Kennesaw State University tour!

 Today we went to Kennesaw State and we had the pleasure of touring their campus and dining commons.  It is quite a bit different than UGA and that was good to see.  They have only one dining hall called The Commons'.  It is the nation's largest LEED-Gold certified collegiate dining facility.  They compost everything available to compost and use it at their garden that they grow locally and use in their dining hall.  They prepare recipes in small batches to ensure the food is not held for long periods of time and is fresh for their guests, a lot like UGA.  The whole buffet type line is going out of style and I know UGA recognizes that, it takes a while to transition from.  Kennesaw has a GlobeTrotter station where they feature different countries food items.  I thought this was a good idea, hard to accomodate for some countries, but a very good idea. 

One of the pictures below is their herb garden.  This school is extremely sustainable and I was very impressed with their practices on that.  Unfortunately, the lack of water and insane heat temperatures have killed a lot of their crops and herbs.  Robert said he expects it to get up and running soon though.  One major difference is that Kennesaw is ran by Sodexo, and UGA is individually operated.  Basically Kennesaw pays Sodexo a certain amount of money to be able to run things a little bit how they want, but Sodexo hires the people they want and has a big say in a lot of how the operation is ran.  I think this would be a struggle, Robert mentioned how hard it is when it comes to training purposes because the employees may only be trained for a small amount of time and expected to know a lot of information.  It can be very frustrating, like anything though.  All of their sauces are made from scratch which I thought was amazing.  Along with sauces they homemake their pizza dough, 80% of their desserts, and bread.

Robert mentioned one struggle they had when they created "On The Fly".  It is a retail location that is used by students when they are in a hurry and just want to grab a quick sandwich and be on the way.  Well, it didn't end up working this way and people that were not in a hurry were packing in a very small area.  I never thought of this point of view, he mentioned that they have plans to change it and get more students to attend the Commons' more. 

Students at Kennesaw are required to have the meal plan, but from what I can tell they have a lot of delicious options!