Firm hired to evaluate dining services

By Chrissy Braden
Staff Reporter

Members of the Student Government Association and other students discussed extending dining hall hours, meal plans and getting a food chain such as Chili’s Bar and Grill on campus in a meeting Thursday with Peg Rodger, a senior consultant with Ricca Design Studio.

Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Don Mills said Ricca, a consulting firm hired by TCU, will conduct market research this month by surveying students about what they want in a dining hall.

“They’re really not asking students about how good their hot dog tastes,” Mills said. “They’re asking what students want in a dining hall and about eating patterns.”

Rodger said the consulting firm is finding out where students want dining halls, what kind of dining halls they want, what hours dining halls should be open and the best meal plans.

“The school has hired us to find out what’s best if we’re going to wipe the slates clean and start all over,” Rodger said.

Mills said this survey is unrelated to dining hall surveys done each semester that evaluate the quality of food and service.

Rodger said the consulting firm is doing market research and will begin the Web-based survey after Spring Break. The results will be used to make a master plan for the new Student Center.

Karl Kruse, a freshman business major, said the school needs a chain on campus that offers variety.

“We need something like Chili’s or Bennigan’s which have something to offer everyone,” he said.

Kruse, an SGA member, said meetings about bringing restaurant chains in the past were unsuccessful.

“No one came (to the meetings), so (administrators) interpreted it as no one being interested,” he said.

Bryant Currie, director of operations in dining services, said the change in dining services depends on what the survey finds.

“It could really go from one spectrum to the other,” he said, “They could find out everything is OK, and there will be no change. Or they could find a lot of things that need to change.”

Currie said he thinks the survey will find the need for change because students want different foods than they wanted in the past.

“We’re in a migrating time,” he said. “Student tastes are changing and they want more choices. As tastes change, we need to change the way we cook and our style.”

Currie said dining services could change the menu at any point but is physically limited by the facilities to make everything students want.

“If we change the facility, we could expand to do things we can’t do now,” he said.

Mills said the survey was important to ensure that the Student Center would have the right facilities.

“The food services now are built for 2,000 fewer students (than what the university has),” Mills said. “We want to make sure that we’re building a facility that meets students needs and not my needs.”

Mills said the Student Center remodeling project is scheduled to begin after the Rickel Building is complete in October 2002.

He said the Student Center is a 20-month project and should be done by spring 2004.

The new Student Center will include a larger ballroom, student organization storage areas and an auditorium in addition to the remodeled dining halls, said Larry Markley, director of the Student Center, in an Oct. 12 TCU Daily Skiff article.

Currie said he thought the survey would call for dramatic changes in the Student Center dining halls.

“Mills isn’t spending all of this money to bring Ricca in for show,” Currie said. “We really want professional opinions about what we can do, and I think we’ll start seeing some changes.”

Chrissy Braden
l.c.braden@student.tcu.edu