A trip to Berkeley

I’ve arrived in San Francisco, a city I am quickly learning to love, for the annual conference of the Society for Foodservice Management. I’m here primarily to serve as the moderator of a panel at the conference on Thursday afternoon, so I have the opportunity to do something I don’t get a chance to do much of these days: visit with operators. This morning, before my SFM session, I plan to visit Dan Henroid at the UCSF Medical Center, which recently underwent a multimillion foodservice renovation. I’m eager to see what Dan was able to do there.

But yesterday I was able to honor an oft-made promise, to visit my friend Shawn Lapean at the University of California at Berkeley. We’ve written several stories about what Shawn and his team have accomplished on this 34,000 student campus. But I’ve never seen their handiwork first-hand.

So I hopped on the BART Wednesday morning to join Shawn for coffee and the dollar tour. I came away impressed. CalDining, in my view, represents what college foodservice should be in the 21st century. The facilities run the gamut from spacious dining halls to out-of-the-way coffee shops, and everything appears to fill a niche, or two, for students. For example, the first operation we visited was Common Grounds, a coffee shop opened just this semester in a location that, unaccompanied, you’d need a GPS to find. As Shawn explained it, Common Grounds is in an upper level of a building that is actually two buildings that were melded together but which still maintained their unique floor identification. In Building A, the levels are identified by letters, while in Building B the floors have numbers. And yet, students have had little trouble gravitating to Common Grounds, which will do $1,500 in business on a good day—and most days are good ones, Shawn says.

The department has responded to most student requests and concerns without, it seems, compromising quality or giving away the farm. Everything, it seems, has been carefully thought out so as to have purpose and value. The call for organics has been answered, judiciously. The desire for branded concepts has been satisfied thoughtfully, with brands that fit students’ desire for authentic ethnic, rather than commonly seen brands that can be found anywhere. And the need for convenience has been covered with upscale packaged goods that, as much as one can with processed foods, meet several of the criteria for healthy items.

I only had time to see a portion of the CalDining operation. The campus is spread out over the Berkeley hills and I had a noon luncheon meeting back at SFM. It was a pity, too, in more ways than one. CalDining had a special visitor: Michael Pollan, author of the books The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense Of Food. Pollan is a frequent critic of what food has become in our fast-paced world, and it would have been interesting to hear his take on CalDining. Oh well, perhaps another time.

But if you find yourself in the San Francisco area, you should visit CalDining. They do a lot of things right in an increasingly tough economic climate.