‘THEY SPICE IT UP’
Area colleges cater to Gen Z’s taste for more healthy and diverse fare
University of Houston students browsed an eclectic menu for lunch at the Cougar Woods dining hall on a recent Tuesday that included white chicken chili, sun-dried pesto grilled tofu and cochinita pibil tostadas with black beans and pickled onions.
While some greasy cafeteria staples — pizza, chicken tenders, cheeseburgers and french fries — remain on menus, today’s college dining offerings have undergone massive upgrades since the 1980s, 1990s and even early 2000s. Often under national management chains, chefs at Texas colleges are serving up healthier, trendier and more ethnically diverse fare to keep their Generation Z clientele satisfied.
On a November day at Sam Houston State University, diners ate bangers and mash paired with glasses of pineapple-infused water. At Texas A&M University, Aggie Dining-created retail concepts such as Copperhead Jacks, which serves burrito bowls, rival chains like Chipotle and have their own cult followings.
“Our students are yearning for more and more diverse and authentic experiences,” said Charles Pereira, vice president of operations for UH System Dining. “‘Authentic,’ it’s kind of been our buzzword this past year. If we’re going to do something, we’re going to do it right.”
Several universities now contract management of food service to giants Aramark or Chartwells, capable of offering more inclusive menu options for people with dietary restrictions and menus that change daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Retail outposts from national, local and internally created brands are exploding on campuses. And limiting food waste and increasing sustainability, while trying to profit, are increasingly the goals.
“Overall, the food here is pretty decent,” UH senior Zafir Minhaj said over a slice of pizza at Cougar Woods. “They spice it up.”
The changes are customerdriven — reflective of a more adventurous clientele, the dining officials said. Most university dining operations expect low profit margins and exist solely to keep students happy and fed, said Kristy Vienne, associate vice president of auxiliary services at Sam Houston State.
That frees universities to focus on the quality of food and to reinvest any earnings into equipment, robotic delivery and order-ahead dining options, she added.
“There’s something about satisfaction and making everyone feel like there’s something here for them to eat that is comfortable to them,” Vienne said. “That helps with (student) retention; it helps with health. But not necessarily profits.”
Dining officials said they don’t struggle for customers, since students often can’t leave campus at mealtimes. At UH, as enrollment has grown and food options have diversified, the number of people with dining plans has also increased, according to university data.
More than 4,800 people at UH have meal plans, up from over 4,100 in 2019 — numbers not reflecting the additional people without meal plans who still eat at the dining halls, chain restaurants on campus or rotating food trucks.
Sam Houston State University this year has about 2,100 oncampus residents and at least 400 commuters with meal plans, Vienne said. And at the state’s largest university, Aggie Dining feeds 60,000 people a day through A&M’s dining halls, retail concepts and catering services, Senior Executive Chef George Charbel said.
Meanwhile, operating costs have increased because of inflation, and at UH, the school’s dining budget increased by more than 12 percent between 2018 and 2022. Unlimited meal plans are priced accordingly — at UH, unlimited entry to residential dining facilities costs at least $2,355 per semester for students who live on campus, according to the university. Texas A&M students pay at least $2,375 a semester for unlimited plans, and Sam Houston students pay $2,450.
Aaron Calaway, a senior, lives off campus but eats at UH twice a week. It’s a bit healthier than off-campus dining, he said, and on-campus eating is the most cost-effective option for him.
“It’s worth the money,” he said. “It’s what you expect from a cafeteria.”
Campus dining officials have long pushed dining halls as a method of fighting food insecurity, which was estimated in 2019 to affect about 41 percent of university students. The total dollar amount of dining plans can deter parents and students, but Vienne said she often has to explain that the cost per meal is lower than what they would find elsewhere. Most students in on-campus residential living are required to purchase a plan at SHSU, Texas A&M and UH.
“Talking about the cost of higher education, a lot of parents are like, ‘You don’t need a meal plan,’” she said. “When you really look at the value, they do need one. Because without kitchens in their (dorms), they’re going to eat retail every day, they’re going to eat junk … by October they’re broke and they don’t have money.”
