Mark Miller is the director of Dining Services at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Prioritizing quality food service has played a key role in the university’s overall effort to keep students on campus.
Consistently at the cutting edge of university dining, in 2006 his team introduced Meatless Monday along with interactive stations where guests can customize their meals. They also designed stations with made-to-order meals, which allows for dietary restrictions and other preferences to be seamlessly accommodated. Seeing this as an opportunity to integrate responsible ingredient sourcing and composting, it quickly spawned Low-Impact Wednesday. Emily’s Garden, which began as an all-vegetarian menu with a vegan option, is now a permanent fixture of the dining hall with one vegetarian option and an otherwise vegan menu. This is in addition to a fully plant-based salad bar and additional stations with meatless options at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
One highlight is the harvest dinner, where a plant-based menu features all the produce from the campus garden at the end of the fall growing season. This event brings together students and the community, as local farms are included.
The dining staff’s efforts are also supported by robust peer-to-peer communication. With about 400 student workers, direct service to classmates is another opportunity to get feedback. Comment boards in the dining hall allow students to share ideas, which the team can respond to and quickly implement. Some of the most popular offerings, like General Tso’s tofu, came from this process.
Miller wants to uphold the high standard of student, employee, and student-employee satisfaction that put their program on the map while increasing awareness with Face Your Waste and Taste it, Don’t Waste It initiatives. He also looks forward to launching a new station in the fall 2024 after a successful summer pilot. Its name, Minus 9, is a nod to its menu, which is entirely free of the top nine allergens (peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, eggs, gluten, dairy, and sesame).
