FSD’s Annual State of C&U Report: 2024
We surveyed college and university foodservice pros to check under the hood and kick the tires of one of the onsite foodservice industry’s most creative and hardest working sectors. The questions our editors came up with for the survey reflect what’s happening at the moment: How’s it going with labor? Which food trends are you anticipating? How are you being sustainable as possible with your practices? Questions like that got us asking more questions, so we each dug deeper into the big-picture topics and found operators who were willing to speak to us in greater detail about their successes and challenges for the year.
By Tara Fitzpatrick, Benita Gingerella, and Reyna Estrada
FOODSERVICE INSIGHTS
The Chartwells Higher Ed team at Texas State University demonstrates how college foodservices holds the opportunity to not just follow, but to create the biggest new food trends.
Just like pairing food and wine, choosing the right menu items for your new robot co-workers to serve can make or break your futuristic food venture.
As college and university dining programs grapple with the question of how to be more sustainable, their own diners may help them get the message across.
As college operators continue to face a labor shortage, culinary internships with local schools are helping fill staffing gaps.
“You can advertise as much as you want, when doing theme meals and things like that, but once the students get on social media and put it on their Instagram...that’s the new word of mouth.”
