By Donna Boss, Contributing Editor
Food Service Equipment and Supplies
September 2002
Merging two dining areas, reducing lines, enhancing menu offerings, finding a balance between self-serve and exhibition cooking, and positioning equipment in view of customers were among the ambitious goals attained during a complete renovation of a residence dining hall at the rapidly growing University of Georgia in Athens.
A tiled, wood-trimmed, 245-square-foot in-house branded concept, Giorgio's, is designed so customers can watch as pizza ingredients are placed on pie crusts before they are baked in a pizza oven. Pizzas are held in warmers. Also held in warmers are calzones and stromboli.
When customers pass through a historic lobby in the newly renovated Snelling Hall dining facility at the University of Georgia, they are greeted by a brightly lit 1,845-square-foot servery that was redesigned with custom, curvaceous, Corian-surfaced serving counters set with inlaid glass tiles, featuring side-by-side serving stations. Each area displays different menu items and is identified by white signage with black and gold lettering. Also in full view within the Georgian-style facility are freestanding stations featuring a 245-square-foot, in-house branded pizza concept, as well as sweets and beverages. Serving equipment and some production equipment can be seen throughout the facility. Three dining rooms, painted in shades of gray and beige, together seating 549, are adjacent to the servery.
"We hadn't renovated this dining facility since the mid-1970s," explained J. Michael Floyd, who heads the UGA dining department. "We had expanded the menu, but the lines were long - sometimes students had to wait 30 minutes because several different foods were offered at the same station. To say the least, the facility wasn't very user friendly." In order to make necessary changes, the servery had to be expanded. The additional space was secured by closing down an adjacent; la carte dining facility that had been created in the 1960s for faculty and visitors and utilizing the space for the student dining program. Renovation took place during the summer of 2001; the newly refurbished hall was in operation in the fall of 2001. Total cost of the renovation was nearly $860,000.
Snelling currently serves 5,000 meals a day, an increase of 2,000 since the renovation. In addition to attracting on-campus students, the new renovation, by dint of offering extended operating hours from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m., has been appealing to off-campus students, as well, according to Floyd.
"We were going to offer self-service at Snelling exclusively," noted Floyd. "However, when I spoke with students they asked to keep a combination of self-service and staff-service." In addition to serving equipment, preparation equipment such as grills, warmers, microwaves and a pizza oven are now positioned at the stations in full view of customers. An unrenovated back kitchen houses most of the heavy production equipment, along with prep tables, and refrigerated and freezer spaces. The only major change made in the back kitchen was the installation of a new flight-type dishwasher.
"The main challenge was identifying where each new station should be positioned in order to avoid bottlenecks," explained Floyd. For example, UGA's dining services management team and servery designer Homer Taylor, vice president of Construction & Development, MSE Branded Food Systems, Gainesville, Ga., debated where the most colorful showpiece station, Giorgio's, should be located. The internally branded station features pizza and Italian entrées, and planners knew it would surely be among the most popular station - if not "the" most popular. Originally, project partners wanted the free-standing Giorgio's, with its wood overhang and beams and copper paneling, to be situated so it would be the first area customers encountered when they entered the servery. However, a bottleneck would likely have occurred, so the station was repositioned along with one of two beverage stations in the Terrace Room dining section. Now, Greens, the salad bar, is the first station customers see when they enter the Snelling servery.
At Giorgio's, frozen dough that was thawed in the back kitchen is proofed in boxes out front. Dough is assembled with sauces and toppings on a pizza prep table and baked in a triple-deck convection oven. Pies, which include cheese, pepperoni, supreme, vegetarian and a specialty selection, are then cut into slices and held in a pizza warmer so students can help themselves. Stromboli and calzones are also offered.
Giorgio's customers also can assemble their own pasta dishes. Two types of pasta, which are prepared in a display cooker, are served in china bowls. Three sauces, prepared in steam kettles in the back kitchen, are placed in hot steam wells. Freshly grated Parmesan cheese and fresh herbs are placed in a drop-in cold well. Garlic and foccacia breads, which are made in the full-service bakery located adjacent to the back kitchen, are offered as an accompaniment. In addition, a daily Italian specialty is baked in a double-stacked convection oven in the back kitchen, and brought out front to be displayed in hot steam wells. Undercounter hot-food holding cabinets are used to hold the large amounts of pizza prepared.
