OSU's revamped dining facility highlights health, community

To answer how students are responding to the new dining hall at The Ohio State University, Zia Ahmed, senior director of dining services, recalls a tweet he read earlier that morning: “[It] said, ‘I’m going to name my firstborn child Scott,’ after the building,” he says.

Rave reviews like this have been typical since the two-story, 28,000-square-foot Traditions at Scott dining hall opened at the beginning of the fall semester. Many students express love for the variety of menu choices and overall design via social media. But the biggest impact may come from a feature that few have picked up on: The dining hall is designed to help them make more healthful decisions.

Traditions at Scott is home to 11 food stations, arranged from healthiest to more traditional American fare. When students walk through the doors they are greeted by a salad bar, complete with options like farro salad with mushrooms and asparagus or spicy corn-and-black-bean salad.

Choices get progressively more decadent, with the yogurt bar, all-day breakfast station, grilled-cheese station, made-to order pastas and carving stations, scratch-made desserts and, in the very back, a grill with burgers, chicken sandwiches, mac and cheese and french fries. On the second floor, a Mongolian grill and churrasco grill station introduce students to global flavors with offerings such as bok choy, egg rolls and empanadas.

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The dining hall also promotes community. Booths seat about 12 people, and Ahmed says large groups sometimes use them for meetings. Students also can push the square tables together. “We learned over time that the students build their own tables depending on the type of group they are going to have,” Ahmed says. “Now they have the flexibility to build and take apart what they need.”

Another key feature is a self-access reader, which gives students the power to swipe themselves in and out of the dining halls with their BuckID cards as late as midnight Sunday through Thursdays and until 7 p.m. Friday and Saturdays. The entrance swipe deducts from students’ meal plans, so there’s no need to pay separately. An attendant at a different door can take other forms of payment from visiting members of the public.

Now the largest restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, by square footage, OSU split Traditions at Scott into two levels to accommodate 1,000 seats, and the effect has the added benefit of compartmentalizing the space. “One of the challenges you have on a college campus is students have to come back to the operation over and over again,” Ahmed says. “So, when you have the two floors it creates the feeling of two separate restaurants.” 

Inside scoop: Traditions at Scott

Footprint: 28,000 square feet
Seating: 1,000
Output: 8,000 meals a day
Key Features: Dish rooms upstairs and downstairs with food waste disposal systems; OSU-run Connecting Grounds pour over/nitro coffeehouse next door; large booths and tables to promote group interaction