Great BGSU Dining Halls: BGSU Dining Q&A & Info Session

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I know I when I do watch TV I just watched the Real Housewives 'cause I need some good trash in my life.

we're alive, everyone there, here, so students are here. We're talking about the great British Baking Show for anyone that just joined. But good afternoon everyone. My name is Shannon Cleary. See we've got numbers continuing to climb, so it looks like we're going to have folks joining us here. So I like. I said Shannon Cleary from the Office of Admissions here at BGSU. We're super excited to have you here today for our first time ever. This is kind of a one of a kind of Presidents Day event that we're doing. So it's a big.

Virtual Series with a lot of events of throughout this entire weekend, so we're really excited to have you here. And of course, happy Valentine's Day as well. So you are here for dining info. Our dining experts are John and Page who are on this meeting in this session with me as well. So in a few minutes I'm going to hand it over to them. Wanted to let you know there is a chat kind of feature here for this session, so feel free to use that for questions throughout and at the end of the presentation we're going to do a live Q&A with John and Page.

But for now we would love to maybe do really, really quick introductions. So since it's Valentine's Day, we'd love to hear your name, your hometown, and maybe your favorite candy. So if you feel inclined to answer that, go ahead and throw it in the chat. I've also got Katie on this session with me as well. She is a colleague from the Office of Admissions and we will just kind of be here to help moderate the chat, but for now, I'm going to hand it on over to John and Page.

Alright, thanks Shannon. So I'm going to start by saying my favorite candy is sour Patch kids. If it's going to be like a sugary sweet thing. I'm not sure what yours is page. I'm sure you have a dietitian answer any non dietitian answer.

Oh gosh, dietitian answer would be just regular dark chocolate. But like not as healthy answer would be cake cats. I love Kit Kats.

Nice kick outs are always a solid choice. Alright, so hey, welcome everybody. This is the great PSU dining halls Q&A about BSU dining. My name is John search. I'm actually director of marketing and Communications for BGSU dining. I went Bowling Green, I'll graduate in 2013. Have been here since so I've been able to experience dining as not only a.

A student, but also in my profession page do a quick intro quick.

Yeah, my name is Paige Wagner. I am the registered dietitian for BGSU dining. I've been here going on three years now and I also went to BGSU for undergrad and I'm currently getting my Masters in public health. So super excited that everyone is here to join us today.

I think I disappeared for a second. I think I'm back now. OK, great, so obviously dining. We are the crew that will hopefully be feeding you here for years at BGSU. We have a lot of fun in our Department. First we talk about meal plans and kind of give you a quick overview. First question everybody asks is like when do I actually go pick a meal plan? Usually that's the question we actually get before anybody even ask what time you plan is so you can read this slide. But really, what's going to be coming down to is your housing and meal plan application. When you fill out your housing.

Once you finish that housing meal plan, you put your $200 house payment in for your deposit and you're set to go the next page that you'll go to is actually for picking your meal plan. Be able to pick a bronze, silver, or gold plan, which I'll go over in a little bit. Some people, if you aren't entirely sure you just take all the Browns when it's the cheapest one, but we actually have it so you can go through this link that's provided the residence life meal change meal plan changed.

Form once you do that, you can actually change it if you think that you may want a larger plan or a smaller plan, you will actually be able to do that up to the day you start classes, and we usually get about a week grace period for students to kind of figure that out, so something that's really important that you.

Pay attention to but also something that it's not hard and fast set in stone until you get into the semester. If you do have questions, you can reach out specifically for the housing and meal plan. Application information you can reach out to reslife@psu.edu. If you do have questions about meal plans, dining options, costly and that sort of stuff you can reach out to dine@psu.edu, but will also be providing you a few different pieces as well. When it comes to ways you can contact us so.

What is a meal plan? Meal plan is something that every student who lives on campus has. It's really convenient because it's actually on your student ID card. You don't have to worry about having a separate ID card or anything like that. It's all just loaded up at the beginning of the semester on your student ID, and you can use at any BGSU dining location. So BGSU dining location is any place that serves food that's on campus. Concaves proper because there are some different currencies at the University uses called like BG Bucks.

For the BG one card that does that are accepted off campus, but specifically for your meal plan that it's any location that serves food on campus. Custom meal plan. It's what the term we use for first year students. First year students have the Custom meal plan because we've noticed when the program first started, we had a lot of students who weren't really sure about their eating habits there. What they would be one for Dieteria and their budgeting so accustom meal plan actually has two parts Falcon dollars which is basically on campus. Food cash. It's kind of like a.

Hard so at the beginning of the semester, if you have a Bronze Meal plan, you'll have $800,000 to spend for this semester, but you also have swipes, so swipes. I believe it's 85 swipes for a Bronze Meal plan if you have.