Nearby Giorgio's is the self-service Sweet Suite, which features such items as fruit, puddings and toppings for ice cream and yogurt, which are displayed on glass shelves and in cold pans. Other desserts are presented in a drop-in dry well, drop-in cold pan and a frost-top display cabinet that keeps individual plated desserts cold. This area is equipped also with a hot well, smoothie machine, dipper well and faucet, and ice cream dipping cabinet and a yogurt dispenser.
Two self-service beverage stations are positioned at either side of food concepts, one in each dining room. The station near Sweet Suite contains dispensers for ice, soda, milk, branded beverages and juice. The station near the long servery line includes ice and cold beverage dispensers, as well as tea, coffee and cappuccino machines.
At the far left of the long, undulating service counter is Sanford Grill. Cooks here prepare chicken, burgers and Philly cheese steaks to order on a gas griddle. Behind a half wall, potatoes, onion rings and corn dogs are prepared in a fryer with an attached dump station and brought out front to hot-food wells. In addition to a steamer, used for heating barbecued pork, a countertop hot dog roller grill is in frequent use, as well. Behind the grill prep area is a reach-in refrigerator and two pass-through refrigerators so staff can easily access products prepared in the adjacent back kitchen and placed in cold storage.
Adjacent to the grill is a station called Cerca de las Papas ("next to the potatoes"), a primarily self-serve area offering Mexican dishes held in cold and hot wells. Rice is prepared in rice cookers. Burritos, on the other hand, are made-to-order from ingredients displayed at the counter. A microwave oven is situated behind the front line to warm burritos. Nachos and toppings also are displayed in hot wells.
Situated to the right of Cerca de las Papas is the Greens salad bar, a refrigerated unit that holds nearly 50 items. Cold ingredients prepped in the main kitchen arrive at this station via pass-through refrigerators. To keep plates chilled, a refrigerated salad plate dispenser was installed. Greens includes a fruit station, as well.
Next to this area is Ladle & Loaf, where two hot soups that have been prepared in kettles in the back kitchen are offered for self-service. A deli featuring made-to-order sandwiches is also a popular offering here. Ingredients are displayed on a refrigerated sandwich prep table. Breads that were made in the bakery are placed at the station for immediate consumption.
Adjacent to L&L is BLD's, where traditional entrées, such as turkey and dressing, country-style steak and side dishes for all three meals are displayed in hot serving wells.
Another self-service station, Veg Yums, to the right of BLD's, is equipped with hot wells to hold entrées that are prepared in the main kitchen on sauté burners and in kettles, steamers and convection ovens. A roller grill is used for cooking vegetarian dogs, while a sandwich press makes grilled cheese and vegetarian burgers. Behind this station is a warm pass-through cabinet and warmer drawers.
Finally, a station named A.M. All Day completes the long servery line. Here, staff make omelets to order in induction woks. Refrigerated wells hold ingredients for egg dishes.
Not attached to the main line, yet positioned nearby, is a make-your-own waffle station with a waffle iron and batter pan, and a cereal display section. A bagels/pastries station is nearby. Customers can heat items in a microwave and toaster positioned near the cereal display.
Creating a design that would accommodate cashier stations and yet maintain the integrity of the lobby design required consideration by the project team. Ultimately, payment points were placed in an attractively designed counter and accented with wrought-iron gates in the lobby. In addition, the entire building had to be retro-fit with air conditioning, which was a costly undertaking.
Staying on budget has been a top priority for Floyd and the renovation teams, who have completed two other remodelings in addition to Snelling Hall at UGA in the past two years. Lessons learned about design and equipment used in Snelling will undoubtedly be applied to future projects, one of which will be a new 500-seat cafeteria on the east campus and another, a 500-seat cafeteria in the central campus, that will accommodate the dining needs of new students housed in residence halls that are scheduled to be built for 5,000 students. As Floyd, this year's International Foodservice Manufacturers Association (IFMA) Silver Plate Award winner for colleges, has proven time and again, dining services at the University of Georgia never stop evolving, year after year.