Supporting the Mission

Mike Buzalka

Visit Villanova University on a fine late spring day and you will be charmed by the pastoral atmosphere of the campus, which sits about a half hour west of Philadelphia. Suffused in history and its Augustinian traditions, Villanova for most of its history served to educate the sons (and eventually the daughters) of Eastern Pennsylvania's Catholic families. It offers a traditional liberal arts curriculum grounded in the principles of faith and service proclaimed by St. Thomas of Villanova and the Roman Catholic Order of St. Augustine (see sidebar below).

As one considers Villanova's many advantages—its ranking as one of the country's top 20 undergraduate business schools by Business Week magazine, its 13 years at the top of the Best Universities-Masters category for the northern region in the prestigious US News & World Report rankings, its vibrant campus life and high-profile men's basketball team—one may elude you...the campus dining services operation.

This is not because of any lack in its performance, but instead reflects the "servant as leader" philosophy of its director, Tim Dietzler, that leadership is first and foremost an act of service. That philosophy-is detailed in the book The Servant Leader, by Ken Blanchard-and Phil Hodges, a slim volume Dietzler has given to dozens of staff and colleagues. In that spirit, Villanova boasts a service-focused, highly professional college foodservice that...

Yet, even on campus, unless you actively do business with Dining Services, you would be hard-pressed to give them a second thought. That's because what they do meshes so perfectly and so unobtrusively with campus life and activities that they become part of the atmosphere, something just there and right, like the greenery and the historic buildings. And, except to recognize the excellence of individual team members, the department rarely toots its own horn.

This is undoubtedly a reflection of Dietzler, who is low-key almost to a fault. He obsesses about all the right things: how to better meet the dining needs of students and staff, how to position his department to meet those needs in the future and how to serve the larger institutional mission.

"In this business you earn your reputation every day in every single transaction," he says. "At any given time you could have hundreds, even thousands, of reputations based on the individual experiences and perceptions of your customers."

Ghosts
A Villanova graduate who had worked in commercial restaurants before returning to his alma mater 19 years ago, Dietzler combines operational experience and savvy with a deep respect for the institution he serves. Starting as a foodservice manager in one of the board dining halls, he became a general manager in what was then a fragmented campus dining operation.

"The university operated separate dining departments for many years," he explains. "We had one that took care of the resident halls and some cash ops. We also had the Connelly Center, our student union, with a retail food operation and its own director. Meanwhile, vending was under a separate arm of procurement."

That all began to change in 1993 when the disparate operations were brought under a new director of auxilliary services. When the resident hall dining director resigned in 1995, Dietzler became one of the two associate directors assigned to replace him. He and fellow associate director Tina Cellucci (now director of administration for dining services), along with the Connelly Center director, all reported to Executive Director of Budgeting & Auxiliary Services Frederick Sieber. In 2002, Sieber promoted Dietzler to sole director.

Through his tenure, Dietzler has seen his department evolve from a very traditional and rigid campus dining service into today's much more flexible and responsive operation. Once largely a commuter school where the small contingent of resident students ate three meals a day at the university monastery, Villanova didn't open its first campus dining hall until the late 1950s, when only 600 students resided on campus.

In 1993, the department began "a full transformation of the dining program," in Dietzler's words. This involved both a series of renovations and the formulation of a new three-tier meal plan approach that has driven revenues above the average meal plan price increase for over seven years, he says proudly.

"When I first started, we had the single meal plan and our focus was really just serving students in the residence dining halls," Dietzler says. "It was a wonderful program, but we were closing at 6:30 at night and there was nothing available past then. Beginning in '93, we made a big push, taking advantage of the retail outlets, expanding our serving hours, expanding our meal plan option and focus, and giving students a lot of flexibility."

A major component of the transition was the Meal Plan Express program Dietzler instituted in 1993. It allows students to substitute retail purchases for a dining hall meal at certain retail locations during designated hours (Dietzler avoids the term equivalency because it invites comparisons of meal values and prices).

"It let us push back into some later serving hours and use the Connelly Center (and eventually other retail outlets) to augment the dining halls," he notes.

The 1993-2002 period also saw modest upgrades of the board dining halls and the openings of a slew of new cash operations.

"We have transformed from a dining program offering six hours of dining a day to over 18 hours. At the same time we lowered food and labor expenses effectively by over six percent in both areas, and driven the contribution to the General Education & Expense fund higher each year since 1996," Dietzler notes.

Since taking over as sole department director, Dietzler has concentrated on confronting the greater institutional challenges hampering the department's efforts to meet the needs of 21st century students. It is a very tough assignment. In his way stand two campus realities: one is something Villanova has in abundance (tradition) and the other is something it finds increasingly scarce ( physical space).

The ghosts of history hover over almost every improvement project. Take St. Mary Hall, site of one of the three all-you-caretoeat board dining halls. St. Mary was originally part of an Augustinian seminary adjacent to the Villanova campus "so it's a rather unique building to work in," Dietzler says.

(Among other signs of its history, St. Mary's retains the seminary chapel and row of individual prayer nooks used by seminarians for private meditation; also, the dining area is dominated by a mosaic wall mural depicting the Last Supper).

The dining room where the novitiates took their meals was set up for family style service, not the multiple-choice cafè dining today's students expect. To increase the choices, Dining Services installed self-serve hot food and salad bars as well as a grill space, but the options for major upgrades are limited. Dietzler would dearly love to completely renovate St. Mary but "working in this environment, you have to preserve the integrity of the building," he concedes. "Leaving some tradition is important."

