Returning students may have found a new experience in an old location: The Caf. The main dining location, located in the University Center was remodeled to provide a comfortable student experience. Changes include lounge-like areas, game tables and a fireplace.
Sodexo General Manager Joe Winegardner said that Colorado Mesa University and Sodexo have partnered well on retail over the years, bringing in Starbucks, Einstein Bagels and other food options aside from The Caf. “I kept thinking we’re putting all this great effort into retail, giving our students more options, but we still are putting through 3,500 to 4,000 meals a day in the dining hall, let’s put some focus on what I call the main kitchen for our students, which is the dining hall,” Winegardner said.
Director of Budgets and Food Serving Programs Whitney Sutton referenced the efforts CMU makes to refresh various areas on campus: painting academic buildings, replacing carpet and updating blinds. According to Sutton, the number of students eating at the dining hall during the week therefore justified updating The Caf to provide a better student experience.
Part of the plan to enhance the experience came in the form of changing the seating layout. “The other dining hall had what I would call a wide open mess hall look. We wanted to get away from that,” Winegardner said.
The new seating area breaks up the dining hall into smaller sections. “What it does, is they call them neighborhoods, so there’s little communities. Here’s a community over here and they’re studying, here’s a community over here and they’re watching T.V. or whatever, here’s a group over there and they’re playing games,” Sutton said.
Those games could be in the form of chess and checkers, with game boards in some of the bar-height tables and game pieces available at the front desk. Sutton said backgammon will soon be added to the list of game tables and game tournaments may happen in the future.
Students looking to relax, rather than play games, can do so in the lounge-like areas along the west wall or the fireplace on the east wall. “Our model for that was the Fireside Lounge right outside of Starbucks. We wanted to try to replicate something like that,” Winegardner said.
Comfort considerations extended to the amount of sunlight coming through the windows. According to Sutton, a previous complaint about the dining hall was how hot it could get from direct sunlight in the evening. Blinds have been added along the west wall to alleviate that discomfort.
According to Winegardner, the feedback thus far has been positive. “We’ve gotten pretty well across the board consensus on ‘wow, this place looks really cool,'” Winegardner said. “It’s the impact we wanted to have.”
The remodeled seating area is the first of a two-part plan to update The Caf. More changes will be implemented next summer that will focus on the serving areas.
Though CMU and Sodexo are partnered in the two-part update, Sutton said Sodexo has covered all the costs so far. “No portion of student’s tuition, fees, or room and board charges funded this project,” Sutton said.
