Exonian Goes Behind Scenes At Dining Halls
The sky was pitch black as we ran across campus in our pajamas, checking our phones twice to make sure we were on time. It was 4:50 am. We arrived at the loading door to Wetherell Dining Hall opposite St. Anthony’s bakery to see a woman in a white apron. It was the baker, Cynthia Amabile.
Amabile led us into the kitchen and instructed us to put on aprons and hairnets while introducing her co-worker, assistant baker Mary Smith, who was shuffling around the small bakeshop mixing cookie dough and preparing pie crusts. Later in the day, the dough would be sent to grill, to be baked fresh for students by the staff there. The pies were for catering; a small faculty get-together had been scheduled for that evening. Smith deftly cut the crust mix into perfect, even squares, while Amabile put on her gloves and beckoned us to the long table in front of the oven. The clock struck five; they had been working for one hour.
“We are making challah today,” said Amabile, as she sprinkled flour onto the table and picked up a large wooden spoon to ease all of the dough in the bucket onto the white surface. Before lunch time, she had to finish baking eighteen loaves of perfectly braided bread for the students in Wetherell. “Challah is popular, though not so much as Portuguese sweet bread,” she said. “For that, we have to make at least twenty-two loaves.”
The bakeshop at Wetherell produces everything from dinner rolls to muffins, pies, cakes, pizza crust and last but not least, grill cookies. Smith and Amabile wake up everyday at 2:00am, eat a hasty breakfast, drive to campus and work until noon, baking from scratch for two thousand students and faculty members at the Academy. On days when there are events to cater, they might stay even longer.
“I’ve been working here for 25 years yet most students don’t even know that we’re down here,” Amabile said. “And I guess why would they? My job is to serve them, and we’re not in a particularly visible place. We come and go, every working day [...] and some Sundays, when there are events happening, I have to bake for them too.”
At precisely 6 am, the first cook, Mercy Boadi, arrived to make oatmeal and prepare the fruits and yogurt for breakfast, followed by the second cooks and the utilities dishwashers. The clatter of pots and pans reverberated across the enclosed basement; another day was beginning for the one hundred staff working in Wetherell dining hall and Phillips Exeter’s dining services.
“There’s a lot behind the scenes. Aside from simply cooking, we have to get the food we need and check it. We’re retrained every five years on things like how to take care of food, how to deal with leftovers,” said James Morris, first cook at Elm Street. Morris is responsible for the evening shifts; he comes in every day at around 10:00 am. and stays until 8:00 or 9:00 pm. “We have to make sure everything on the menu is ready; we don’t want to disappoint,” he said. “Sometimes things happen, people call in sick [...] Last week we had pizza on Friday night and we
called it flame-baked pizza crusts, but they turned out to be the wrong size. If I had put sauce and cheese on that it would have collapsed.” To deal with the unexpected scenario, Morris had to call on the help of grill, the bakeshop and Wetherell. “I needed 80-100 crusts, but thankfully they sent us a few dozens and we had time to reconfigure everything,” he said, commenting that it was a “minor miracle” that they managed to still produce high-quality pizzas.
All of the operations that go into the production of food at the Academy, from the three meals served at dining halls to chocolate chip cookies for Friday night events, are mostly invisible to Exonians, who are often quick to criticize any shortcomings. After talking to the bakers and cooks, we asked students in both dining halls at lunch and dinner for their opinion on dining services. Upper Troy Marrero compared dining hall food to playing “Wheel of Fortune,” saying, “sometimes you get subpar food and other times you’re winning. On nights like tonight, when there is chicken fingers and fries...I am winning.”
Many also complained about the lack of variety in the menu. “They have a small variety of lunch meats to eat and I wish they had better options on what to bring with you for games,” said upper Hannah Brown. Students who have specific diets, in particular, find it hard to find foods that meet their needs. Lower Saskia Braden said, “It’s really hard to be a vegan here. I end up eating the same salad almost every meal because even if there is a vegetarian or vegan choice, there isn’t much variety to it.”