Meal plan the swipes are going to the Oaks in Carolina Place. There are two largest locations there. All you care to eat, so once you go in you give them. They take away one of your swipe your card and then you can eat as much as you want as long as you want for as long as you're there. Once you exit the building to go back in and it would cost you another swipe. Obviously with Cove it's a little bit different. We actually have our Carolina Place location set up as a takeout location for students, but as we move forward we're hoping that we get back into the full service of both locations. So we're excited about that.

Selecting malaria and talked about that? Wouldn't you make sure when you're filling out your housing you don't just stop after your housing, it should automatically send you to select your meal plan so when it comes to the plants, we do have three for first year students. These are this past year's pricing. the University hasn't gone through and done any pricing changes yet, so don't view these as solid stone. As I said, you'll have swipe, you have alcohol sales, right? Bronze Milton has 85 swipes, an $800,000.

Like I said, you use those in combination, which I think is really important to understand that some days you're not going to want to sit down in the Oaks and have a full meal. You want to get something quick and you want you want to be on the run or you're going to be going to your dining Hall, or so your residence Hall.

So you want to stop at one of our convenience stores and get something that you can reheat in your room. That's really what that.

The two different swipes and Falcons really work well together when it comes to that.

Meal plans work. Like I said, swipes swipes are like I said, for the folks in Carolina Place and they can be used other places on campus as well for a meal equivalency. That's actually at our market location. We also have what's called my meals assistant, which is on our website, which you'll get the website actually in the next slide that you can look through and it will ask you questions about your eating habits where you plan to be living and it will give you some information on what's probably the best suggestion for you. One of the questions we always get is which plan should you?

Choose. It's really a tough question because it's about your eating habits more than anything else. So, for example, the example I always love to give is when I was a student I had I was an RA and there were two people on my floor. One was a 90 pound cheerleader who had a gold meal plan in destroyed it every year. So she always was like a three square meals a day. Everyday type of person, just because that's who she was with her need to feel for her athletics. Choose a big snacker throughout the day so she had the gold plans. Like I said that's fine before that.

Three square meals a day. Person myself. I was actually a silver plan person because it's about 2 1/2 meals a day, give or take. So for me it was a good size lunch in a good size dinner and then like a late night snack that wouldn't be considered like a full meal. Alot of people also think of the solar plans. Great for people who love like coffee and a bagel or donut to get you going in the morning. That's definitely a big one for sure. And then the bronze plan I mentioned. The 90 pound cheerleader flyer who had the Gold Meal plan, but we also had alignment on our floor.

Only had the bronze plan and he was like what is he doing like and he wouldn't even use all this bronze plan but that's because he was getting like 3 meals a week. More from Chipotle. So it's really about your eating habits and what you're going to be doing. It's also something where throughout the year you can add on meal plan on our website. You can get Falcon delicate swipes you can get however you want to do it. You can change your meal plan between fall and spring semester. So if you get the bronze plan and you realize that if you went to the Silver, gold would probably save a little bit of money.

In the long run, you can do that. It's super easy by contacting our office or using that meal plan change form. It really works well on. Our goal is always to be flexible when it comes to dining locations. I provided a few of the different logos. We're actually going to have Einstein bagels on campus next year, which we're really excited about the markets of the convenience stores we have on campus. We have an express steak and shake at Jamba a Starbucks. We also have pressure late night, which is a location that's just or out of kreisher. It's open from 5 to midnight and it's got a few different things there. There's are wild pie pizzas out there we've got.

Al Dente, which is a pasta bar and we've got a burger bar out there. And of course you'll see the little robot on their Starship should still be around next year, which we're excited about so you can also get those things ordered and delivered to you with the little robots, and we also will have. We also have mobile ordering at some of our select locations as well, but that's something that we can get a little bit more information as you contact us so that texting number, the social media and also the email that's my direct email. So if you have specific questions, I'd love to hear.

For any of those sort of questions they dineoncampus.com/BGSU isn't important website because that's got all of our information about dining. Any major updates, any hours changes all go on there. It's probably the best place to start. Anytime a question about dining, but like I said, they actually. The texting service is what I helped run. So if you do have a question you want to text it, I'll be on there answering questions. The social media at BGSU dining. That's for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And like I said, there's my email and that's all I have for now before we get to the Q&A. So I'm going to pass it over to page.

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looks like around a little bit of technical difficulties you may have had the same thing happened to me.

Hey Wade.

Sorry, I'm popping back on it. Looks like we can't hear you so I'm not sure if you have it muted or not. Or maybe you can try to refresh and see if that helps your broadcast. If you refresh the page.

I wish I had some elevator music for everyone.

We can hear you now.

I was just going to say I will brag about page a little bit. Actually Page has been awesome when it comes to our campus and all that stuff. She says oh good now. OK then I won't embarrass her by bragging. OK, I'll stop.

Alright.

OK, I said no, don't brag. So you guys can hear me now.

Yeah.

