By Jacqueline Kim and Claire Thurston
Shake Smart gave away over 800 smoothies on Free Shake Day, Sept. 19. Arden Ryan/ News Editor
At the start of the 2024 academic year, Carnegie Mellon Dining Services launched four new dining options on campus: Crisp and Crust, Shake Smart, Tepper Taqueria Express, and Mr. Bulgogi. The new locations vary in cuisine type and concept, each seeking to creatively fill student needs within the meal plan.
The Tartan spoke with three members of the Carnegie Mellon Dining Team to better understand the ideas driving each restaurant. Michael Tokarek is the Pittsburgh District Manager of Chartwells, a higher education dining service that manages 300 college campuses. Joe Beaman, Director of Dining Services, manages the collaboration between Chartwells, local contractors, and Carnegie Mellon itself. Jessica Tones is the Program Director of Nutrition and Marketing for Dining Services, and is a registered dietitian focused on education programs within dining.
The three represent the multiple working parts of Carnegie Mellon’s unique “polyoperational dining system.” Carnegie Mellon contracts Chartwells, a larger company, to operate several restaurant locations including Entropy+, Nourish, Hunan Express, the new Shake Smart, and restaurants on the second floor of the University Center (True Burger, Revolution Noodle, and the new Crisp and Crust).
The university also works with 11 family-owned, local Pittsburgh restaurants that operate secondary locations on campus. Beaman cited that collaboration is a long-standing feature of Carnegie Mellon dining with Taste of India and La Prima both in their 33rd year on campus. He explains that this feature provides, “an increased access to diversity, and also, supports the entrepreneurial spirit, which is so vital to the heartbeat of Carnegie Mellon.”
This combination between Chartwells and Pittsburgh locations, rather than one centralized dining hall like many other college campuses, embodies Carnegie Mellon dining’s core values.
“As a program, we’re really proud of our cultural accuracy with our menus and the diversity of not only our menus and our concepts, but of our dining vendors and our vendor owners,” Beaman said. “Our goal is to try to expand as much as we can, you know, to different types of foods and partners.”
New additions to the 32 dining concepts on campus, introduced at the beginning of this semester, include Shake Smart, Crisp and Crust, Tepper Taqueria Express, and Mr. Bulgogi. The first two locations specifically aim to quickly fill student demand for “lighter” and “healthier” options.
Shake Smart is a new health-centric dining option located in the Highmark Center for Health and Wellness. Shake Smart’s menu consists of various protein shakes, smoothies, and acai bowl options. The location’s concept is centered around the Highmark building itself and its athlete-population traffic. It hopes to target nonathletes and athletes alike by offering healthy and nutritious options post-workout or practice.
Tones described how Shake Smart goes above and beyond a regular smoothie restaurant: “They’re not just a concentrate in some ice, right? You can add different kinds of proteins and milks and vegetables and fruits and nuts and nut butters … And it’s been wildly popular, too.” That popularity showed at the free shake event on Sept. 19, at which over 800 shakes were handed out.
“It is new and upcoming. It’s what students have been asking for collectively,” Tokarek said. Managed by Chartwells, the Shake Smart concept is already a successful model on other college campuses, including the University of Pittsburgh.
Crisp and Crust is a vegetable-focused salad and roll-up restaurant run by Chartwells in the University Center’s second floor dining area. The items are made-to-order and can be customized using a wide range of toppings, bases, and proteins (including a bread bowl and a large burrata).
However, customers can also choose from a pre-designed list of signature items, which Beaman remarked “takes some of that decision paralysis away when you can just walk up and try different flavor combinations.” These premium options are what differentiate Crisp and Crust from other salad bars on campus, like at the Exchange or in Tepper.
When the previous concepts in the space that Crisp and Crust inhabits now weren’t taking off according to student polls, Tokarek said the dining team hoped to creatively “use existing space to meet the needs of students.” Students were asking for lighter, more vegetable-forward options, a need which was evidently met by Crisp and Crust, in what Beaman calls, “an enormous win for our campus community.”
The concept of Tepper Taqueria Express was largely influenced by the preexisting Tepper Taqueria located in Tepper. However, recognizing that many students are frequently on a time crunch and unable to wait in line to custom-build their taqueria orders, Tepper Taqueria Express was created. The new dining option prepares Tepper Taqueria options packaged and ready to take to-go.
Mr. Bulgogi is a food truck dining option located at Legacy Plaza that specializes in Korean barbecue (bulgogi) bowls. The food truck was first purchased by Carnegie Mellon and established in 2014. The concept of rotating local vendors offering a series of different cuisine options each week was first introduced last year.
However, the popularity of Mr. Bulgogi, in addition to the lack of Korean style food on campus, ultimately resulted in Mr. Bulgogi’s permanent residence in the Tartan Food Truck for the rest of this semester.
The process of establishing new dining locations on campus is heavily dependent on the present needs of the student body. The Campus Executive Chef, Director of Operations, and Director of Dining work in collaboration to develop a new concept that is presented to the Carnegie Mellon dining team on campus.
“We develop [an idea or concept and] we see if it’s going to fit within the infrastructure of the current space,” Tokarek said.
The process of projecting expenses, ingredients, allergens, marketing, and construction are all tediously undertaken and coordinated alongside the university in order to produce the final locations that are accessible to students.