A Day in the Life of the Dining Services

Every morning at 7:30 a.m., 59-year-old Edward Carpenter drives to the wholesale meat market on South Hampton St. in Boston to look at a few tons of meat products.

"Say a vendor has an order for a couple thousand pounds of roast beef," says Carpenter, the meat and poultry buyer for Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS). "I'II pick out the ones I want."

At about 10 a.m., Carpenter gets back to his office in the Freshman Union and spends the rest of his day making calls to vendors to find and order the best food buys for the Harvard community.

Carpenter is one of about 450 dining service workers who spend a great deal of time ordering, preparing and serving meals to hungry students, who have traditionally been critical of the food HUDS provides.

Assistant Director of Dining Services Administration Dale M. Hennessey says she is sometimes frustrated when students criticize the Union without knowing how much planning and preparation is necessary to run a modern college dining hall.

"[Students] obviously don't know what goes on behind closed doors," Hennessey says.

Dining hall workers begin their day at the crack of dawn, according to Union Manager Katherine E. D'Andria. Three morning cooks and two dining hall administrators arrive at the Union each day at 5 a.m. to start preparing breakfast, D'Andria says. The rest of the morning staff, except for part-time and student workers, is in by 6:30 and stays until 2 or 3 p.m.

The dinner cooks come in at 10:30 a.m. and work until 7:30 p.m. They begin work on the next day's meal, prepare that evening's dinner and help out with that day's lunch if they are needed, D'Andria says.

The cooks are constantly busy during the meal--heating and reheating entrees, chopping and mixing ingredients for the soups and other menu items.

With some exceptions, the menu is on a six-week rotation, says Hennessey, a registered dietician who often comes up with new recipe ideas to add to the 800 food items HUDS already serves.

Each meal has its own guidelines, she adds. The dinner menu, for example, always has two hot entrees, two vegetables and a starch. Each kitchen is given the exact same recipes, Hennessey says, but there may be slight differences in the ways the food is prepared.

Hennessey feeds the recipes into a six-year-old computer system similar to the ones used by other college dining halls across the country. The computer separates food items by type of product and by vendor, and estimates how much of each ingredient will be needed for a particular meal, based on past servings and the time of year, Hennessey says.

This information is then given to Carpenter and Philip R. Bauer '36, the other food buyer. Bauer, who works entirely out of his office, purchases food from all over the world, although most of it is produced in the U.S. Most of the fish and dairy products are produced in New England or New York.

Some food, including fish, is delivered to the dining halls only a day or two before it is served. Other food items, like canned goods and groceries, arrive two weeks before they are served.

But Bauer says, "There's nothing there that's going to spoil."

After each meal, dining hall managers enter into the computer the amount of food used and the number of students who ate the meal. The managers then get an estimate from the computer of how much food will be needed next time.

D'Andria says the computer prediction is usually very accurate, adding that miscalculations generally result in food running out. She says any leftovers are served and finished at the next meal.

"We very seldom have food left over. If we have extra food, something is wrong," D'Andria says.

There are very few limitations on what kind of food can be prepared, Hennessey says. The only restrictions are in the amount of menu items that can be laid out on the serving line.

"For the most part, these menus are based on what we've gotten back as student input. We're always hungry for information that way," she says.

Since HUDS' goal is to cater to the students, Hennessey says it places great importance on students' constructive comments and encourages them to use the suggestion box located on the checker's desk at the Union.

HUDS employees listen to student comments at mealtimes and report back to Hennessey on what students like and dislike, she says. And every week, HUDS production supervisors meet with Hennessey to discuss what is being done right and what can be done better.

"Student input is important. We're here for you guys," she says.

However, representatives at the Local 26 food workers' union have said that student input should become a more integrated part of the Dining Services structure.

Domenic M. Bozzotto, one of the union representatives, says that when Local 26 negotiates a new contract with Harvard in May, it may include a standards committee, consisting of HUDS administrators, workers and students.

"It's a good, strong consensus that gets things done," Bozzotto says.

The purpose of the committee would be to give everyone some input into the workings of HUDS, Bozzotto says. The committee would insure that everyone would be satisfied with such issues as worker hours, food quality and the way theme dinners are conducted.

Earlier this year, HUDS drew criticism from Assistant Dean for Race Relations and Minority Affairs Hilda Hernandez-Gravelle over a "'50s Night" it staged. Hernandez-Gravelle said flyers for the event, which described the 1950s as a carefree era, were offensive because of their unconscious insensitivity to segregation and racial prejudice during that time.

HUDS was also attacked by some members of the Harvard community for the way it handled National Dairy Week in February. Female dining hall workers were required to wear milkmaid's bonnets, and one worker offered to dress up in a cow suit rather than wear a bonnet.

Despite the criticism, Hennessey says she and the HUDS staff like to introduce a lot of "monotony breakers" like the theme dinners for the enjoyment of both students and dining hall workers.

To make sure that the facilities are safe and clean, HUDS conducts its own health inspections, which examines workers' hygiene and the cleanliness of kitchens among other things, says Hennessey.

"We have to maintain these standards on a daily basis. We have too much accountability to mess up. Being in the food business, you can't do anything else," Hennessey says.

The Cambridge Health Department has performed spontaneous routine checks on all the Harvard dining halls, and no major violations have been found.

Joseph M. Nicoloro, who works at the Health Department, says of the Union, "All in all, they're doing a good job."