OK, I'm not quite sure what happened there. Home Wi-Fi is never fun. So hi everyone as John has mentioned, I'm Paige Wagner. I am the registered dietitian for BGSU dining. My primary job is working with students who have food allergies, medically required dietze. Maybe they're looking to eat healthier. They have low fodmap diet that their doctor needs them to follow. Whatever the case, maybe that is what I'm here for, so I'm going to give you a very brief overview of how this works with food allergies on campus, but then I am going to have my can't.

Act information at the end. So if any of you on here do have food allergies, or if you have any questions about any kind of dietary information, please shoot me an email. I would love to connect with you more, I assume, with students all the time about it.

OK.

Not sure it's letting me go to the next slide, John.

OK, thank you. OK, so this year I've had over 160 students identify themselves as having food allergies, so I right now I'm actually probably closer to about 180. So these range from super severe always needing epipen's tumour intolerances. And this does not account for anyone who follows medically required dietze. These are simply just food allergies, so at the bottom there of the slide you'll see that it says student responsibility.

So what this means is that when students come to campus, you are responsible for telling us about your food allergy. I wish it was as simple as I could. Just look at someone and know that, hey, you're allergic to peanuts. We need to make sure that we're not feeding you that, but we do need you to tell us. And the reason I say that is some students are kind of intimidated, or they're a little scared about telling people. Please never feel that way. We always use the phrase don't be shy, self identify, and that just means tell us before you even come to campus.

One of the things that I do is I will send you custom menus for the entire semester so you can see everything that there is to eat for the entire fall semester. Then I sent a new one for the spring semester. Now will have all the allergens labeled on there, so you can look ahead of time to know exactly where you're going to be eating. And these are just like that's just one of the very few benefits. Or sorry, one of the many benefits that you get by telling us early so we can help you have the best experience possible.

OK, so this is just a very long list of all of the allergies that we have dealt with this past year and helping students so no allergy is too strange, too big, too small for us to help you. As you can see there are plenty that are not the top eight that are on here. We have a student I have a couple of students who are pushing fifteen 1617 food allergies and we feed them safely every single day, so please don't feel as though you have to have peanuts or tree nuts or celiac disease in order to be accommodated. We will accommodate for any.

You're allergic to. I've had students be allergic to mangoes, and some are allergic to any kind of beam. Which beans are in everything nowadays, so we want to make sure that you can eat safely and healthfully.

OK.

So this is just a brief overview of how food allergies are handled, but you can go to this link, type it in your browser, or just email me directly. Both will come to my email and you will fill out some information for me either way, and it was just for me to get to know you better. An all of this information stays with me so I can provide it to our chefs. Once you fill this information out, I will ask you to meet with me via zoom right now since a lot of you probably aren't here yet, but also for covid safety.

And then I will take you on a virtual tour of the dining Hall and I will also introduce you to our chefs who can prepare you custom meals so that you are always eating safely. You don't have to worry about not finding anything to eat and they will cook that for you. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. However, often you need it. However big of a meal plan you have, you can always use it and have our chefs cook for you.

OK, so how are food allergies handled? I previously mentioned that you can receive that you will receive copies of the custom menus for each semester when you tell me about your food allergy, and I even go as far for my students who have 1516 seventeen food allergies. I will actually every week send them copies with all of the ingredients listed out so that they can see what they can safely have. This helps them feel more comfortable and it also helps our chefs when they're trying to create meals for them.

We have many students who will take advantage of the custom meals and they will do breakfast, lunch, dinner. We have some that maybe they only have one allergy and they feel pretty comfortable eating most places so they only use it maybe once a week.

You can schedule times or you can drop in to get a custom meal. We highly recommend scheduling times because the more time that a chef can have to prepare your food, the better and you may have to wait just a few minutes. If you do, a drop in will still gladly make you the food. We just only suggest doing that if you have a little bit of time to wait and you are in a rush and so the other thing is please stay in contact with us once you tell us about your food allergy, you'll be added to my list of students who receive emails for me, their food allergy newsletters.

In in that you will get all of the updates that you'll need to know, so you'll get all of the chefs emails if someone is may be out for a day and you have to order differently. Come straight to your email, you get fun perks, so I do a lot of giveaways to our students, so I just did Valentine's cookie boxes that work, period. The top allergens. This past Friday I will let you know if product labels have changed and so please make sure that you pay attention to those emails. If you want on the emails now you are more than welcome to send me.

Um, I guess they contact me and I'll add you so you can see what I sent now before you come.

EpiPen information so this is super important. If you have an EpiPen, please make sure that you always carry it with you. In Ohio we are not legally allowed to administer an EpiPen to someone and we cannot keep it in our buildings, so never play it. You know little little.

On the dangerous side, as I like to say so I have students who may be live across campus and they feel really safe eating from us, which is what we want. But the last thing I would hate to happen is for something to happen and you don't have an EpiPen on you, so not to say that we obviously if you had one with you we wouldn't inject you. We do everything we could to help you, but just know that every building responds differently in our buildings that we cannot have them. So always, always, always carry them.

