Dining Hall Department Faces Price Squeeze

"We try to serve food as much like home as possible. But we cannot hope to imitate home cooking or achieve the relaxed atmosphere of eating with one's own family. ...We also must cater to a variety of tastes and still remain within a budget."

These words, spoken by Carle T. Tucker, director of the Dining Hall Department, illustrate well the many dilemmas which face the administrators of the various dining halls within the University. A tight budget, some inevitable degree of dissatisfaction with the menu or with eating conditions, an institutional flavor to the food unlike Mother's cooking, facilities outmoded by College expansion--all of the factors work to the detriment of the Dining Hall Department.

Worth $590 Per Year?

It is a recurrent question, especially when the menu features chipped beef or Hungarian goulash, whether Harvard food is worth $590 per year. Does the kitchen administration do a satisfactory job in satisfying student palates, or is the food here poorer than at other colleges? The Dining Hall Department, caught in a price squeeze and without adequate understanding from the student body, finds itself trapped in the middle, trying to satisfy budgetary requirements and at the same time attempting to provide enjoyable meals.

Food is big business within the University. During the last fiscal year, the Dining Hall Department spent $3,576,547--but less than half of this amount went directly to wholesale grocers. In fact, the Department spends only 44.3 per cent of its annual budget on the 31,000 pounds of flour or the 60,000 quarts of milk used monthly in its operations. If budget trimming can be practiced in the Department, it might start among the salaried workers. Wages account for 44.1 per cent of the Department's expenditures, and a reduction might make a drop in the board rate feasible.

Manpower Efficiency Sought

Certainly there are exceptions to the assistant director's claim, "We are using our manpower 100 per cent efficinetly." Why should two women in the Freshman Union automatically dole out two pats of butter to each and every student? Must an employee be paid $1.30 per hour to stand idly behind a coffee urn waiting for an occasional order? Progress is being made in this direction, however, as a study is currently underway to assess the efficiency of workers within the Department.

Labor is high-priced in Cambridge. Harvard, one of the two Ivy League schools with a union contract, pays the top wages for kitchen workers, along with Yale. A new contract last year played an important part in the board hike. But, at the same time, Harvard provides less expensive meals than Yale, especially when the policy of seconds is considered. Yalies shell out about $520 for eighteen meals--which, according to Tucker, comes to over $602 for a full 21-meal schedule, and the unfortunate Elis cannot have seconds on meat. Students at Princeton pay $560 yearly for a 21-meal week, but these meals are catered by Howard Johnson's, which uses non-unionized labor and which gives only limited portions.

Unlimited Seconds' Unique

The expensive policy "unlimited seconds" is strictly a Harvard institution, unique in the country. "The pride of the University is involved, and we will not drop this policy," Tucker states. Here, however, is another area in which board rates might possibly be cut. Why should Harvard stand in splendid isolation by serving seconds on meat? To serve 2,200 dinners, the Central Kitchen will usually order about 2,000 pounds of meat. Without additional servings, the amount purchased might be cut by as much as 15 per cent--with a corresponding reduction in rates. On the other hand, the quality of food might be upgraded.

Apart from the budgetary angle, the Dining Hall Department is engaged "in a continuous search to serve better food," a quest which many undergraduates believe does not exist. Since July 1, the University's "meat standards have been upgraded," according to dining hall magnates. An official University inspector checks all meat before purchase, and marks satisfactory pieces with a special stamp. No beef carcase or gross of turkeys can enter any of the University's kitchens without the stencilled mark of approval.

Test Dietician Added to Staff

Tucker points at two other recent developments aimed at improving food quality and reducing estimated costs. A test dietician, added to the University staff on January 1, now "studies nutrition on a scientific basis." This researcher takes slabs of meat, cooks them in different methods at varying temperatures, and tries to attain optimum palatability with a minimum of food shrinkage. The less the shrinkage, the less food needed for preparation. In addition, all purchasing for the kitchens is now handled through competitive bidding, which has brought a reduction in delivered prices. Both these moves aim at cutting down or minimizing the cost spiral in which the Dining Hall Department is trapped.

Standardization Considered

Hallowed tradition, however, poses a stumbling block for further attempts at reducing cost or increasing efficiency. The Department is considering standardization of menus at all Houses, a move which would have two "beneficial" aspects. "Such a plan would aid us in purchasing food in bulk quantities. More important, it would eliminate the myth that one House has better food than another."

There seems to be little justification, at least at present, for instituting a standardized menu. Master Bullitt has rightly pointed out that the manager of an individual kitchen would lose his initiative in menu planning and experimentation. More important, the small, indendendent kitchens provide a testing ground for new recipes, dishes, or combinations.

Single Menu for All Houses

But the pleas of the Masters will delay the day of standardization only slightly. A single menu would be a logical extension of the controlling web which penetrates all parts of the Dining Hall system. All menus--from the Central Kitchen, the Union, Dunster, Adams, Harkness, Kresge, etc.--must be approved by the Department. Purchasing for every kitchen is handled by a single agency, which commands lower prices through its bulk purchases. And most important, the Dining Hall Department is pressing an all-out effort to combat the "psychological" statement that the food differs from one kitchen to another. "Exactly the same food is served in all the dining rooms, and any claims of difference between meals in one House and in another simply are not true," Tucker claims.

