How Zia Ahmed is redefining dining

Zia Ahmed is connecting the dots.

He is working to tie campus dining to student development, understanding that quality cuisine makes for happy students. And happy students are higher-performing.

Ahmed is unwilling to operate in a silo. As the senior director for dining services at The Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus, Ahmed says the role campus dining plays is all about nurturing students along the educational journey, similar to the role of professors and counselors.

Campus dining, for example, recently rolled out a mobile ordering app that facilitates to-go purchases at its 30-plus dining halls. Ahmed says the app has a broader purpose than simply offering convenience. “At campus dining, we’re in the student development business, and the app is designed to fulfill that mission,” Ahmed says.

When pressed for time, mobile ordering frees up students to avoid extended dining occasions. The faster they receive their food, the more they can concentrate on coursework.

In an effort to further develop students’ worldview, the dining program sponsors trips abroad to work with farmers. Getting in the trenches to grow and dry coffee in Central America, for example, translates to higher-end coffee for campus dining menus. But trips to Honduras and Guatemala also help local farmers improve sustainable agriculture, enabling them to grow healthier food.

Bottom line, Ahmed is continually shaking the tree and redefining the campus foodservice paradigm with a vision that’s occasionally “bold and gutsy,” he says. The approach is vital, he says, to remaining on the leading edge of dining for the next decade and beyond.

Back to the future 

Ahmed’s future includes a proprietary mobile app, leading to food delivered by autonomous vehicles. He envisions a greater reliance on automated food assembly—all while maintaining the crucial role of human interaction.

For the here and now, Ahmed, whose program serves 40,000 guests per day and 10 million per year, is embarking on more immediately feasible forward-thinking initiatives.

This fall, to address a seating capacity issue at several dining halls, his team unveiled Curl Market Patio, a fully outdoor facility, including cooking and prep equipment. “It’s one of the more gutsy things I’ve done as the weather each month only gets colder,” says Ahmed, who worked with equipment suppliers to procure high-grade, stainless-steel and weatherized cooking equipment designed with casters for easy mobility.

Mirror Lake Eatery, a new concept at The Ohio State University. Photo: FSD staff

Another initiative aimed at driving sustainability is the university’s My Cup program. The program centers around a reusable, insulated cup equipped with a radio frequency identification chip embedded at its base. Each chip is loaded with 10 drink purchases per cup, resulting in a more sustainable solution to disposable cups while also reducing transaction times. The university handed out 15,000 personalized cups in what Ahmed describes as “one of the most comprehensive reusable cup programs in the U.S.”

From flavor to time-savers

As he ponders future initiatives, Ahmed, who spent several years at The University of Akron as foodservice director, says a renewed emphasis will be placed on a menu concept very meaningful to him: flavor fusion.

“Our guests are not always seeking authentic Mexican, Indian or Szechuan food, for instance,” Ahmed says. “They seek fusion of flavor of these cuisines.”

For example, a campus taco station features “Brazilian-inspired-prepared meats” served in a traditional taco format. “It’s not about the spices and sauces but the Brazilian cooking technique used,” he says. “Korean cuisine might not be as appealing to some, but once you integrate ‘barbecue’ into the conversation, you create fusion—a level of familiarity where people are more willing to try it.”  

This attention to detail has garnered a growing number of new diners—putting seating capacity at a premium. Designing Curl Market Patio is one solution, and so is mobile ordering for to-go pickups. “Students told us this is how they want to interact with us,” Ahmed says of a program developed with San Francisco-based Tapingo, whose mantra is “people waste too much time waiting, worrying and wondering what could have been. We think there’s a better way.”  

Ahmed considers OSU to be the No. 1 university in the nation in terms of the number of mobile orders, to the tune of 8,000 transactions a day. So far, 35% of all transactions come from mobile ordering, with 35% of all mobile tickets occurring at lunchtime and 20% at dinner. In the future, the app is projected to become more robust, unleashing greater functionality to capture trends about student habits and provide food nutritional information.

Ohio State Dining, which has seen 80% of all facilities either renovated or built since Ahmed arrived, created dedicated pickup areas for students to support mobile ordering, which—due to robust adoption—could create its own wait-time dilemma. Not so, Ahmed says. The app gives users the power to avoid waits.

“Users log onto the app to see how long a wait time is at a particular venue,” he says. “If there are multiple orders in the queue, they might decline and select another restaurant. The app estimates wait time [and] helps manage time and avoid waits.”

Ahmed is laser-focused when it comes to the oft-controversial topic of technology and how it can displace staff. He says technology’s role, carried out properly, ultimately enhances human relationships rather than undermines them. “Cashiers are telling us that when there are, say, 20 people waiting in line, they’re basically a ‘human robot.’ They’re under a lot of pressure and that negatively impacts the quality of authentic human interaction.”

With the right infusion of technology, staff is freed up to engage with diners in other ways. Ahmed cites a Student Ambassador program designed to better engage with guests—from small talk to gauging opinions of the dining experience.

But ultimately, the OSU program success all comes back to food. Flavor fusion is a “fun” future-forward application. Curating and nurturing foods—like students—can’t be dismissed.

“We have a responsibility to look at the big picture,” Ahmed says, “and create awareness of food—the scarcity of it—so people respect and preserve food security for years to come. It’s about the overarching idea of creating transparency in the food system and making it sustainable for a long time.”