Staff Spotlight: Dining Hall Services
By JOONHYUNG HEO, ELLEN JIN, ALLEGRA LAI, and LAUREN LEE
Seven days a week, for breakfast, lunch, snacktime, and dinner, more than a thousand members of the Academy community stream in and out of the dining halls. The lines are long, the plates are loaded with food, the tables are packed — and when they come back for the next meal, everything is as it was. The tables are clean, the salad bar is full, and fresh food is on the menu. Behind it all is the Dining Services team, hard at work to make sure that Exeter is fed.
Elm Street Dining Hall and Grainger Auditorium, the latter of which will be used temporarily until Wetherell Dining Hall is scheduled to reopen in fall 2024, are the Academy’s two dining halls on campus. Both locations share a similar structure in terms of staffing: a general administrative group oversees subdivisions of cooks, bakers, and dishwashers, among others. Elm Street, which opens during the week and through the weekend, employs a larger team than Grainger Auditorium, which only opens on weekdays.
On a regular school day, the dining staff spend much of their time preparing meals. The end result — a ready meal — is the product of many different roles, from manual to organizational work.
Supervising the entire operation is Director of Dining Services Melinda Leonard. “I provide leadership and support for the team and Exeter community,” Leonard said. “I provide resources for our department and communicate within Dining Services and the wider community. I consider myself very fortunate to work with such a talented, committed group of individuals.”
The Dining Services Manager in Grainger, Heidi Dumont, also spoke to the administrative side of preparing food. “I manage all the employees in my dining hall and I’m part of the general leadership group, which is the Dining Services team as a whole,” Dumont said. “We have biweekly meetings to talk about upcoming events.”
“In terms of my daily schedule, I start by polishing the menus and checking in with the staff,” Dumont continued. “Then we have a pre-meal, an informational meeting to go over allergens for that day. I also have to look two weeks out and forecast what our menu should look like, and our menu system generates recipes and places an order for the food. The rest of the day is basically moving food from the mobile kitchen down to the service line and working with the production team and front of house to make sure we have all our supplies.”
Dining Services Manager Jeffrey Perrotta in Grainger, working alongside Dumont, manages production. “Typically I start by doing my rounds with the back-of-house staff and check in with everyone,” Perrotta said. “I make sure the products I ordered have come in and check whether there are any shortages or products that need to be refused due to quality. Then I work with the culinary team and see if they need any help with recipes or cooking methods. In the afternoons, I prepare my orders for the next day and walk through my storage areas to make sure I have all the ingredients the culinary staff need.”
On the other side of campus, the Assistant Unit Manager in Elm Street, Rebecca Bolton, performs a role similar to Dumont and Perrotta’s. “I give my team a pre-meal to start the day, basically going over any updates or changes we might have with the menu or big dates,” Bolton said. “Then I’m here to help them on the floor. You might see me running around during lunch service, after service trying to get my paperwork done, and throughout the day putting out any small fires. I do another pre-meal for the dinner service crew. I try to help the team in any way I can.”
Complementing the kind of administrative work that Leonard, Dumont, and Bolton perform, the kitchen staff spend their time physically preparing the meals — everything from revising menus to cooking at the stove.
“First thing in the morning, I check in with employees front and back of house to ensure everything is on track,” Executive Chef Pierre Gignac said. “I connect with dining hall managers, food purchasers, and the dining director and manage catering orders. When time allows, I work on menu planning, recipe editing, and production team scheduling.”
“Each meal is created from menus established months ahead,” Gignac continued. “Recipes are generated and ingredients are ordered through the managers. Ingredients are delivered every day from multiple vendors, and meal preparation generally starts two days ahead and finishes the day of to get the freshest food. It takes the whole team to make this happen, from the manager and food handler to the cooks, the front-of-house team, and the dishwashers and custodial.”
Dishwasher and Compost Manager Frank Brienza is one of these people who complement Gignac’s work in the dining space. “I start work at nine at Grainger after breakfast,” Brienza said. “My job is to take care of the dining, the trash, and the compost, and to assist people on the front line if they need it.”