The omnipresent dollar squeeze also determines, to a very large extent, what foods can be served. "Cost considerations are not the main factor involved in menu planning," the Dining Hall director states, "but they play a very important role in our considerations." Expensive meat cuts at dinner will be counterbalanced by less costly foods served at other meals--the cost of a roast beef dinner may be offset by goulash, chop suey, or some other inexpensive dish.

Poor Public Relations

In addition to budgetary considerations, the Dining Hall Department is hampered by poor public relations. The Student Council evaluation of the College dining halls, written by D. Dwight Dogherty '59, deemed the lack of publicity as the greatest problem of the kitchen authorities. Dogherty suggested hiring a full-time public relations director, but this suggestion, although aimed in the right direction, has definite drawbacks. The wages paid another official in the hierarchy might better be spent in research or in sauces for the turkey.

Student apathy largely prevents the Dining Hall Department from fully satisfying the undergraduates it serves. Few people ever bother to visit the Central Kitchen, the main bakery, or the various House pantries. But the opportunity is there, and the kitchen administrators welcome visitors. Tours through the food preparation complex--an enlightening experience to say the very least--will be given any group that contacts the Dining Hall management in advance. Members of the Student Council roamed through the kitchen this Fall, and most of them expressed amazement at the problems which the Dining Hall Department faces as a matter of routine. Greater encouragement of visits forms one method by which the kitchen authorities can bulid up a reservoir of good will and student understanding.

Student Suggestions Welcome

The dining hall authorities continually affirm their desire to please the student-customers, their captive patrons. Suggestions from undergraduates are welcome--in fact, Sunday night's blueberry pancakes were suggested by a group of Lowell House members. Other indications of likes and dislikes are considered. "We found the Student Council poll very helpful in determining undergraduate preferences and tastes," Mr. Lane claims. Mutton, which received a very low rating on the poll, has appeared only rarely on menus this year; on the other hand, the more popular entrees have tended to appear with monotonous regularity.

But communication between undergraduates and kitchen administrators exhibits, unfortunately, a one-sided, negative characters. Each dining hall supervisor has a comment sheet to fill out after every meal; space is provided for student reaction to the menu served. However, few people ever trouble to register positive comments with supervisors, so certain dishes, by lack of negative comment, are repeated again and again.

Without student encouragement, the Dining Hall Department has full justification for not experimenting extensively with new dishes or combinations. More surveys might help the situation somewhat, but the initiative for kitchen-undergraduate rapport must come from the students themselves. House committees might consider polls or tours as worthwhile activities, and undergraduates should not hesitate to suggest changes and give opinions about the food. For $590 per year, any Harvard student certainly has the right to complain or praise, to suggest or condemn--but very few use this privilege.

The day-by-day operations of the Dining Hall Department alone illustrate a striking degree of coordination brought by years of experience. Take the Central Kitchen as an example. Serving nearly 6,000 meals per day, the Central Kitchen, jammed under Kirkland House, is a veritable beehive of activity from 1 a.m.--when baking of breakfast rolls begins--until well into the evening with the serving of dinner.

Menu planning is a long, involved task, starting as much as two months before the meal is served. Proposed menus must receive the approval of the director of the Department, and must be planned so as not to overstrain the production facilities. Baked potatoes and roast pork, will not usually be served together, since the various kitchens simply do not have sufficient oven capacity for such a load.

Centrality poses many problems, in addition. Food must be transported far from the Central Kitchen, and then reheated on pantry steam tables before serving. Of course much savour is lost with the cooling, reheating, and subsequent sitting in the steam table or on the serving line. It is significant that the plans for the renovation of the Leverett dining area include proposals to prepare more food directly in the pantry. Leverett residents, at the tag end of the tunnel, have often suffered with less palatable food then other Houses due to the great distance from the Central Kitchen. Centrality intrinsically lowers the quality of served food, since reheated dishes can never taste as well as food brought directly to the serving table from the kitchen.

Outmoded design drops the efficiency of the Central Kitchen greatly. For example: approximately 2,000 gallons of milk are consumed daily in the Central Kitchen and its five connected House kitchens. However, there is no cold storage area large enough to hold this amount of milk, so deliveries must be made daily. Much manpower is wasted in cross-haulage between various storerooms--delivered foods may stay in one cooler for two or three hours until the next shipment arrives and then must be shifted to one of the two other small cold storage areas.

The designs of the Quincy House dining area and of the revamped Leverett pantry indicate some of the future alterations which will eventually be undertaken in all the Houses. Quincy plans feature a serving line separate from the dining area, so that much noise is shut off from the tables. When the Leverett dining hall is reopened in November or December, the serving line will occupy part of the present pantry.

To keep pace with the times, the Dining Hall Department is likewise "exploring the possibility of redesigning other House dining areas." Plans have been tentatively drawn for Eliot House, and other studies will commence soon. The Central Kitchen itself will not expand in the near future, since the ninth and tenth Houses will have independent kitchens, but it may be partially reconstructed.

Much maligined and little praised, the Dining Hall Department lacks an adequate voice among the students. Yet, considering the problems of spiraling costs, demands for higher quality, and somewhat inadequate facilities, the College kitchens do a more than satisfactory job. Despite the general student railery, two-thirds of Harvard undergraduates rated the food "good"--a major achievement for institutional cooking. The kitchens cannot rival Mother--but neither could Mother serve 2 1/4 million meals per year