We also have a station Ana Carolina Place which right now is located in the Oaks. Since Caroline places take out, but it's free. The top eight allergens is actually free of the 9th one as well, which is sesame. So the federal government is working on passing the labeling that Sesame will now be labeled as well, but until then, we mainly focus on the top eight. So as you can see, they're all listed there, but these foods are never prepared in this area. They are never served. Their people are not allowed to bring food from other areas into this.

Um dining place. So we try to do our best to make sure that this is a safe place for any student with food allergies. Of the top eight to eat. And we do a wide variety where open there for lunch and dinner seven days a week. So we did a revamp of the menu this year. We know how pizza on there. We have soups and sandwiches I think just the other day they did ribs and Mac and cheese so there's a lot of good comfort foods on there that you might not normally see and they're all safe.

So looking for more info. I do have a student intern who had such a great experience. She actually came to us and asked us for a job so Alana Felber is her name and she does a lot of work to reach out to students. She herself is a student still, so she advocates on behalf of everyone. So if you ever have an issue or if you want to see something changed or maybe just share things in general, she is my go to Rockstar student. She wants to provide everyone with more information and have more of an open Q&A.

So these are two dates that we're going to be doing this where you can ask Alana and I anything. If you just have questions about dining, you know at different restaurants in town as well. This is more of a Bowling Green community Q&A where she can kind of help guide you through everything that has to do with food allergies. When you come to Bowling Green OH.

So with that being said, I believe that is a very fast version of what I like to offer our students and there is my contact information. If you would like to talk more, I actually recommend using my cell phone over my office phone. I'm generally not at my desk very often, so you'll definitely reach me faster on my cell phone. Feel free to text me on there as well. I respond pretty quickly and I believe I will hand it back to Shannon.

Awesome, thank you for so much. So I've been saving a lot of questions from the chat. We have a lot of good ones, so some of the questions have been repeat so I might just ask for the general topic overview. So first question that we're getting a lot is about something that John kind of started to touch on, but changing or increasing the meal plan during the semester at the end of the semester. Can you just give maybe more detail on when students are able to change their meal plan and if they start to run?

How are they able to add more?

Yeah, for sure, so works pretty easily when you start this semester. We have bronze, silver and gold. You're able to add on meal plan on our website at anytime. If you go to thatdineoncampus.com/BGSU on the top left, there's a meal plan section. It says purchase a meal plan. You can do. It can add on anywhere from I think it starts at $50,000 up to 1000 Falcon dollars and you can add on on smaller amounts of swipes as well from I think it starts at.

7 All the way up to I think you can get a block of 75 swipes, so you can really do it however you like when it comes to changing your entire meal plan. If you realize you've got a Bronze Meal plan and you're only a few weeks into the semester, you're already like burning through your meal plan a lot, it might make more sense not to just add on a small amount, but actually bump up your meal plan. So during the semester you can move your meal plan up so if you have a bronze or silver, you can move them up to silver gold, but you can't actually.

Make it go down until between the semester break, so I suggest to a lot of students is kind of go a little conservative with either the bronze or the silver and then add on within your meal plan less. You know you're a 3 square meals a day, every day, type of person. That's really important. If that's the case, then the goal plans kind of designed for you. But yeah, that's kind of basically in between the semesters you are going to do is contact our office to do that meal plan change or that actual foreman. Our accounting staff will help take care of that.

Perfect OK, so next general topic is that rolling over what happens if to the to the Falcon dollars in this wipes that I don't use does it roll over each semester or does it roll over every year? Just may be touching on that for us?

Yeah, for sure. So your Falcon dollars do go from fall to spring semester. So for example, if you have an extra $100,000 at the end of fall semester and you had the bronze plan, you'll actually start spring semester with 900 Falcon dollars. They do go away at the end of every academic year though, so if you are holding on to them during April May.

We actually do a bunch of different programming. We do kind of like truck sales at our convenience stores. Those sort of locations to help make sure you use those swipes. However, go away at the end of every semester. Reason why that's the case is because it's how we actually do our pricing for ordering. So when we get at the beginning this semester with all the students and all their swipes, we know that we have I. I'll just throw out like the app.

I don't know if 50,000 swipes better in the bank and that's how we actually organize our purchasing our meal plans to try to be the most efficient as possible. So when you get to the end of semester, you want to make sure you are using your swipes because they don't transfer from Fall, spring semester.

Perfect OK so question for page, maybe more so we had a couple of different questions about kosher options and then like milk options. So do you know are we making sure that some of the food is available for those students who are lactose intolerant? So I think kosher, an lactose were kind of the two big topics I saw in the chat.

Yeah, so kosher is definitely.

It's definitely a difficult one compared to any kind of food allergies that we have. We technically do not have any kosher kitchens on campus. We are very straightforward about that. If you're someone who adheres to it very strictly, we do not consider ourselves kosher. However, we do have the capability of ordering and kosher foods, so through our suppliers we can order in kosher. I know kosher chicken, premade foods, you know, we do our best to try and provide anything we can for kosher students, but unfortunately none of our kitchens are truly kosher the way that.

