full

Legend says that if the San Andreas Fault were to rupture tomorrow, the line for Rendezvous West would still be standing. Even before the dining halls open for lunch at 11 a.m., hungry undergraduates line up outside of Rende West – the Hill’s Chipotle-esque takeout restaurant – with dreams of acquiring their burrito bowls in under 45 minutes.

When you first make the pilgrimage to Rieber Court, the serving station seems a lifetime away. As you crawl forward, led on by the scent of al pastor, watching other students sashay by with white takeout boxes in hand, you feel you’ve transcended spacetime. But the wait is a small price to pay for the coveted treasures of Rende West.

Bruins rally together at the Rose Bowl for seasonal football games and howl en masse when the clock strikes midnight every finals week, but nothing quite elicits UCLA school spirit like dining hall food. Ranked first place nationally for its cuisine, UCLA Dining Services is one of the largest university dining programs in the country. The program’s sheer magnitude may help to bring in accolades, but its size is also a necessity. The dining team serves nearly 30,000 meals each day to students living on the Hill.

While UCLA’s dining program is a point of pride for many students, most have yet to consider the work that takes place behind the scenes just to keep the program running – let alone maintain its No. 1 ranking.

“I don’t think it’s something people think about. They just see the food, take it, eat it,” said Eman Almuti, a first-year psychobiology student.

In recent years, the university’s dining services have expanded rapidly. A new takeout location, The Drey, opened on the Hill last year, and Epicuria at Ackerman debuted this summer, allowing students to use their meal swipes on campus. Much to the happiness of nocturnal Bruins, De Neve Late Night made its long-awaited return this quarter after a pandemic hiatus.

A glance behind the scenes reveals the individuals who work together to preserve UCLA Dining’s title and raise the program to new heights. Operating largely out of sight, these people work around the clock to enhance students’ eating experiences.

At the foundation of the dining program is the food itself, and the man behind UCLA’s top-tier grub is none other than chef Joey Martin. In his role as senior executive chef, Martin oversees the culinary operations for dining on the Hill and across campus. In person, Martin gives the impression of a man who’s always on the job. He arrived at our early morning interview having just come out of another meeting and had to leave to jump into another one right after. As he spoke, he sat deep in his chair, arms crossed, peering through heavy eyelids. Martin is no stranger to high-pressure work environments. Before coming to Westwood, he cooked for the likes of the Los Angeles Lakers and catered for the Grammy Awards. But, driven by a desire to impact students’ lives, he forfeited corporate bonuses and joined the nonprofit sector when he came to UCLA in 2016. With five children of his own, he’s eager to prove to the youth that food can be both healthy and delicious.

“This is kind of a test run,” Martin said. “How can I educate college students about eating habits and then try to translate that into making my kids not eat chicken fingers and mac and cheese?”

He grapples with this question every day. When crafting new dishes for the dining halls, Martin and the culinary team consider a variety of factors, ranging from the type of cuisine to the health benefits and cost of ingredients.

In the process of planning a vegan spaghetti bolognese for Epicuria, Martin and his team originally opted to use Impossible meat, a plant-based meat substitute. After a taste test and a reconfiguration of cost, the team revised the recipe to substitute the Impossible meat with eggplant – a bettertasting and less-expensive alternative.

“We got to save a little bit of money and nest egg that to spend somewhere else,” Martin said. “Also, I think we improved the dish by going to the eggplant.”

Like any other nonprofit, cost is always a consideration for UCLA Dining. Any money left over from student housing fees at the end of the year gets reinvested into the program, said Al Ferrone, senior director of food and beverage for UCLA Dining.

Ferrone, like Martin, made the jump from the private sector to the nonprofit world by coming to work at UCLA. He served as the regional director of operations for Interstate Hotels & Resorts until 2015, when he decided to dedicate his life to transforming college students’ eating habits.

As a supervisor, Ferrone is informal and no-nonsense. He emphasizes that he often keeps his office door ajar so anyone can walk in. The first thing he does everyday is hit the gym so he’s ready to tackle a long day of meetings, tastings and financial planning.

“Providing the restaurant-quality food that we do here every day, that’s exciting – that we take the word institutional out of our institutional feeding,” Ferrone said. “I just want to have great food here, and that’s what really drives me.”

