5 things: Food service director receives jail sentence for thefts

Each Friday Food Management compiles a list that highlights five things you probably missed in the onsite foodservice news that week and why you should care about them.

Here’s your list for the week of October 5:

Temple University has shut down the Johnson & Hardwick cafeteria, its largest on-campus dining facility, after the COVID spike prompted administration to move all classes online, which in turn led to a 60% drop in students living on campus. While there were 3,000 living in residence halls at the semester start, only 1,200 there are now, according to a campus spokesperson.

Read more: Temple University shutters largest dining hall as campus residency drops 60%

The Food Recovery Network at Texas Christian University (TCU) is on hold due to COVID-19 regulations that restrict the group from delivering excess food off campus. Previously, the organization picked up food three times a week from campus dining locations and delivered it to the Northside Inter-Community Agency and Union Gospel Mission. In addition, with all food served to-go at campus dining locations, there is less food available for the food recovery network.

Read more: TCU’s Food Recovery Network is unable to deliver food amid COVID-19

Related:5 coronavirus things: Judges generally refusing to dismiss student refund demands

A partnership among the Lunchbox online ordering engine, delivery robot firm Kiwibot and foodservice management company Sodexo has produced a pilot autonomous and contactless food delivery program across the University of Denver (UD) campus. To implement the program, Lunchbox worked with Sodexo to create the Eats DU app to facilitate campuswide contactless delivery with Kiwibot’s delivery robots serving as the last-mile solution. This integration serves as a preview of what the future of food delivery holds as online ordering continues to rise and autonomous technology continues to become more sophisticated and agile, Lunchbox says, adding that it plans to scale the partnership to other locations including workplaces, hospitals and even cities moving forward.

Read more: Lunchbox Ventures Into Autonomous Food Delivery with Sodexo and Kiwibot Partnership

Shelly Chisamore, the former foodservice director at Big Foot High School in Wisconsin, has been sentenced to three months in jail for stealing thousands of dollars from school vending machines. Her plea deal requires Chisamore to pay $12,000 in restitution to the school. The district attorney alleged that Chisamore stole more than $4,000 from vending machines at the school over six years.

Related:5 coronavirus things: Penn State temporarily closes two dining venues

Read more: High school's ex-cafeteria manager gets three months in jail for stealing

Dickinson College in Pennsylvania plans to use the some thousand pounds of food waste generated by its campus dining hall, along with local cow manure, scraps from local schools and grain from local brewers to create enough energy to power operations at the school’s 80-acre, USDA-certified organic farm and an adjoining dairy farm it leases. Currently, most of the school’s food waste gets composted but by next year, plans call for it to go into a 14-foot-high, 75,000-gallon stainless steel biodigester where bacteria will break it down to produce a gas that runs a generator to produce electricity.

Read more: Pa. college plans to power two farms from cafeteria waste, cow manure, and brewery scraps

Bonus: Local restaurant partnership program enhances Virginia Tech dining program

Contact Mike Buzalka at [email protected]