Culture is considered to be and then when it comes to alternative milks, lactose intolerant vegan all of that kind of stuff. We have a very wide variety of options, so in the Oaks Dining Hall we have a vegan station called Shoots which is always going to be free of dairy and then in each dining Hall location we also have mini fridges that are filled with alternative milks where students can ask staff to get that for them and it's labeled right there and we also have like gluten free toasters and stuff right beside it. So it's kind of like it's.

Own little allergy free section and we carry rice milk, oat milk, soy milk and any kind of milk that's not milk is in that fridge.

Perfect, OK thank you and then another topic I see that was kind of throughout the presentation but also kind of bubbling up a little now is 1 are Falcon dollars or the meal plan in general able to be used anywhere off campus.

Yep.

I for me you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the answer is no. So meal plan is only available to be used on campus, so any of the dining facilities here on campus will take your meal plan. Whether it's Falcon dollars or swipes. But I'm getting some questions about BG bucks, so John, if you want to talk about the difference, or if you'd like me to take that, I'm happy to do that. But BG Bucks compared to your meal plan is a little bit of a confusing topic, so.

Yeah, yeah for sure it is confusing. We run into this every year. BG Bucks are a great option for students and.

There are great option for students if they want to have a little bit more flexibility when they're adding on dollars. So they are Fiji Bucks are accepted on campus in the dining halls, but there are also accepted at the Falcon Outfitters. They are accepted at athletic events. They are accepted for printing, so that's what BG bucks can do and they accepted off campus. I saw I think he put out a link into all the places off campus that accept the BG box. A great example is Valvoline.

Our meal plan does not work at Valvoline. That's just not how it works. So BG box works well for maybe I could stop gap if a student doesn't have a debit account or something like that. It's something that parents or guardians can use as a stopgap. Sometimes the Falcon dollars in swipes an meal plan in general, or only for the finger at 14 locations on big issues campus that is run by BGSU dining. So those are convenience stores which are markets that.

Everything that's in the food court of the Falcons nest. So like I mentioned, we have steak and shake and we have Panda Express and we have a Starbucks and we're going to Weinstein's and we're going to actually have a new pub opening as well in the student Union. All those locations take Falcon dollars and then the swipes are for the Oaks and Karoline Place. And I know I saw somebody ask about take out. Those locations were still working on take out with those locations. It's a question because we've made a lot of exceptions within Covid

of what's able to be taken out of those two specific holes. But all of our other locations. All of our food courts, all of them have to go options as well, so if you want to take your food, you know, take your panda. Or if you want to take, we've got a substation called mono Subs. That's super easy. There's obviously take out options for those.

Perfect awesome you to go orders was going to be one of the topics I asked you about, so that's perfect. Just another quick rundown, just in case you miss anything. John said BG Bucks are completely separate from your meal plan so you can use it at places on campus. And some of that might be for food, but your meal plan is a completely separate thing so that there is a little confusion there. But John kind of helped iron that out. So Speaking of covid, we did have a question about how the covid restrictions have may be altered.

The dining policies or procedures so I know there were probably a lot of changes, but if you maybe wanted to give this a quick summary of how dining has changed in the past year.

Yeah, for sure. I know Paige can talk a little bit about this too. 'cause I know she worked a lot with quaranti meals and those sort of things when those became important. But really, for us the biggest piece was creating safe spaces for students to eat. So for example, the Oaks Dining Hall prior to code, I think it hold about 850 students at one time, but with we've added plexiglass shielding, we've socially distanced the tables. I think it's.

We've done a bunch of everything when it comes to health and safety of our HVAC systems. We've reduced that number down to about 350 seats at one time in the OH, so that's one of the things that we did for our locations. We did our best to provide sanitizing stations. We moved ahead with one entrance, one exit locations, those sort of pieces. We've done that all of our locations we've fixed or socially distance and also reduced the population.

Of people who can go into, for example, our markets. So some markets have a 10 people Max and then we have social distancing stickers that you can use to follow to make sure that you aren't too close to anybody. Those have been the biggest things that have seemed to really work and we're really excited about that when it comes to those safety features for our students and those are at all of our locations. So if you do come on to campus and you go to example, or are Falcons nest locations, which is our food court, you'll see my lovely wife and I spent a lot of time.

Putting down social distancing stickers and arrows and just trying to make sure everybody knows the safest way to get around the locations so we're really excited about that. And we're also excited about the future of what that looks like. We're never going to make any promises on that, as we all go through this wonderful code experience together, but we are excited to see how we can keep working with the University to provide the safest and also the best experience.

Yeah, I can speak about corn teen meals real quick too, so I'm part of the Covid response team as well, so I am responsible for making sure all the students if they are quarantined or isolated, that they are fed so we have a great system down for that and we send breakfast, lunch, dinner and then snacks as well. And to make sure that all of our students get everything they need.

