corey Union basement and the Poolside in Park Center will no longer serve meals but will return to its former role as an athletic event concession stand. The remaining dining outlets will retain their retail character, honoring ASC accounts like Dragon Dollars, Connections and Privileges as well as cash and credit card.
Additionally, Dining Services plans to open Fuel, a new small retail café similar to The Bookmark, serving Starbucks Coffee in the lobby area between The Bistro and the SLC.
Speedier service is another bonus of the unlimited access menu at The Bistro or Neubig, which caters to students who don’t have time to stand and watch their meal cooked in front of them. However, both large-scale dining locations feature plenty of on-site preparation stations as well.
“At Neubig we try to make everything as much to order as possible, and The Bistro is actually designed to have all the food prep and cooking right out in front of you,” McNamara said. “The open kitchen is right there in the front.
“Both dining facilities will assemble sandwiches and offer deli, a salad bar, grill, pizza and pasta stations,” McNamara said. “The Bistro also will feature a rotisserie oven.”
“We’ll have a live demonstration kitchen and we’re very excited about that,” McNamara said. “If you ever watch one of those live cooking shows, it’s a lot like that. There’s seating for about 30 people in front of our demonstration kitchen, which we plan to use for all our menu and recipe testing, for bringing in chefs, and just to educate people on health cooking and fun things as well. We’ve tried cooking classes in the past.”
The Bistro will be as prepared for the student who wants to pile into a large meal as for the one stopping by to chat with their classmates over a quick nibble or beverage.
“We are looking at the opening of The Bistro as a new era in dining services at SUNY Cortland,” McNamara said. “Everything students need can be found from day one until the end of the year without the need to add money to a meal plan or losing or counting meals. The Bistro is state-of-the-art, innovative and interactive and, best of all, stress free dining.”
For more information, visit the website or contact ASC at asc@cortland.edu or 607-753-2430. The office in Neubig Hall is open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.