“BRING BACK LEMONADE,” “FRIES BETTER THAN IN-AND-OUT, FIRE BROWNIE” and “Rice Please!! just rice” — these are just a few of the handwritten notes plastered across the comment board in Dewick-MacPhie Dining Center, directly adjacent to the dishwasher carousel. To many students, this bulletin board has served as an untapped outlet for expression, an evolving tapestry of jokes and doodles. To others, it is a serious forum for discussion — a cork agora of sorts to ruminate on the most sublime successes and catastrophic failures of Tufts Dining. And the rest? Well, they just want rice.
Patti Klos, senior director of Tufts Dining Services, explains that the bulletin boards have been featured in Tufts’ dining halls for over 20 years. Perhaps the reason behind their longevity lies in their utility: anyone, staff or student, can take a glance at or add a message to the comment board.
“Everyone being able to see the feedback in real time … kind of gives us a finger on the pulse,” Klos said.
The open, communal aspect of such a feedback system elicits a more lively, playful selection of notes, which can draw more eyes to existing feedback and a greater diversity of perspectives.
Sophomores Ruchama Vincent and Naomie Pierre echoed this sentiment. “This was our first time actually reading it,” Vincent said. Pierre added, “We just thought it was funny.”
While humor is an effective tool to stimulate interaction and discussion among dining hall attendees and staff, the practical implications of these notes remain unclear to many students, as first-year Dom Balise expressed.
“I don’t know if they actually read it or not,” Balise said. “I wrote, ‘please, can we have more bell peppers?’ ... and then they had them, but then they were away for a while and then they brought them back.”
So, does anyone actually read the notes? According to Tufts Dining Services, the answer is a definite yes.
“Our marketing team, our communications team, the managers, the chef managers and our nutritionists, the director of dining … we all take a look at it,” Klos said. Compliments, or “love notes,” as Klos remembered one manager calling them, are used as motivators in staff huddles, reinforcing what was done well by the dining team.
To better convey these requests, the Tufts Community Union Senate used to have a specialized dining group within the services committee that regularly met with Tufts Dining, but this arrangement has fallen by the wayside. Instead, Klos and her team often try to gain insight into current student behavior — “asking people what they do” as opposed to “what would you like” as Klos says — in order to search for ways to maximize utility for students.
Along with adjusting to the wants and needs of a growing student body, Tufts Dining attempts to reconcile a variety of other, often contradictory, factors in the creation of a cohesive menu. Tufts’ diverse cultural landscape pushes Tufts Dining to pursue collaborations with cultural clubs or specific celebrations.
Klos prioritizes high-quality, unprocessed food while also interrogating the feasibility of specific requests: “Can we get them? How is the cost?”
Berries, for example, remain a major struggle. While fresh berries remain popular amongst students, providing them is often prohibitively expensive. To overcome this issue, Fresh at Carmichael and Dewick-Macphie Dining Centers work together to provide berry access at a somewhat regular frequency.
“[Fresh berries are] supposed to be on the menu twice a week in Dewick and twice a week in Carmichael, and they’re supposed to be on alternate days,” Klos said.
With Tufts being home to the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, nutritional value is taken into consideration for any food being served at Tufts.
“We want nutritionally dense [food] wherever possible, not added sugars, fats, salt, things you don’t need, even if you don’t realize it now at 19 or 22,” Klos said.
However, she admitted that dining options are a bit restricted at times. “There’s only so many pieces of equipment,” she said.
Developments in the world can even have effects that ripple into the food we eat at Tufts. The war in Ukraine had a severe effect on grain and oil prices when it first began. Most recently, ballooning egg prices are currently threatening to place a major strain on dining budgets.
“To really be able to address these impacts, we are going to have to get creative,” Klos said.
She commended strategic breakfasts at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, such as attempting to avoid eggs entirely through more non-Western breakfast options, or reducing egg usage with dishes like quiche.
However, no menu can be perfect all the time. Integrating the discordant pulls of cost, nutrition, availability and student requests is certainly no easy task, and students are cognizant of this reality.
“It’s not going to be Michelin star restaurant quality all the time,” Balise remarked.
However, Klos doesn’t shy away from those kinds of comparisons.
“If you follow Gordon Ramsay, he’ll often say, ‘it’s nice to get compliments, but I really want to know how I can improve,’” Klos said. “He’s expecting critique, and so we do too.”
The point for Klos and the Tufts Dining team is not for students to lower their heads and resign themselves to just eating at a dining hall.
“You should compare us to a prepared food place,” Klos said. She later repeated her open invitation to students: “Please feel free to tell us what you think.”
Tufts Dining may only be open for service during select hours, but they are always open for comments. Whether thumbtacked or emailed, compliments and complaints are crucial to well-functioning dining halls.
“It’s like a yin and yang,” Klos said. For all the food students happily consume, there is space to give back and shape dining halls into something of their own. Take a moment to write a note of gratitude, adoration or a simple request for bell peppers — and the world (of Tufts Dining) will be better for it.