Students get to choose their own meals. We have at least four to five options for every single meal for you to choose, so there's always wraps salads, soup and crackers, and then like a really delicious hot meal too. So typically want to begin. One is meat containing and then. Same with the sandwiches and wraps. So for every kind of take out option we have, those are the same ones that go on the quarantine menu. And then if you have food allergies, I still handle all of that so.

Thankfully, you don't have to worry about any new team handling your food allergies or dietary preferences is still all comes to us, so we try to do our best to make sure that even if you are maybe stuck in your room for a few extra days or not feeling too well that we give you the best care and food possible an we do anything we can to try and bring you guys a little bit of happiness during that time.

Yeah.

Perfect thank you guys both, so we're getting a question kind of about comparing the dining halls as far as vegetarian options or you know different allergy options. So like there were asking is 1 better than the other. If I'm vegetarian, is 1 better than the other to get gluten free options so you know we've been sharing in the chat that most of the dining facilities have allergen free gluten free options in them, but I didn't know if you wanted to share.

About you know the special section we have in the Oaks or kind of your opinion of where the best location is for those allergen free foods.

Yeah, of course. So the great news is, is no matter what your allergy or dietary preferences, we have chefs in every single dining building on campus, so you can always get a special order meal no matter where you go, so that's never an issue. You don't have to go to one single location for that. The Oaks has the vegan station and it also, even though the vegan food is at the station, there's still a lot of times vegan and vegetarian options offered throughout the rest of the dining Hall.

And we have labels in front of each food that is served. That will tell you whether they're vegan or vegetarian. And it's also on our menu as well. Same with Carolyn place. We always have vegan and vegetarian options there, but we also do have meat containing options at both locations. Ann Caroline place houses. They eliminate station. So if you are allergic to the top eight allergens that might be somewhere where you will want to eat more often. But again, if you live on the other side of campus, it could be just as easy for you you to go to the Oaks in order from our chefs there.

So to be honest, it kind of just depends on where you live on campus and what you're looking for. But every single location has something and everyone has chef so that we can cook for you.

Great, this one is kind of fun that I'm sure you both would love to talk about. They want to know about the robots. Tell us about the robots.

I can take this one so the robots are all across the campus. I'm sure if you if you just search BGSU robots you will find plenty of videos that we put out. The universities put out Starship is the actual program, so if you go to

if you go to either the store App Store or Google Play and just Search Starship Technologies or Starship deliveries, it'll be the first app that comes up. It works really easily. It's honestly I like to compare it to Uber so once you open up the app it will show you a map of all the different places that it can deliver to. So for example, you won't let you deliver it in the middle of the street or off campus in certain places they try to make it as safe for you As for the robots.

When it comes to that part, which I think is kind of funny, you'll take the little robot pinyol, drop it where you want your food delivered, and then in the next page you'll go through it's out all the different locations that do deliver through Starship, not every location on campus deliver every like food concept delivers from Starship, partially because we some locations are better suited to go through the robots than others. When it comes to food that they serve. Also sometimes it's just the design of the buildings, makes it a little more difficult to run Starship out of it.

So there's a bunch of reasons, but I think we've got 9 or 10 different locations on campus that will work through Starship. So once you put in your order you hit pay. You can use credit card, or if you've got meal time, you can use your Falcon dollars. Once you do that, you hit go and then it will give you a little countdown of how long it's going to be. It's usually around well depending on the time of day is always the biggest thing in which location you're ordering from, but it can be anywhere from, I think of the quickest ever got. One was probably about 5 minutes or less when it came right from.

The Starbucks on campus, which was super quick too, a little bit longer than that. They're rated for about 60 minutes. So for example, we did a temperature test to make sure that it was safe to have the robots deliver Panda Express to the farthest point of, or that it can travel too. 'cause they go about four miles an hour and food was still safe temperature after about 60 minutes, which was pretty cool that it keeps it either that hot or that cold. So that's kind of your window and it will keep it updated the entire time. So I know there is a lot of students who.

Know that on their walk that they time it to where the robot shows up right before they leave for class. So then they're able to grab their snack or drink or whatever right as they go. So when it comes to fees or anything like that, it's actually just $1.99 fee. It's a delivery fee that goes to the student, so whatever you purchase, if it's $10, will be 1199 as your actual cost.

Vegas and an I was going to ask. We got some questions about additional fees or delivery fees so there is no additional fee like BGSU. Students were not charged any additional money for having these robots here on campus which is so awesome. So there's just a delivery fee like you might have on door Dash or something like that. And I can say speaking from experience as you know, working on campus it brings me joy every day to be able to order from the robots and and have a little little extra fun rather than walking all the way over to Starbucks, but.

