Capping off months of heated discussion, the University selected Charlotte-based Compass Group conglomerate to manage Duke dining, administrators confirmed Monday.
A pair of Compass brands, Bon Appétit and Chartwells, will take charge of dining operations on East and West Campus, respectively. Minor tweaks to the freshman board plan will also be in place for the start of the fall semester.
"When we talked to their clients, well, frankly, it seemed unusual that there could be such happy clients out there," said Director of Dining Services Jim Wulforst.
The University's agreement with Compass is "fundamentally different" from its previous contract with ARAMARK Corp., said Kemel Dawkins, vice president of campus services.
Compass' initial contract runs only two years with an option to extend for an additional three, Dawkins explained.
ARAMARK remained on campus for five years in spite of consistent criticism from students and administrators alike.
A new philosophy on food
This time around, Wulforst moved to correct other previous contract flaws as well.
"With the ARAMARK contract, they paid us a fee to be on campus; in this agreement, we are paying the Compass Group a management fee," Wulforst said, noting that the fee will be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Since the University is assuming the risk now, it will be up to Wulforst and his staff to ensure that students want to spend their dining money on campus. If a profit is made, the funds will go to the University rather than the vendor.
A byproduct of this change will be that the University will need to annually infuse the dining budget with between $1 and $2 million dollars of extra funding, Dawkins added. He declined to specify from what area the funds would come.
About the Compass Group, Dawkins explained that even though all of the potential vendors proposed to run the Duke dining business similarly, Compass brought a unique dedication to locally grown and produced food.
"What we've done is rethink and re-emphasize those things that are most important at Duke," he said, adding "the proof will be in the pudding"-both literally and metaphorically.
The pair of Compass Group companies-Bon Appétit and Chartwells-will bring their own specialties to East and West Campus.
"The two brands are very much competing for students' business-there's nothing superficial about it," Wulforst emphasized. "They're two very different companies."
The Marketplace's cafeteria set-up will be well managed by Bon Appétit, he said.
"Bon Appétit has really strong merchandising-to the point where you really ate with your eyes when you smell the food," Wulforst said. "You are just overwhelmed by the food.. The Bon Appétit folks are all about presenting food in bountiful ways."
Bon Appétit will also have a presence in the Great Hall, Wulforst added. Chartwells will specialize in managing the retail brands on West, such as Subway and Chick-fil-A. He added that he does not anticipate changing those locations in the near future.
Changes to the freshman board plan
The arrival of the Compass Group is not the only change students will see when they return to campus in August; the freshman dining experience on East will be different.
Although top administrators-including President Richard Brodhead and Executive Vice President Tallman Trask-previously told The Chronicle that changes in the freshman meal plan ought to include increased choice, the incoming Class of 2010 has the same 12-meal-per-week requirement as in past years.
There is also no new off-campus dining component of the plan-an idea that some have suggested could improve Duke's relationship with the Durham community while providing students with more locations to use their food points.
Instead, Wulforst said the administration focused on how to improve quality and choice at the Marketplace itself.
Dinner hours will be extended to 9 p.m., and will be served seven days a week as opposed to the existing Sunday-through-Thursday schedule. On West, the Great Hall will be open for Sunday brunch.
In addition, lunch equivalency-in which freshmen apply the cost of their missed breakfast to lunch at the Marketplace-will be worth five dollars next semester instead of four.
Wulforst said he was disappointed that he was not able to extend equivalency to West-where most students are during the school day, he admitted-but he promised that it is on the table for the future.
"There were some cost considerations," Dawkins said. "We're going to evaluate how this plan works in the fall."
Although student opinion has called for a reduced freshman meal plan, the issue is more about food quality than anything else, Wulforst explained.
"What it really came down to was just 'the food sucks,'" he said. "I think if we had Bon Appétit [at the Marketplace] five years ago, students would want it open for all 21 meals a week."
Wulforst also announced that the long-empty Upper West Side of the Marketplace will be a "culinary test kitchen" in the fall for the Compass Group.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.