Dickinson’s Dining Services has undergone fairly substantial changes this year. The Dining Hall now has a cart that offers weekly specials (wings, gnocchi, etc.), the Tex Mex station, and a weekly salad bar. The Devil’s Den was also overhauled. The Dickinsonian spoke to Errol Huffman, the Director of Culinary Services, about these new additions to the dining offerings.
The big changes in the Devil’s Den were not a result of a substantial budget increase. “It was a reworking of the budget,” Huffman said. “The Devil’s Den used to fall under the functionality of the bookstore … it just seemed to be the right time to do that once the bookstore moved under Marketing and Communications … the Devil’s Den stood out more as a food service option,” Huffman said. According to Huffman, the budget was relatively simple to rework for the Devil’s Den renovation.
Dining hall employees also saw a pay rate increase for this year. Students working in the dining hall now earn $13 an hour, and free meals while on shift. “Over the course of the last two years, we really pressed hard using data-based decision-making models to present our case where the challenges were, where the market is … taking actual feedback from candidates who would apply and turn down jobs because of the offered pay rates, and I think the college did a great job in hearing that, seeing that data and responding to it,” said Huffman.
Currently, there have been no issues regarding the supply of Devil’s Den products. Huffman says that products could change depending on the frequency at which students purchase items. “We listen to students … we look at what products sell and don’t sell. If there is a product sitting on a shelf collecting dust, we are going to discontinue it and replace it with something,” said Huffman.
Huffman said that Dining Services ordered a brand-new fryer for the SNAR, which was broken when it was delivered. “Union Station will start to have french fries, chicken poppers, fried chicken, fried fish … different things like that will be added to the menu. That’ll probably be on the Get app,” Huffman said.
Huffman hopes to open the Biblio during the evening some nights. “It depends on our staffing, but my understanding is we have at least one student who has barista experience who is interested in working in the evenings. I am trying to work with my team to get that going to operate from 8-10 pm or something like that,” said Huffman. Before COVID-19, the Biblio was open consistently during the evenings. “It’s always been a student-run operation … it’s a fun place and we would like to bring that vibrancy back as soon as we can,” Huffman said. Currently, the dining team is satisfied with the Juice Bar’s operation and they have no planned changes to the location.
Huffman is happy with how Denim Coffee has operated throughout the last year. “I think Denim is going to continue to operate as it did last year. We are generally happy with the relationship. So long as students are happy with that, I don’t foresee any changes that are taking place there,” said Huffman.
Looking forward, Huffman is excited to delve further into plans regarding the proposed dining hall renovations. As covered previously by The Dickinsonian, the college will begin renovations to the Dining Hall during the summer of 2024. When asked about whether these dates are still the goal, Huffman said “broadly speaking, I think that is the hope and desire. I haven’t heard any updates as to whether or not that is going to be pushed out … [The cost] is going to be a large driver, what does the college have on hand, what might they do for fundraising, or for debt accumulation, so I can’t say what the timeline will be.”
This past summer, Huffman took his team to Boston, where they visited Harvard University, Tufts University and 25 different restaurants and food halls to look at how these operations conduct their dining services in order to implement these findings into the modernized dining hall.
During COVID-19 and the years following, Dining Services struggled to fulfill multiple positions throughout multiple locations. “This year is smoother sailing than last year. We still have about two dozen vacancies that affect primarily a-la-carte stations, things like Biblio, Union Station, Juice Bar, and Devil’s Den … finding good candidates to work shifts later into the evening or weekends are a little bit challenging. The dining hall is in a much better place than it used to be,” said Huffman. “We still fight a little bit with some of the recruiting and fight a little bit with some of the sourcing of products, but overall I am much happier this year with the way things are going than where we were one year ago,” said Huffman.
