CULINARY PROGRAM

Our chefs customize each of our food programs to the tastes of each community we serve. Menus are written weekly based on seasonality, local availability, and feedback from our Whitman students.

Student Driven Menus

Student feedback is a critical component of our menu writing process. Our chefs and managers develop relationships with students and solicit feedback in person whenever possible. Speaking with our students through human interactions, comment cards, Instagram, and even Yik Yak, management lists menu items being requested. It works these requests into the weekly menus. We enjoy the engagement with the Whitman College students and encourage the students to assist as much as possible in our menu writing process.

Cleveland Commons station menus are based on current food trends. The Global Station features a weekly menu with popular world items such as Indian tandoori, classic Mexican cuisine variations, and West African offerings. The Oven Station offers a popular daily changing menu showcasing trendy street foods, hand-made desserts, and wood-stone pizzas. The Oven Station offers great change and accents the weekly menu. The Sushi and Noodle Station is based on Executive Chef Nimal’s knowledge and career cooking through Asia. The Noodle Station’s popular items range from Sri Lanka-style yellow split pea curry to garlic chicken ramen with a sustainable focus. The Comfort Station features a weekly regional and global “comfort food” such as smoked barbecue, paella, or even chicken parmesan and brings comfort to students from around the world. The popular Grill Station always has two plant-based sliders to complete with the buttermilk fried chicken and smash burger sliders. Every station menu is written to complement each other and cover a wide variety of options.

POP-UPS/STATION TAKEOVERS

Pop-ups in the cafes offer additional variety and are offered multiple times a week. These pop up’s range from bang bang chicken, street tacos with hand-made tortillas, piroshky, dim sum, milkshakes, and more. The cooks can highlight their specialties, bringing excitement, and high student engagement.

Here is a sample of a few of our engagement experiences around campus:

Pricing

Prices are determined by mutual consent between Bon Appétit and Whitman College. Our pricing recommendations are based on a comparable market basket of restaurant-quality meals in the area. In addition to this market comparison, we consider our cost of goods, labor, and other operating expenses.

Pricing is adjusted before the start of each academic year based on CPI – Food Away from Home. For the past three years, we have held our pricing below CPI. For the Academic Year 2021-22, prices increased by 4% compared to CPI of 4.7%. For the Academic Year 2022-23, prices increased by 5% compared to CPI of 8.3%. For the Academic Year 2023-24, we proposed a 5% increase compared to the CPI of 8.2%.

Because of our approach to how we menu, we have held our price increases below CPI for the last three years. When supply is limited for certain products and prices are higher, we can avoid menuing those items and replace them with lower cost options. For example, last spring, when turkey supplies were limited, and prices were high, we ran alternatives such as pork loin and ham.

Menu Mix

Throughout our café, we offer menu choices at several different price points. Our menu mix provides healthy and satisfying meal options in the $4-$6 range, the $7-$9 range, and $10 and above for specific entrées. This pricing range also helps us ensure that we have relatively even participation at each of our concepts in Cleveland Commons. We review guest counts for each station and evaluate our menu mix accordingly. If we see that at a particular meal, once the station has a much larger guest count than the others, we know we need to adjust our menu mix to achieve a more even distribution.