Dining Revamp: Bison Café Refreshes Menu and Layout
A major component to the Lipscomb experience is dining on campus. Entering the fall 2024 school year, students noticed a refresh of the Bison Cafe, also known as the Caf. While most food options remain the same this year, the largest change has been to the Bison Cafe. The Caf now features vibrant new signage, updated plates and utensils, and a revamped layout designed to improve traffic flow and dining experience.
Dining on campus has been a center point for several Lipscomb student leadership groups. Fall of 2021, the inaugural school year for President McQueen, featured various changes to dining on campus. Changes included the installation of Freshens, Creekstone Grill, Pie on the Fly, Local Eats and Uncle Daves storefront.
The President Student Advisory Council formed during President McQueen’s inaugural year has made food a center point of discussion. Today, Creekstone Grill has been replaced with Wild Blue, and Pie on the Fly was replaced with Boars Head Deli.
Abani Varner-Williams, Sodexo marketing manager, emphasized the importance of communication with students. “It’s been actually pretty informative and helpful. Something that has been my mission and my goal is really strengthening communication between us and the students in the university. But also strengthening that just relationship in general so that they know everybody here in dining, are here to make this the best experience for the students. The students are our number one priority. So, I would say throughout those different partnerships like SGA, that’s been the biggest one that we started this past spring.”
Varner-Williams highlighted that student-athletes’ requests for Powerade was heard. “And we were able to implement a lot of different changes like Powerade is back in the dining hall, which is a big thing that we constantly were hearing, especially with the athletes. This semester it’s back in the dining hall.”
Varner-Williams looks to engage the student community with various pop-up events.
“And then one of those big events that we do in partnership with SGA is the Campus Celebrity Chef pop up. Where we get different popular students on campus or different popular faculty and staff members to pick their favorite recipe, we’ll cook it, and then they come in and serve the students. So, I would say that it’s been a very fruitful experience, and we plan on continuing to build upon those different relationships and different events and really just continue to make them bigger and better.”
Regularly, the Caf now serves new smash burgers, grilled chicken, fries and other rotating specials. The Innovations Station has been moved and is offering a rotation of unique dishes, for example, shrimp and grits.
Another significant shift is the offering of allergy friendly foods. Last spring students saw an upgrade to the Simple Servings area which has food that is allergy friendly and is cooked separately from the main kitchen to prevent contamination. There is also a special closed off area with a larger assortment of allergy friendly snacks that can only be accessed by students who have allergies.
“Our Simple Zone, which is located behind Simple Servings, which is our allergen safe or allergen friendly area here in Bison Caf It’s a room where the students have to go through the Accessibility Office to get access where they can get all their gluten free products. We’ve been trying to implement different programming and different options so that they can always have access to something to eat here in the Caf.”
Changes are not always easy to make. There are many challenges that students may not be aware of.
“Everything doesn’t happen overnight. Sometimes I know that they’ll have different requests for different things and preferences for different things. But a lot of times the switch or the change is not something that we can just do immediately. It’s something that kind of has to go up through the ladder of communication. I think, you know, with the students, they just think they can request something. And a lot of times it can’t be an immediate change. And sometimes it’s not always like that because at the end of the day, it is a business. So sometimes things are just a little bit more technical than they may seem,” Varner-Williams said.
With the new semester underway, Lipscomb Dining plans to continue enhancing the dining experience, promising even more events like the popular Campus Celebrity Chef pop-up. If you ever have any questions or concerns about dining on campus reach out to Abani Varner-Williams.
As of a few weeks ago, Sodexo announced the removal of Boars Head Deli meat from all its franchises and partnerships, including the Boars Head Deli in Bennett Campus Center. The station will be renamed to Bison Deli. Bison Deli will continue to offer a variety of deli sandwiches.