Over the past summer however, dining has tried hard to improve the quality of their services. In the 2016-2017 school year, former Director of Dining Services Ward Ganger retired, prompting the creation of a Steering Committee to examine the whole operation. The Committee, led by Melinda Leonard, Acting Director of Dining Services, includes faculty members young and old, many holding other leadership positions on campus, such as AJ Cosgrove, Dean of Residential Life, and Pamela Stuppy, the Academy’s registered dietician. It began meeting towards the end of last spring term to discuss the sustainability and financial efficacy of dining services, as well as strategic planning for the next year. The Clarion group, an independent consultant firm, was also invited to come and help the Committee with objective reviews and recommendations.
Tom MacDermmott, the Director of Clarion group, came to observe the summer session and gather information from focus groups starting from last May. According to Leonard, MacDermott has been on campus four times and talked to all the managers as well as students and faculty. “He’ll gather information we’ve shared and data from survey and focus groups and give us an overview of what Clarion’s feedback is, what we’re doing well and some areas for improvement,” said Leonard. MacDermott presented his findings last Thursday during a consulting session that lasted from 3:00 to 7:00pm.
“We are on target,” Leonard commented regarding dining services’ progress over the summer. “Our goal is to stay ahead of the curve. I’m very proud of that, there have been articles in food magazines highlighting our fresh fish program, our zero-waste management, our catering department.” Brousseau and Como worked together to update the minimum standards for both dining halls. “Although we have different menus we have common standards that we review annually,” Brousseau said. Some improvements this year include replacing all the liquid eggs in dining hall recipes with cage-free products, purchasing antibiotic-free chicken, and adding sticky rice to all three meals.
A significant number of the recent changes focuses on health and sustainability; Como, for example, is utilizing the afternoon snack times to run smoothies and healthy snack programs. After twenty-five years as the school’s baker, Amabile also notes that the bakeshop is incorporating more breads with nuts and seeds than ever before. “There’s been a shift towards a lot more attention to the public guidelines out there regarding healthy food, a lot more whole grains, more vegetable-based options, consistent with national guidelines like heart associations and other organizations focused on health,” said Stuppy. “There’s more attention to students with allergy and those who need special food.” She also noted that in the last five to six years, there has been a recent emergence in interest in sustainability. “The big topics are where do foods come from and how we can provide more transparency for the people eating the food [...] The committee is looking at the current trends and thinking about more than just providing delicious food for people.”
Last June, Stuppy organized a meeting with the eight dieticians for private boarding schools in New England to discuss common problems and possible solutions. “Compared to other schools we’re doing very well,” she said. “I like that we’re a private food service, that we don’t have a food service company because it gives us more flexibility within the system to do things than other schools [...] I can tailor things specific to our population.” She also expressed satisfaction in seeing the dining staff so vested in making food as healthy and sustainable as possible, because “they’re the people on the trenches who are actually doing the job.”
Along with these changes, there are many new events around campus that require dining services in order to go smoothly. Brousseau commented on this, stating, “We’re doing something called TGIF; certain Fridays, we’ll have something fun. We’re also working on possibly baking pies, so that’ll also allow the community to pack up and donate to certain groups that in the past we’ve donated to.” Dining services have also introduced pizza karaoke on Fridays, as well as smoothies and milkshakes for National Milkshake Day. In addition, there have been two cookouts so far, as a demo for future events.
With the increase of dining service events however, there has been rising concerns about understaffing, especially because many of the staffs are not full-time employees. Cynthia Jerge, Catering Manager, said, “all the time I find it hard to allocate enough staff [...] every year, the number of events seems to go up.” According to Como, however, cooperation is the key. “I think it’s about helping, we help each other out a lot.” Especially when dining services organize special events, Elm Street and Wetherell collaborate and pull in resources to make sure that everything runs smoothly. “It’s very much a team effort, across the board in dining services. All the managers come in, the staff changes their schedules accordingly to best support each other,” said Brousseau. Cooperation extends beyond just the two dining halls; the four different arms of operations underneath dining services, the residential program, catering, the bakeshop and grill operations all work together to create the best dining experience possible for students and adults on campus.
At the same time, complaints about dining hall food have become hallmark phrases for most Exonians, many of whom are unaware of the hard work behind the scenes that go into each meal. Only one hour as bread-baking apprentices in Wetherell, however, revealed to us the extent to which the dining services staff at our school work morning to night, providing not only nutritious meals but also entertaining events that spice up campus life.