How to win diners’ trust—or win it back

When Kent State cut ties with its dining services supplier in July 2021, it was a particularly difficult time to make the transition to self-op.

Vendors were short on products and ingredients, leaving them unable to fill orders. Staffing was perhaps an even greater challenge, with many operations understaffed or hiring workers with little to no experience.

Those three huge headwinds hit the Ohio-based university’s dining team hard, and the fall 2021 semester proved to be a major challenge before it even began. The team had to build new menus—a whole new program—yet didn’t have an executive chef until days before the semester started. Not a single student employee was on tap to work for the fall.

Almost immediately after the semester began, so did the complaints from some students and their families about food quality and safety, among other concerns. They shared photos of alleged undercooked items, created petitions and online memes, and even launched campus protests.

Kent State had lost the trust of many of its dining customers. But over time, the team managed to win it back through methods they continue to employ every day—here’s how.

Own it, own it, own it.

As news of the complaints began to spread across campus and the wider community, the dining team knew there was only one way to start: by taking responsibility.

“We had to put vulnerability first early on,” says Senior Director of Culinary Services Jacob Kuehn, who came to Kent State from Cornell University shortly after the transition to self-op.  “You have to be humble and listen before taking the chance to respond.”

Kent State Culinary Services set up a formal text-based hotline of sorts where students could share their concerns and thoughts. The team committed to responding to every piece of outreach within 24 hours, sometimes following up with phone calls or group forums to hear additional feedback.

The dining team set up a formal text-based channel where students could share concerns and thoughts. / Photo courtesy of Kent State

“The one-on-one with somebody makes it easier to find a solution and have a real conversation,” Kuehn says. “We can't do that all the time, and a lot of times people don't take us up on it, but we make it available and we do have people who take advantage of it.”

Go back to basics with staff training.

Opening those communication channels was a bit like turning on a firehose, and amid all the feedback, it quickly became clear to Kuehn that some staff needed additional training.

One example: “We kept hearing that the rice was undercooked consistently,” Kuehn says. “That was really the most important part of all of this: getting the basics right, getting the quality better, and training more on food safety. We need these foundations before we can start move forward with fun ideas.”

Kuehn arranged a full food safety and allergen training program at the end of the fall semester to fill in knowledge gaps for new staffers, in particular. More experienced workers, like cook Randy Srp, also stepped in to help.

“Sometimes it’s things you only get [from experience]—like people would say, ‘I temped the chicken and it’s at 165 degrees.’ Well, for some of my chicken, depending on what it is, I might go 180 or 190,” Srp says. “It’s little stuff like that, where the rules are a guide, but you have to have some experience [to know that].”

Undercooked chicken was indeed one of the oft-heard complaints, and to be fair to the staffers, Kuehn says, constant supplier replacements made consistency challenging.

“We usually try to stick to a standard spec, but it was like there was a change every week to that chicken tender,” Kuehn says. “So yesterday was a good product, and today, it's a raw product and that leads to serious issues. We really had to start [with the training].”

Share a transparent plan with your diners, and make sure you deliver.

Through the texting service, forums, marketing and other channels, Kuehn and the team shared with diners their plans—including the safety trainings, menu changes and a switch from a three- to four-week menu cycle.

“Shar[ing] our plan and then deliver[ing] over the rest of the semester was really what won a lot of parents and students back, or at least calm those concerns that they had,” Kuehn says.

All of the effort culminated in an end-of-year Feast Before Finals, a “blowout celebration” with more upscale menu items that Kuehn says was an inflection point.

“That was really the turn for our dining program,” he says. “We wanted to show the students that we are committed to change, and this event was very successful—highly liked by students—and it gave them a glimpse of hope for change next semester.”

That spring semester went much more smoothly, Kuehn says, but he recognizes the operation still has room to grow. Through it all, he and his team never forget the core lesson: Every day, operations have to continue to win diners’ trust.