Is Harvard Dining Services SERVING Your Needs?

For the first 17 years David M. Lentini worked in Harvard's dining halls, about one or two students a day asked him if the dining service could start providing Heinz ketchup. Seeking to satisfy these students, Lentini frequently asked his managers to buy it--to no avail.

But with the arrival of Michael P. Berry, director of Harvard Dining Services (HDS) in 1990, customer service was moved to the front burner. The dining halls have begun to offer numerous new programs and services to students with special needs and eccentric culinary tastes. According to Lentini, students nowadays can not only get Heinz ketchup, but can also make requests and expect prompt service.

"Customers are the reason for our being," according to the stated mission of HDS written in 1991. "Students are the primary focus of our business activity....we understand the importance of courteous, attentive service that accommodates the varying needs of the members of the campus community."

Yellow feedback cards give students the opportunity to make special requests or complain about meals. All dining halls guarantee that an HDS employee will call students within 24 hours after receiving a yellow card to discuss a complaint or notify the student about the feasibility of requesting an additional cereal or type of bread.

Sarah Bartholomew, supervisor of the Adams House dining hall, says the Adams staff receives and average of about five cards per week. After special meals, she says, more students submit feedback cards. Following yesterday's Elegant Brunch, for example, 12 students turned in cards.

For students with special needs, HDS purchases soy milk and salt-free seasonings, according to Michael Miller, coordinator of production and quality assurance.

Special kosher meals and the recent addition of garden burgers to the dining halls' daily grill menu offer more dining alternatives for students with special needs. HDS also provides students with bag lunches if they don't have time for a sit-down lunch.

"We try to accomodate students as much as we possibly can," says Miller, who says many of HDS's customer service programs grew out of focus groups with students that were held last spring.

"Nutrition Bites" binders, one of the latest efforts to help students eat well, was one of these programs. The 381-page informational notebooks provide students with fat, calorie, carbohydrate, protein and vitamin breakdowns for all HDS food offerings.

For example, one chicken chimichanga has 5.009 kilocalories, 1.13 grams of carbohydrates, .049 grams of fat and .253 grams of protein. Six ounces of turkey tettrazini has 510 kilocalories, 52.12 grams of carbohydrates, 20.09 grams of fat and 28.03 grams of protein.

To help students make sense of the thick Nutrition Bites binder and make healthy meal choices, strolling nutritionist Shirley S. Hung, a student at the School of Public Health, visits dining halls Thursday and Friday evenings. Her job is to provide students with nutritional counseling and help them formulate a healthy, well-balanced diet, Hung says.

With a display of colorful fliers in fron of her, Hung says she sits at the most prominent table she can find and waits to answer students' questions.

Hung says the most common questions she gets are about weight loss or gain, low fat diets and how to get specific nutrients like protein and iron. Her advice to students wanting to have a healthy diet is to base their eating on a food pyramid--a refinement of the old four food group recommendation.

"Base the diet on the bottom of the pyramid," Hung says. Items at the bottom of the food pyramid include bread, pasta, fruit and vegatables.

"It's all about shifting, not cutting things out completely. Balance, moderation and variety are the three key elements to a healthy diet," she says.

Though Hung has sound nutritional advice to offer--particularly about eating well in Harvard's dining halls--she says many students do not know about her service. She adds that many students aren't aware of the options they have and don't know how to make the most of the dining service in general.

"The staff is amazing," she says. "Each house is its own community, and they really want to be accessible to students."

Despite the efforts of HDS to help students learn about nutrition, many students still complain about menus filled with high-fat entrees with low nutritive value.

Yet almost none of the students interviewed who complained about the low nutritional value of the food had turned in a feedback card, consulted with Hung, or examined the Nutrition Bites notebook that lists the fat, protein, cholesterol and vitamin content in the foods served in dining halls.

"The food they offer is unhealthy," says Feliciano D. Vera '97. "The red meats are too fatty and much of the food is cooked in oil."

Maria Mendez '97 has similar complaints--she thinks she's gained weight since her arrival at Harvard partly because so many foods here are cooked in butter and oil.

Of course, talking to Hung wouldn't solve all student complaints or provide a sure-fire way of avoiding "first-year fifteen," But learning which foods to avoid and requesting non-fat items is a good start, according to Hung.

Hung herself warns that changes come slowly when meals are being mass-produced.

"I can't work miracles," she says. "I'm not the cook or the money person. But there's a lot of basic information we need to get out that has nothing to do with the service side."

Some students say HDS isn't really as responsive to student needs as it claims to be, citing HDS' failure to respond promptly to feedback cards.

Taryn Hearn '95 turned in a feedback card requesting apple juice in bag lunches. she says her request was not met and no dining hall worker ever got back to her--which HDS claims never happens when requests are made.

Keith E. Law '94 encountered a similar problem. He noticed that instead of storing ice cream scoopers in hot water, dining hall workers were storing them in ice--which makes the ice cream harder to serve. He turned in three feedback cards about the matter. Although HDS called him back once, the problem was not rectified, he says.

Law's roommate, Costas Panagopoulos '94 was more successful. Last fall, he submitted a request for fettucine alfredo to be served. He says HDS had not offered it since his arrival in 1990. Soon after he submitted his request, fettucine alfredo made its way onto the menu.

Students who dine at the Freshman Union say first-years get a raw deal--customer service or no customer service.

"The difference between the Union and the house is big. The quality and variety of food is better in the houses," says one junior.

Lynn Peng '97 says she usually eats in Adams House instead of the Union because she likes the house's self-serve policy and thinks the food is better there--a phenomenon she attributes to the fact that the Adams kitchen prepares smaller quantities of food than the Union.

Other first-years lament perennial problems, such as long lines which they often cause their food to be cold and stale by the time they sit down to eat it, they say.

Miller says he hopes these problems will be alleviated when the first-year dining center moves to Memorial Hall, slated for the fall of 1995.

Miller says HDS is working closely with the architects of the project to ensure that the switch is a success.

But no matter how many improvements HDS makes, some students will always have problems with the food it serves.

"People complain about the food because they're kind of bitchy to start with," theorizes one junior male. "It's an escape from frustration."

One reason some students will never be satisfied with the food here is that, for many, institutional food will never compare to Mom's or Dad's cooking--no matter how hard HDS tries. Nutritional Information for Popular HDS Entrees

Entree  kilcal.  Cholesterol (grams)   Fat(g.)  Protein (g) Beef Enchilada (2)  827.7  61.52  50.32  35.14 Fettucine Alfredo (6oz.)  594.6  79.68  20.87  21.68 Grilled Tuna and Cheese Sandwich  412.4  27.43  26.71  14.95 Maccaroni and cheese (8oz.)  706.2  67.89  34.57  29.96 Turkey Tettrazini (6oz.)  340  34.75  13.39  18.68 Shake and Bake Chicken  304.9  00.00  17.35  34.82 Stuffed Shells (2)  340.6  40.41  13.90  14.82 White Pizza  374.6  42.49  15.06  16.88 Crimson/SoRelle B. Braun   SourceLHarvard Dining Services