High-quality, cost-effective meals form half of the UCLA Dining experience, but the other half lies in the eating experience.

While waiting for their food, students will often provide feedback about their dining experience by texting a number advertised at multiple locations on the Hill. A TV monitor announces “Dine and Dish” in flashy lettering, and students do as the screen commands. Slouching under the weight of their JanSports and impending homework assignments, these young minds produce poeticisms like “burt (burrito) good,” which appear on screen along with a response from an unidentified figure who signs off as Charles.

Day in and day out, Charles responds to the jumble of musings the student body slings his way. These responses are invariably formal, in contrast to the casual nature of students’ texts. One may receive “I do concur” or “your feedback will be shared with the chefs” in response to the assertion that “these sandwiches r bussin.” While many find this chat feature amusing, Charles is a prime example of the elbow grease that produces the glossy exterior of UCLA Dining.

As it turns out, Charles is a very real person. His full name is Charles Wilcots, and he’s the associate director of UCLA Dining. In this role, he oversees daily operations and helps plan

Wilcots is mild-mannered and prone to humility. He immediately swats away questions about his identity as a campus celebrity. He said he originally began responding to students in 2020 through Dine and Dish to help alleviate employees’ stress in the face of staffing shortages.

“I wanted to pull something away from the team, so they can focus on providing great service with what limited resources they have,” Wilcots said. “I like to stay focused and see what’s going on in the locations as well, and that’s (Dine and Dish is) a good way for me to keep abreast of what’s happening with not being in the locations day in and day out.”

The purpose of Dine and Dish is to streamline communication between students and dining management so staff can quickly target problems and respond to student demands, Wilcots said. Additionally, Wilcots and his team gather feedback by attending weekly meetings with student representatives and conducting quarterly polls. The dining team then uses this crowdsourced information to enhance its methods of operation. In the pursuit of growth, the management team is quick to take on new ventures.

Wilcots said he has seen the dining halls change dramatically since he first arrived at the Hill 25 years ago. While UCLA initially had standard dining halls that all served similar dishes, the dining team has since created themed – or “destination” – dining locations. Now, students can stop by Epicuria if they are in the mood for Mediterranean cuisine or walk down to Bruin Plate to satisfy their cravings for whole grain French toast.

Dishes cycle through the major dining halls every three to four weeks, so the menus are constantly changing. Nevertheless, in order to bring excitement to students’ lives and celebrate different kinds of food, Dining management began periodically hosting special dinners at different dining halls. Crowds of students line up for these meals, forming lines reminiscent of the ones wrapping around Pauley Pavilion during basketball season.

Some of the themed dinners incorporate a certain food item into every dish, such as the legendary Garlic Fest at B Plate. Others will revolve around a type of cuisine. Last year, the Old School Italian night at Epicuria was a major success among students on the Hill. Despite the dinner’s popularity, the culinary team expressed hesitation when asked to repeat the theme. The chefs wanted to focus on more innovative foods, but Martin urged them to appease the masses.

“My chefs didn’t want to do it again, but I said, ‘You have to do the Old School Italian again this year!’” Martin said. “So I think that’s on the docket.”

The dining team continually works to ensure student satisfaction, but the pressure to constantly operate at a top-grade caliber can be difficult to manage.

“My favorite is when these athletes get paid millions of dollars to perform. And they come, they have a bad day, and they’re sitting in the locker room saying, ‘I just had an off day,’” Martin said. “We have an off day, we get people sick, we get complaints, ... so we can’t have off days like that. We have to be on our game every single day.”

The incentive to perform comes from students and university officials alike. Ferrone said Chancellor Gene Block has even frequented the Hill and enjoys lunching with students because of the high quality of the food.

“The difference between us and the other schools is nothing more than people and talent,” Ferrone said. “They buy the same tomatoes, they buy the same lettuces, they get the same meats and all that stuff. The question is: Do you know what to do with it?”

Ferrone added that competition is a significant motivator for the dining team.

“It’s like Avis and Hertz. Who wants to be No. 2, right?” said Ferrone.

And Wilcots and Martin are ready to throw down the gauntlet.

“We want world domination,” Wilcots said.

“Stay tuned,” Martin added with a laugh ♦