Digging Deep Into Dining: Russell Monteath on Cal Poly and the Dining Program

When it comes to working in campus dining, putting the needs of students first is a priority for Cal Poly Partners, the organization that oversees all things dining. Russell Monteath, director of Commercial Services for Cal Poly Partners, emphasized the importance of putting students first in regards to their dining experience as first years.

CL: What do you think are some of the biggest, challenges and things you have to deal with, day to day when it comes to dining halls and dining?

RM: It’s just volume. I don't think people realize this, but, in a ranking of what we serve people, like how many coordinated people live on campus. We rival UCLA, USC. We are enormous in terms of a dining program. So, we have over 50 locations and we feed over 25,000 people a day. So if you can do the math, you know, 50 locations, 25,000 people, right now, 8,500 students who live on campus, 9,000 students that are on a meal plan. I wouldn't say the hardest, it's I just think, when I have a history of working in food service outside of a residential like university setting, volume is really key.

CL: How else has the dining hall, the Cal Poly dining stuff changed over the years? 

RM: This is the most important, we simplified that about five, six years ago, and we kind of just said, student experiences is all that really matters to us on campus. So I know we get sometimes negative feedback from students and I like sitting down with students and talking to students all the time. But one of the things I would tell you is it's a focus on anything that we're doing. Does this improve the student experience? And if so, we're getting it from students, from them, from their mouths, from surveys. We do a survey annually of about five thousand students, you know, this isn't good, or this is what we wanna see, right? So like, you see projects like 1901, the marketplace, right? That was really derived a lot from feedback from students about what needed to happen.

So it's really been a shift in saying, this is a student' program. We're making decisions that are helping improve students' lives. And, you know, like I said, I think we can sit back and I can candidly tell you that the focus maybe wasn't always what was the center focus. Like, we want to do this. The question always comes back, does this improve student's life and do students want it? And if the answer is no, then we're not doing it. You know, we look at concepts such as 1901 Kitchen that just opened up. We got a lot of feedback from students that want to see an all you care to eat buffet style concept, right? So we open that up. 

CL: I know a lot, specifically VGs, like the menu change is kind of every couple of weeks and stuff, like, does that come from student feedback?

RM: If I was a First Year and I was buying into a meal plan that was mandatory and I had to eat here 25, 30 something times a week, three meals a day, I could understand where people are coming from where they say it's the same food. I get tired of the food. I get it, I hear you. So for us, one of the things that we did when listening to the students and doing that is rotating menus as frequently as we do. Like Vista Grande changes, they have nine platforms at Vista Grande, uh, every two in Balance, which is the allergen kitchen, we rotate every week. And then some of the other platforms were rotating every two to three weeks.

Listen to the interview with Russell here!