Update on Dining Operations and Solutions in Progress

Solutions 

• Launched Chef Mike’s Market in John Jay dining hall to provide an additional dining option to the campus community. Open daily from 11:30 a.m. - 9 p.m., Chef Mike’s Market has a variety of hot and cold food options, including a complete, ready-to-go fresh cooked entree for lunch and dinner. 

• Worked with Barnard Dining to reintroduce meal swipes at the Diana Café. 

• To begin later this week, an expanded residential dining option provided out of Faculty House. More details will be announced shortly. 

Although we do anticipate some crowding will persist until indoor seating is open, we expect these actions should immediately help to ease some of the congestion. We will continue to identify additional grab-and-go options and seek other solutions.   

Background 

Staffing and Hours of Operations  

Like other Universities and businesses in the restaurant and hospitality industry, we are facing staffing shortages. We support the University and City’s food service vaccine requirement for the health of our community, but it has been challenging to source vaccinated temporary staff to fill vacancies quickly. Fortunately, we are working with a staffing agency that is rapidly adding new employees and we expect to have a full team on site on a regular basis soon.  

Crowding  

Our dining program has grown significantly over the past few years. This year, Columbia Dining has an additional 1,200 additional meal plan holders across all three undergraduate schools (Columbia College, General Studies and Engineering). Additionally, through the exchange program, our dining halls have been feeding over 1,000 Barnard students each day. The result of this growth has been significant crowding during peak times at John Jay and Ferris and longer wait times for cooked to order food at JJ’s.  

We know there have been days and times when the line to swipe into the dining halls has been longer than students should have to wait. We’ve provided some tips to help students try to navigate, based on what we see in the dining halls every day, as we work on solutions.   

Food    

We pride ourselves on the integrity of our food program. Our culinary team batch cooks or cooks to order. At stations like the omelet grill or the JJ’s grill, we cook for each individual student. We never precook and reheat. Sometimes this takes more time. With the high volume of students eating during peak periods, we have seen times when pans of food empty faster than anticipated, and it takes a few minutes to cook the next batch. Students don't need to take more than they are going to eat, we are not going to run out. Please know that we are not short food or cooks. But, we will never precook food hours before it will be served, just to have full pans of food on the serving line.  

To help reduce the time it takes to get food in the dining halls, we are going to temporarily streamline options for easier production and faster service. While reducing choices at stations such as the John Jay salad bar is something we do reluctantly, given the volume of students we are serving daily, it is a necessary change. 

Indoor Dining 

We can’t wait to have students enjoy meals in the dining rooms. We know that grab-and-go is adding to the congestion in the dining halls, as students take more time to pack up what they need for their meals. We don’t put a limit on how long each person spends in the servery making food selections. We are looking forward to resuming indoor dining as soon as the University monitoring plan allows.  

We’re Here to Help  

Regardless of the concern or problem – we want students to let us know. Our staff and managers are here to help. If something isn’t out on the floor, that doesn’t mean we don’t have it. If a meal didn’t turn out quite right, tell us so we know for next time!   

We’re part of the campus family and are here for our students. We’re committed to providing the best dining experience we can. So, please keep the feedback, compliments, and suggestions coming our way. See you at the next meal.