Of course, this is only the day-to-day operation behind school meals. For such special events as Fall Fest, Family Weekend, and the Lunar New Year celebration, the dining staff go through another extensive process.
“These events are often planned months in advance and engage multiple departments that elevate the events via student and community participation,” Leonard said. “As a department, planning these events is just as much fun for us as putting them on. They truly reflect our spirit of community and give us some fun throughout the year.”
The staff often refer to previous iterations of these events in planning ahead. “We try to base our information off of years past,” Bolton said. “If we tried something two years ago and it didn’t work, we know we shouldn’t try it this year, and we know something works if people loved it previously. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But we also try to add different things each year to make things a bit more special.”
Indeed, these events are often a creative outlet for members of the dining team. “Fall Fest is a good example,” Dumont said. “We started planning that in the summer and came up with the idea of the Volkswagen bus from weddings Ms. Leonard had attended, so that created the seventies theme. On the night of the event, we got to see everyone enjoying themselves. It may not be the healthiest food, but it’s just a fun thing for one night, and it gives us the opportunity to create something stress-free for the students that’s also community-based.”
Beyond all the hard work that the dining staff put in every week, what is most striking is just how much many of them enjoy being at the Academy.
“I’ve been with the Academy for three and a half years now, and I really enjoy it,” Bolton said, even having spent an entire career in various restaurants and hotels. “This is honestly one of the best places I’ve worked at, and I’m hoping to be here for at least the next 25 years into retirement.”
While a part of the Exeter appeal is the opportunity for creative expression in planning for special events, perhaps more significant is the sense of community that Dining Services staff enjoy — not just amongst themselves but with the Academy community at large.
“I love the interactions I have with students and staff in the dining hall,” Perrotta said. “It’s great to see how the food we produce brings the community together every day.”
“I still have a thank-you note from a student from 2006,” Dumont said. “I’ve been here for 21 years, and sometimes you just make those special connections. My favorite part is really when we can make those great relationships with students and faculty.”
“My favorite part of the job is the people I meet,” Brienza said. “I feel like I get a lot of respect here, and that really does mean a lot to me. And I hope a lot of people know I respect them. I remember two years ago, the senior class bought me a jacket — a black windbreaker-type jacket, with ‘Exeter’ on it. That really brought a tear to my eye. I still wear it every day.”
Certainly, working at Exeter has not come without its fair share of difficulties. For the team formerly in Wetherell, the transition from their old dining hall at the end of winter term in 2023 to Grainger as a temporary space was an obstacle. Nevertheless, the staff have risen to the challenge.
“The infrastructure was a problem in the beginning months,” Gignac said. “But now it’s operating to its capacity. It is no doubt a difficult kitchen to work out of, but we have a very dedicated team. Of course, it doesn’t compare to Wetherell for its functionality, but it will do until we are in our new environment.”
“With any move into a new production space, there are always going to be challenges associated and it took a great team effort to pull it off,” Perrotta said. “There were equipment issues at first, but we received a lot of support from the Academy to get what we needed. I cannot be more profuse in offering gratitude to our staff for the effort they put into making things run smoothly.”
The dining staff’s work and their consistency have not been lost on the Exeter community itself. Students found plenty to be thankful for.
“They always make sure to clean up after us,” lower Sam Altman said. “They also replace the food quickly so people don’t miss the things they run out of. Not only do the staff complete their tasks efficiently every day, they also make an effort to get to know us. I really am grateful for what they do.”
In particular, Altman mentioned Brienza as a staff member who gives his all in a personal and professional capacity. “I love Frank,” Altman said. “Every time I’m putting my plate away in Grainger, he’s always there to help. He says thank you and cheers me up, even when I have chemistry in the next block. What a great guy.”
Lower Alva Carlston reflected on similarly positive experiences with the staff. “I interact with them at least once a day,” she said. “They’re always kind and curious about what’s going on in my life.”
From planning special events to preparing meals on a day-to-day basis, the Dining Services team spends every week feeding the Exeter community. Their hard and earnest work has not gone — and never should go — unnoticed.
