A Fresh and Flexible Approach at Biola University, La Mirada, Calif.
A dedication to fresh food and a versatile foodservice equipment package that accommodates a variety of cooking styles and techniques allow this burgeoning university to meet the diverse demands of its faculty and staff population.
By Toby Weber, Contributing Editor -- Foodservice Equipment & Supplies, 12/15/2008 12:00:00 AM
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| The Grain Gallery at Biola features fresh-baked breads and desserts. Many of the breads cooked at Biola are used in the facility's deli station. |
Biola University is a small, private, non-denomination Christian institution located in La Mirada, Calif., just outside of Los Angeles. Founded in 1908, the university has seen dramatic growth in undergraduate enrollment over the past decade, moving from around 2,000 undergraduate students in 1997 to more than 3,500 today.
That growth, of course, put a huge strain on the campus's main dining facility, which had not seen a significant overhaul since it was first built more than 40 years ago. As a result, in 2005 Biola completely updated its dining services, resulting in a multi-station, all-you-care-to-eat concept that provides students with multiple seating options and the operator with flexibility when designing its menu.
The renovation process was an extensive one. As the main dining option for more than 2,000 students, faculty and staff, simply shutting the original facility's door and hanging a “Closed for Remodeling” sign was not an option. Instead, the process began in the back of the house. When that portion of the construction was completed, the dining area was moved to a tent outside — dubbed the “cafernacle” by the student body — and work began on the front of the house. The entire process lasted a full academic year.
The obvious inconvenience, however, has paid off. While many universities struggle to keep students and their dining dollars on campus, the number of customers Biola serves continues to climb. The number of meals served to commuter students — who are not on a university dining program and, therefore, are most likely to eat off-campus— increased by 400 percent the first year Café Biola, as the dining area was re-christened, opened. Even more impressively, instead of that figure decreasing as the novelty of the facility faded, it has actually increased to 500 percent of pre-renovation meals served.
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| The redesigned dining facility at Biola University represented a major investment for the institution. To make that investment last, the facility's décor is energetic, yet timeless enough to remain viable for decades to come. |
“The two main goals of the renovation were to bring the kitchen out-front and to break the dining up into different types of neighborhoods,” says Cary Wheelend, regional vice president for Bon Appétit, Biola University's foodservice management company. “The whole concept was not to force people to go through a single line every time they ate.”
Café Biola, therefore, offers six distinct stations, most featuring display cooking. The operation takes advantage of this dining format to create different “neighborhoods,” each with its own visual identity, seating options and configuration.
Customers enter Café Biola at the cashier station, where students on a dining plan have their identification card scanned, while those not on a plan pay a flat fee. Upon entering Café Biola, diners can turn left to approach one of the main entrée locations, the Pizzeria. In addition to pizza, at this unit staff prepare calzones, individual-sized casseroles and other dishes on a refrigerated pizza prep table, and then cook them using a high-volume conveyor oven. Staff then plate items and keep the food warm by placing it under heating lamps and on top of a heated countertop. The dual-direction heating arrangement, says Jim Webb of Webb Design and the project's design consultant, prevents air currents from cooling the tops of menu items, where they lose most of their heat.
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| Biola's Dining facility scatters seating areas among the various cooking stations. This approach takes advantage of the display cooking at the facility, bringing them into the “theater of food,” says facility designer Jim Webb. |
Moving along the wall of the serving area, customers pass soft drink dispensing machines and then encounter the Chef's Table. Facing the customers is a sauté range with close access to hot and cold wells for holding ingredients. Behind that sits a cooking line that features a wok range in the center with prep tables on both sides, followed by upright hot and cold storage boxes on each end of the line.
Continuing left is Café Biola's Home Cooking station, which serves comfort foods such as meatloaf and macaroni and cheese. Key pieces of equipment in this station include open gas burners, combi ovens, a rotisserie oven and a pressure cooker.
Customers can then turn right to find The Garden, a combined salad bar/deli. This island station features an oval design with a flat end.
Following The Garden is the Sixth Avenue Grill, an island station that offers burgers, chicken sandwiches, chicken fingers and similar menu items. The grill's design essentially features three separate cooking stations: a broiler, a griddle and a three-unit fry station.
“The beauty of this type of operation is that it allows operators to collapse certain platforms during slow periods,” Webb says. “This results in more people, activity and energy at the open platforms and their nearby seating areas.”
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| Biola's U-shaped salad bar allows kitchen staff to conduct final prep on vegetables for the station in full view of patrons. |
In the center of the serving area sits the Grain Gallery, Café Biola's bread, dessert and pastry station. The bulk of this station consists of the aforementioned wooden horizontal display for showcasing the Grain Gallery's freshly baked offerings. Also included in the Grain Gallery are two glass display cases, one dry and one that is refrigerated for holding desserts and other items at safe temperatures. The station also offers toasters, cereal and milk dispensing, an espresso machine and a yogurt machine.
The back of the house also contains the operation's warewashing system. As diners leave Café Biola, they are asked to bring their tray, china and silverware to the warewashing station. Instead of relying on a conveyor system for gathering dirty dishes and trays, Café Biola utilizes a tray accumulator. This system, which can hold approximately 150 trays at a time, relies on four stacked shelves that rotate like a carousel as diners place dishes on them. As the accumulator gets full, staff remove dishes and place them in the warewasher. Since the accumulator system offers both vertical and horizontal placement of trays, it requires less labor to operate during slow periods and more space to hold trays during busy periods compared to the more traditional conveyor model, according to Webb.
Adjacent to the bakery is the production kitchen, which includes dry storage and large walk-in refrigerators and freezers. Also in the BOH kitchen is a 40-foot line of cooking equipment including combi ovens, convection ovens, broilers, steamers, kettles and fryers.
The centerpieces of the production kitchen are the prep tables, which are 5 feet wide and have aisle space on both sides. This setup, Webb says, was utilized for two reasons: It allows for freer movement in the back of the house, which became smaller as a result of the redesign; and it allows staff members to work opposite each other, increasing the amount of space dedicated to prep work. This extra space is vital for Café Biola's prep and production system. To staff each station to successfully and efficiently conduct final prep work in front of the customer, the back-of-the-house prep work must provide individual cooks with ingredients portioned in the proper amount and easy to work with.
This final prep and production, in fact, is at the heart of Café Biola's design and operation. By adopting a display cooking format, customers can feel that they are part of the “theater of food,” Webb says. This theater, the commitment to locally grown food and a sustainable foodservice culture, and the fun yet timeless interior design provide Biola University with an operation that should serve it well for years, and even decades to come.
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