Sometimes you need your steps into so it's good to have both options and then really quickly. Just because I know you're both pretty involved in the teaching kitchen, we're getting some questions about that so didn't know if there was anything. I know Katie's been sharing some answers in the chat, but anything extra you wanted to add about the teaching kitchen and what it's all about on campus.

Yeah, I can take that one, um, so my my job is kind of split into. I'm the campus dietitian, but I'm also the teaching Kitchen coordinator an. Our team is myself and John. He does all the marketing and he also does some really cool classes in there as well. And then our executive chef.

Is the other woman in charge?

He said he can only hear me.

Oh

I I double checked with Katie and I think she can hear us as well so I don't know if maybe it's just something with with specific computers.

OK sorry I was like Oh no, I don't want to keep talking if no one can hear me.

So the teaching kitchen is super cool. It is John and I's second home. Pretty much. It is absolutely amazing. I think Katie might have dropped some links in there for you to see it. We do have an Instagram if you want to follow us. It is TK underscore, BGSU dining. I will drop it in right now.

And what we do in there is our executive chef, along with all of our six other chefs on campus, myself and John. We will teach you how to make anything from simple snacks to A6 course meal for your family. All of it. You can pay for using your meal plans, so sometimes classes only cost one swipe. If we're doing a full 6 course very indepth like 2 1/2 three hour class and maybe like 4 swipes, you can pay for your friends to come with you if you want.

And then we all sit down family style and have the meal together. Unfortunately due to covid we have not done any in person classes since covid happened. Just because our space is too small to safely social distance and give everyone the great experience, we want them to have. So we have been doing to go classes, so it's kind of like HelloFresh where you order the class from us. We put all the ingredients in A to go box for you. You pick it up and then you either watch the live stream recording of it and you get to cook along with us just from the safety of your home or your dorm or wherever you may be.

So we're hoping you know, and everything opens back up that we can get everyone in there safely as well, but until then, we're going to keep doing that and you'll find a lot of videos that John and his team have produced on our Instagram as well.

And I'll put a note in Chef Jillan page. Did a awesome Valentine's Day video that if you want to see the fun and shenanigans that you would probably run into at the teaching kitchen, that is a very very good example.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that I'm gonna need to watch it. OK so we have a question about celiac options so I don't know if I don't know much about that. Obviously I'm not the dining expert, but if you can touch on that that would be great.

Yes, so as I mentioned, we have our chefs that do this special ordering and we also have the eliminate station. I know for all food allergies cross contact is a huge concern, which is why I encourage all students with severe allergies or any concern for cross contact to order from the chefs. We also do have avoiding gluten symbols on any food that does not contain gluten, and you'll find those in every single location that we have in front of any food. So that is the great thing about.

Everything is labeled. You will always know if it contains lewinter. If it doesn't, but I always encourage students to use the menu that I send them at the beginning of each semester so that they can make sure you know you feel like you're getting the most out of your meal plan. I want you to be able to look ahead of time and get what you want to eat. I don't want you to swipe in and feel like you, you didn't find anything that you were looking for, so the biggest thing with any of that is definitely just make sure that you stay in communication with us. Like I said, I have, I think celiac disease was my second most common.

Um dietary restriction that I deal with peanuts and tree nuts are probably number one, and then I have at least like 35 to 40 students who have told me about their celiac disease, and Fortunately we have not had a single reaction from anyone. So like I said, the best thing you can do is tell us about it. Tell us about it early and stay in contact with us.

Great, OK and then just a general overview of ours so I know you don't have to necessarily go down the line with every specific facility, but I'm wondering about late hour's things like that.

Yeah, for sure. So we actually have locations open anywhere from 6:00 AM till a little past midnight. Actually all throughout the day. So some of them make a little bit more sense when it comes to the Oaks. I think is open from 7:30 to 8:00 or 9:00 PM currently.

Hello.

Death Covid and those sort of things. So we have and with those locations that are actually open except for there is a 30 minute period from 3:30 to 4:00 that we actually close the facility and wipe everything down and sanitize it. So that's one thing when it comes to the Oaks in Carolina Place usually run those hours of either starting at 7:00 or 8:00 AM for breakfast and then going until around that 8-9 o'clock time. The food court usually is at the Falcons nest is usually open from since there's so many different locations. I think it opens at 8 for Jamba Juice.

And then, but not all those like you steak and shake is not open at 8:00 AM. Usually those open around 11 around 10:30 when it comes to Panda Express or mondeos or we have a small place called chicken deputy which is like a fried chicken place that we go to that's available and we also have out at Chrysler is Chrysler late night, which is open from 5:00 PM to midnight. That's got those other locations so you can find something on campus at all type three times a day. I would say the core time frames that things are open. This probably from that 7.

AM till about that. 10:00 PM and R convenience stores are open, usually till around 11:30 every night. So something to just keep in mind and I know I saw one that I want to make sure I felt pain and I think it was one of the things that I sort of miss spoke about. When you think about how many meals when I say a bronze plan is about an average of two meals a day or the silver plan is about two and a half of the gold is 3 meals. The things that you think about is it all depends on your eating habits. Those are that's kind of the data that we have from like the.

