WMU's New Dining Hall Moonlights as a Retail Outlet

When Western Michigan University renovated its Davis Dining Service into the new Bistro3, the first major dining hall renovation at the school in 10 years, it got a two-fer in the bargain. During the day, Bistro3 operates as a standard — if spectacularly modern — all-you-care-to-eat residential dining hall, complete with fresh food stations like World Flavors (international entrees), Blazin'Bronco (grill) and Fresh Creations (deli, salads, soup and make-your-own pizza/pasta bowls as well as preprepared pizza and pasta dishes).

DAYTIME JOB. For most of the day, Bistro3 is all you care to eat from a variety of fresh food stations.

At least, that's the workaday world identity of Bistro3. But after 9 pm weekdays and 7 pm on Sunday, Bistro3 morphs into the Bistro3 Coffee Lounge, a cash operation, featuring WMU's exclusive Western Grounds coffee.

“When planning this coffee lounge, we ended up converting all of our coffee on campus — dining halls and retail — to Western Grounds, which is a fair trade organic coffee, specifically ground and blended for us by Paramount Coffee, an employee owned company in Lansing, MI,” says Dining Services Director Judy Gipper, RD.

THE DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES TO FM'S BEST CONCEPT AWARDS competition is March 31, 2010. For info or a nomination form, go to: food-management.com/best_concept_entry/1010-best-concept-nominations.