Virginia Tech: Meeting the needs of today's evolving students

For most college campus foodservice teams, opening a brand-new dining facility with nine concepts and 600 seats would be plenty for one semester.

But Virginia Tech didn’t stop there. In addition to popping up that large new facility, this semester the team also launched three new retail locations, renovations at a food court, novel sustainability initiatives like eliminating plastic water cups, and a digital menu revamp that includes allergen symbols.

“I crack up thinking about how last summer we changed essentially nothing—and then this summer, we did everything,” says Brian Grove, director of dining services at Virginia Tech. 

“In the C&U sector, constant change comes with the territory. You’ve got to update, renovate and remodel if you want to keep up,” he adds.

That spirit is fully embodied in the Perry Place facility within Virginia Tech’s new 100,000-square-foot Hitt Hall. Each of the nine dining concepts is a direct response to student feedback and their desire for new, different, more, better.

For example, the all-day breakfast diner Solarex was inspired by students telling Grove they wanted breakfast options available throughout the day. Another common refrain was complaints about a lack of authentic Asian food—so Grove and his team went to YouTuber and Asian-cuisine chef Mai Pham to create Rambutan, an Asian street food concept that is exclusive to Virginia Tech and features flavors largely from Vietnam, Thailand, and China. 

By far the most popular restaurant in Perry Place is Smoke, which serves up barbecue in a “sort of hybrid” approach between Texas and Kansas City styles. Grove says students are consistently willing to wait in “a mile-long line” for a five-ounce Texas-style beef brisket, rotisserie chicken, pulled pork and other items cooked to perfection in smokers. There’s even something for vegetarians here, in the form of smoked tempeh, plus sides like smoked jalapeno mac and cheese and a southern-style potato salad.

“We do a lot of outside research: We went to Austin and Kansas City, to great barbecue restaurants—we hit about 17 different restaurants,” Grove says. “We wanted to make sure we had not only the best barbecue, but also the best sides—the best of everything.”

While Perry Place is certainly the crown jewel of this semester’s new offerings, the spirit of refresh extends around campus. Because when you seek to evolve with students’ tastes, often it means breaking out of old patterns and partnerships.

“We had a 20-year relationship with a national brand that was great, but it had just reached a point where it was not resonating enough with our students,” Grove said. “I had to make the hard decision and opt not to renew the contract. We’re in a moment where we needed to move in new directions, in a lot of ways.”

Smoke offers students a hybrid approach between Texas and Kansas City BBQ styles.

New directions

These trends are fueled by actual changes in the campus populations, like a shift to more international students over time, as well as higher dining expectations from students overall.

“It’s very much destination dining, and a desire for an eclectic mix of options,” says senior associate director of dining Brandon Hendricks. “What one dining center is doing will be very different from the next.”

Owens Food Court, for example, embodies the traditional food court experience with its expansive space offering tons of seating and multiple concepts. JP’s Chop House, by contrast, in Cochrane Hall includes higher-end furniture with a steakhouse type of vibe. Even pizza varies from one spot to the next: Rosso serves up personal-sized pies made to order, while Turner Place uses a special sourdough starter and sells by the slice.

“They all have not only their own cuisines, but also their own cultures, and I think that’s a beautiful part of campus life,” Hendricks says. “You can go have a different experience in every single dining center, and you won’t repeat anything: the meal, the furniture, the music, the overall experience.”

Outside of the dining facilities and concepts themselves, operations and service have also been imbued with new—with a particular eye on sustainability.

This summer, the campus’s Southgate Food Center swapped out plastic containers for clear compostable containers when packaging items like parfaits and puddings. Also at Southgate is a new “biodigester,” a piece of equipment that the foodservice team acquired with support from the Athletics Department. The biodigester uses a natural process called aerobic digestion, to digest food scraps into gray water that is dispensed into the regular plumbing system. In the first six months, the unit digested more than 20,000 pounds of compostable waste.

Across campus, all facilities have eliminated plastic water cups. And students can opt for reusable to-go containers that they are instructed to return within a set number of days. Students also now see universal waste signage at each dining facility, offering color coding that makes waste disposal easier to understand.

“Our students are very Mother Earth-centric, and they want to make sure they're doing the right thing for the planet,” Grove says. That spurred the team to “be really intentional about building sustainability into the process from the ground up at Perry Place.”

After an exceptionally busy slate of new concepts and initiatives this semester, the foodservice team feels they’re ushering in a new era for dining at Virginia Tech. But the innovation, Grove knows, cannot stop here.

“My best advice is to put yourself into the life of a student and be attuned to their needs,” he says. “I know that sometimes it’s tough to do that, and it can feel like you don’t have enough hours in the day. But it’s so important to prioritize stepping outside of what’s happening today, so you can develop for tomorrow. It’s the only way to succeed in C&U.”

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Get to know Virginia Tech’s Brian Grove

See what’s in store for Grove’s operation, which was named FSD’s November Foodservice Operation of the Month.

Q:  What is it that makes your operation excel?

It’s certainly my team, and specifically the fact that we're all on the same page. We are all truly passionate about what we do each and every day to take care of our students here on this campus. Great food and great service is what I preach every day, and the team really cares about making that happen.

Brian Grove

Q: What are your goals for the operation in the coming year? 

We’re working on a few new concepts, including one that’s free of the top nine allergens. We're also looking at developing a kosher food truck. We have no kosher here on our campus right now, so we're actually creating a partnership with Hillel. The university is planning a new campus as well, so we’re of course a big part of that process with adding new dining centers. We’ve had a lot going on the last year, but there’s a lot coming up too.