UH and Texas A&M are both run by Chartwells, which provides “chef-driven” food concepts at university dining halls. On top of giving more variety to students every day, they also throw in the occasional surprise of a celebrity chef or a short-term pop-up station with items like pumpkin cheesecake crepes — a fall offering at UH. Sam Houston State’s dining is operated by Aramark, which operates similarly.
While several UH students said they appreciate the variety, most people considered the food just “good enough.”
Nmeso Ukachi-Nwata, a sophomore, said she finds some of the meals to be bland, especially because she’s used to Nigerian foods with heavier spices.
Despite having fewer dairyfree
options than she would like, she said she is generally satisfied with the food at UH. She added that Moody Towers Dining Commons has a station that uses products free of the eight major allergens.
“Some things here are kind of ... restaurant-like,” she said. “There are some days where things taste really, really good. My friends make fun of me all the time — I really like the burgers.”
Minhaj said he appreciates that the campus serves halal meat because of his religion. And Gino Troiano, an international student from Argentina, said the options keep him from being bored with his food.
On Tuesday, he got seconds of tostadas.
“I assume you would have to be used to some really good quality food to hate it here,” he said.
Becky Tolle, director of dining services at Texas A&M’s Sbisa Dining Hall, said she feels the difference between the campus dining of now and even a decade ago is generational.
“Our company as an organization
really drills into the food trends,” she said. “What are the Gen Zers eating? Because maybe five years ago, it was chili mac … but now it’s like, no they’re not eating that. They want Indian food or African cuisine, or they want more cultural experiences, not just your mom-and-pop Hamburger Helper-type menu.”
Pereira, at UH, said he feels that Gen Zers’ upbringings have also paved the way for more
technologically-centered dining trends.
UH in 2017 began offering mobile order-ahead pickup services, and two years later became the first campus in Texas to offer robots that deliver food to students. Most Sam Houston State University buildings have “pods” where they can quickly buy sushi or sandwiches. A&M last fall also converted about 40 percent of its dining kiosks to be equipped with technology that allow customers to order themselves, without interacting with someone behind a register.
“They’ve grown up with the phone in their hands. Robotic delivery, mobile ordering … we’re seeing that that’s the demand and we’re evolving our dining program to ensure we’re staying current and relevant with the demographic we’re serving every day,” he said.
“Not everything that we bring is going to be a hit out of the park, but part of being an innovative campus is bringing new, fun experiences to the dining program to keep things fresh.”
Outside the dining hall
Some of the biggest, most rapid changes in campus dining center around retail — restaurant spaces either owned and operated by the university or contracted through an outside business.
UH is set to open a new food hall in spring 2024 containing a mix of internal, local and national restaurants, expanding, in a way, on the local food trucks that come through campus each week. Sam Houston State University officials have meanwhile embraced “ghost restaurants” since COVID, making use of unused restaurant space to create short-term pop-ups. Most attractively to dining officials, they allow the university to shirk the cost of franchising and still bring variety to the campus food scene, Vienne said.
The evolution of campus dining has also ushered in changes to food sustainability efforts on university campuses, including with increased attempts to compost.
Every kitchen at A&M composts their leftovers, Charbel said, and one of two residential dining halls at UH rid of its waste that way. While officials say they’re working to start composting at the second location, they already divert 15 to 20 cubic yards of waste from landfills each week, or three to five large dumpsters, according to university dining.
Chartwells at UH also purchases its products from more sustainable vendors, including cage-free eggs, chicken that is free from hormones and antibodies, and fair-trade coffee, Pereira said. Similar efforts at A&M have benefited food quality, Charbel said.
“Six years to now, it’s a huge difference. Food quality, food options, food education,” the chef said. “As far as food sustainability, it takes nothing from taste. Actually, it helps.”
At Cougar Woods, freshman Sara Larin finished a burger. Hearing how some of her friends at other Texas universities eat, she said she sees where UH dining halls might have come a long way in the past few years. That doesn’t change that she’d prefer to be eating elsewhere.
“When I went home for the break, I loved my mom’s food,” she said. “But I think compared to other schools … I never feel like I’m going to starve.”