What he did do was convert a vacant court yard adjacent to the dining hall space into a two story building featuring a retail c-store. Dubbed the Second Storey, it has been one of the department's biggest recent successes.

Developed with the 1,200 student apartment dwellers in the nearby Back Campus area in mind, Second Storey has a sizeable market for its full-service deli, meals-to-go, groceries and frozen foods product mix, especially since students can use their Meal Plan Express option to make purchases.

Dietzler muses about simply taking the entire St. Mary dining space and making it into an expanded Second Storey (the retail and resident dining hall areas share a common production area that sits between them and effectively divides the two spaces). But...

"It's hard to change things because it's the way things have always been, and there has always been a dining hall here at St. Mary," he concedes.

Those ghosts again.

Noshes From Underground?
Tradition combines with space limitations and operational logistics issues (never mind financial considerations) to frustrate (so far) changes at another location, Dougherty Hall, which Dietzler terms the "the anchor for most of our operations on campus."

A relic of the 1950s, Dougherty has become a kind of eternal project for Dining Services. "For the entire 19 years I've been here, we've been talking about renovating that building," Dietzler laughs. "It's such a fixed structure. There's a ramp that takes you around to fixed stations and serving lines...12-gauge stainless steel...there really isn't much we could do without a major effort."

The problems had been mitigated somewhat with the additions of two cash operations (see sidebar on p. 48) that augment the antiquated board dining operation in Dougherty. However, they are a band-aid; Dougherty really needs major surgery.

Part of Dietzler's challenge is that Dougherty functions as a commissary for the various campus retail operations.

"We can't shut it down, even in the summer," he says, "so we're trying to find other ways to attack it." Moving the commissary operation to another building on campus is a non-starter (that space issue again), "so the challenge is, how are we going to renovate Dougherty Hall without putting another building on campus?"

His solution: "Project Mole."

As its name implies, Project Mole is subterranean. It would entail building a 25,000-sq.ft. underground kitchen and serving area beneath the campus commons area. That new facility would become a central commissary while Dougherty undergoes a complete renovation. Afterwards, the underground area would become a permanent retail space connecting Dougherty (a major campus

As its name implies, Project Mole is subterranean. It would entail building a 25,000-sq.ft. underground kitchen and serving area beneath the campus commons area. That new facility would become a central commissary while Dougherty undergoes a complete renovation. Afterwards, the underground area would become a permanent retail space connecting Dougherty (a major campus administrative center) with the Connelly Center directly across the commons.

"It wouldn't have a visual impact on the center part of campus but would give us additional space," Dietzler explains.

"The idea is to build this elaborate serving area underground and transition a move into that. It would include an all-you-can-eat dining area as well as a convenience store and a walk-up counter for 24-hour service."

Meanwhile, the renovated Dougherty Hall would no longer need the large dining hall it currently operates, leaving room for desperately needed additional student programming and conferencing space. These in turn could provide additional catering opportunities for Dining Services.

"It's really a win/win for everyone," Dietzler argues.

Project Mole is currently in a project queue awaiting decisions on funding.

Making Do
How do you meet modern student needs on a campus that imposes so many restrictions? Very carefully and very creatively.

Villanova Dining Services has worked to manage a slow evolution that includes a series of dining outlets that supplement the three traditional board dining halls, extending hours, providing variety and increasing flexibility. Meal Plan Express makes select retail outlets realistic and affordable alternatives for resident students at designated times of the day (and, ironically, may have taken some of the pressure off from having to make significant renovations to the dining halls).

Still, space considerations make operations difficult. Take the highly successful The Exchange operation, where attractive display makes the food feel prepared-to-order even though most of it is pre-made and served to plate. "It's basically a sardine can operation that nevertheless does $1.3 million a year," Dietzler says (The Exchange averages 1,700 transactions a day from a 900-sq.ft. space). "The marvelous dishes they make in that cramped kitchen space...well, I'm still trying to figure out how they do that."

In the traditional dining halls, the department has sought to be as responsive as possible to meeting student expectations. The high satisfaction scores the department continues to garner testify to its continuing success in this area.

Dietzler has not stopped planning for the future. He wants to put a completely organic salad bar into the retail Belle Air Terrace location. Menus will also be upgraded once a new executive chef—a new position—is brought on board in June.

Meanwhile, he relies on what has been achieved so far. This includes the signature marketing touch of the various concept names that play on the school's Catholic ties. In addition to Holy Grounds, there are the Padre Pizza and Heavenly Wings & Other Things in the Donahue Food Court.

"We try to have fun with the Augustinian traditions of the university," he admits.

At the same time, Villanova has sought to make its campus a welcoming one to students of other faiths and cultures. As at many universities, the food choices increasingly include a wide variety of ethnic choices. The department even started a halaal program in conjunction with the Muslim Student Association last year, when halaal choices were available daily through the Muslim feast of Ramadan (for this effort, MSA named an award after Dietzler, and he was its first recipient).

The initiative is just one in a series designed to prepare the department for an anticipated increase in international students. The school's strategic plan calls for increasing this portion of the student body from the current 15% to as much as 25% in the next five years. Villanova recruiters have been circling the globe from Istanbul to Beijing in search of future students. "A big factor," says Director of Admissions Michael Gaynor, "is providing a campus on which foreign student feel comfortable and welcome."