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Busy day boxes

We invite managers to call down and place orders for their units, and we take the lunches up to them.

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Celebrating with students and the community

01-10-2014 Ideas and Innovation

So students have a chance to celebrate with their friends, we offer a holiday meal in both of our residential facilities. The events are posted on the university calendar so that all university...

Unexpected surprises

01-08-2014 Ideas and Innovation

For a special event we did, we had a student draw our University Dining Staff and we put the drawing on the back of T-shirts for the T-shirt giveaway, along with our University Dining slogan, &...

To build support and awareness of our Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC) program, we partnered with Acson America, a Hispanic community activist organization, to host breakfast meetings with principals...

Tap into student talent

01-03-2014 Ideas and Innovation

Use the talents of your student population to properly market your dining program. We advertised on our Facebook page for student marketers and selected five.

Teaching health young

12-31-2013 Ideas and Innovation

Every year during take your children to work day, we host a healthy cooking demonstration. The kids are actually helping to make the dish.

Offer price discounts

12-26-2013 Ideas and Innovation

We hold a “power hour” in our cafeteria in the afternoon, where we offer coffee for 35 cents.

Expand products

12-20-2013 Ideas and Innovation

We started producing our own lip balm from the beeswax that we harvest on campus (we recently installed two beehives). We sell the lip balm in our gift shop.

Food is art

12-17-2013 Ideas and Innovation

We recently collaborated with several people in Carilion Clinic and Roanoke Public School System to develop a Food is Art Gallery. The gallery is located just outside our Mountain View Café...

Recognize your staff

12-12-2013 Ideas and Innovation

When we recognize employees, we do so with handwritten cards rather than emails. We also gave all the staff a branded fleece pullover, which went over very well.