App basically data average student, but like I've said, some students need the bronze or have the bronze plan. They have some leftover because they're getting their meals from other sources, so I know I'm a good example of that. My freshman year. Actually, I only about 45 minutes from my hometown and also some baby with my family, so my parents were coming to visit me. I would also go home some weekends. I always knew that when I was getting coming back that my mom would load me up with groceries and things for my room.

So the bronze plan worked well for me, and that's kind of a good example. Or if you know if you might be lighter, but if you're coming from a farther away, so if you're coming from Chicago or out West and that's going to be, and you're not going to have kind of that, that second home sort of feel of going to your house an hour away or something like that. Uh, Goldtown might work better, because if you know you're going to be spending more of your time on campus and not having home for weekends and those sort of things, that's definitely a good thing to kind of think about so.

It is, there is no magic formula. Unfortunately, if I had it, I probably would have sold it and wouldn't be working here of no way of knowing exactly what meal plan is perfect for you. So you do have to fill out a little bit, but I really suggest if you do have questions, reach out to page, reach out to myself because we've been doing this long enough that I've kind of got a good sense. If I ask you some questions about what your eating habits are. If you're a big comfort food person, if you're super healthy eater, I can definitely help out when it comes to kind of figuring out what might work best for you.

Meet me.

Great, so we've got one last question in here about the busiest time of day that students eat in the dining halls, so I think that's kind of a fun question and good for everyone to hear. I know for me as a student, I did graduate two years ago, so not super long ago, but it was like 11:30. I feel like it was when it was pretty busy, but of course things are a little different with Covid now too. So any any general answers you can give Sean who asked this question.

The The Big one, I'll say is pay attention to the class schedule. So Monday, Wednesday, Fridays, comparably to Tuesday Thursdays. It's different. Which days have the crazy Russian? The student Union comparably to the Oaks? I would say yeah, that 11:30 time is pretty solid for about everybody 'cause a lot of people want to get there early. So then if they've got a next class or if they just finished class.

Yeah.

So that 11:30 time is probably the biggest one for lunch dinner page. You probably know this when it comes to the Oaks. We usually see over because the actual teaching kitchen is in the Oaks Dining center, so we can kind of see the line when we're doing events.

In app.

I don't know, probably like.

It's typically 6:00 to 7:00 PM is usually the biggest time. If there are six to 9:00 PM Clock classes, I know they normally happen earlier in the week, but yeah, I would say like 6:00 to 7:00 PM Monday through Thursday is typically the busiest.

But to be honest, like don't ever let those times scare you because we never run out of food. We always have the seating for it in the other thing that impacts how busy we are. Special events. So John's team does a great job of they do all kinds of special events for students, so some nights it may be like Italian night and the Oaks is featuring all of your favorite pastas or pre covid. They did breakfast, midnight breakfast before exams so those will always gather more people. So if you're in a rush and you don't like crowds, maybe you want to go to the uh.

Other dining Hall that night, but if you're super excited about it, you may want to go to the busier dining Hall. It just kind of Pence, but yeah, I mean, you can definitely get in and out of anywhere very quickly.

Great, awesome. Well, I think that kind of wraps up most of the dining related questions. I know a couple more might pop up in the chat but didn't know if you guys wanted to do a closing. Share your contact info again and then we can kind of hang out in the chat for the next couple of minutes just to make sure we can answer any last minute questions.

Yeah.

Oh no, we left Paige alone we.

No.

I was just awkwardly staring and I was like I don't know if this is planned. Maybe I'll just close it, I don't know.

No.

No, I think we both had issues at the same time. We love technology.

But yeah, this is perfect. So just having contact info to share. John and Paige are super responsive, so you can definitely reach out to them with whatever questions you might have before you head out. Just know we do have additional sessions today at 5:00 o'clock and 6:00 o'clock, so if you haven't registered for those, you can go ahead and pull those up. I don't know if Katie is able to drop in the chat, the Presidents Day link so you can check out some of the other sessions, but this was one of our biggest sessions. So thanks so much for coming and asking such great questions.

Big thank you to John and Page for staying on here for awhile and getting all this information out to perspective students so.

Abbott

Yeah, no problem. Thank you everyone and I think John and I are both more than happy to answer questions not only from our job perspective, but we both also went here and we're proud alumni. So if there's anything that you're also curious about that we're always more than happy to talk to students.

Well, thank you all so much. Have a great sorry done, go ahead.

no it's OK. I just saw that Emily brought up a great question that Alcaide nailed it. Yes, we do have our menus online on ourdineoncampus.com/BGSU so if you want to see what covid menus are a little bit different because we kind of optimize them for safety. But you can kind of get a good look at what the dining halls offer if you go to our website.

Alright, perfect will have a great rest of your Sunday and hopefully see you at some other sessions. Thanks again.