The newly renovated dining hall in the American Heritage Building at Harding University offers choices ranging from smash burgers in the Create area to healthier options like maple-glazed roasted turkey breast, oven-roasted seasoned cubed sweet potatoes and steamed peas and carrots with salt in the True Balance area “free of the nine major allergens.”
It’s just a better way to be “inclusive for people with dietary restrictions and to make sure that everyone can come here to eat and enjoy community,” said sophomore Joshua Kohlbacher, a student worker from Germantown, Tenn., at a ribbon cutting Wednesday held by Bison Hospitality.
Kohlbacher said Wednesday’s celebration was the culmination of the partnership between primary campus food service provider Aramark and Harding. “It is a great environment for students and faculty to come and commune together. For one, we’ve kind of redone the layout. We got pergolas and new paint jobs and study rooms. We’ve got better seating – much more comfortable soft seating, better lighting and just a better environment.”
The dining hall also has True Balance, where it is explained on the wall that there are no peanuts, no milk, no fish, no tree nuts, no shellfish, no wheat, no soy, no eggs and no sesame. The calorie counts for the offerings of the day are also listed.
Jason Warrington, Aramark marketing manager at Harding and a 1990 graduate of Searcy High School, said True Balance is the most popular station and actually was offered last year; “it was just smaller.”
“We had reached capacity so we literally did not have the space for the equipment to produce more food so we needed to expand it,” Warrington said. “So we pivoted, punched out this back wall, expanded the area. Now we have more staff back there; we do all the production so everything that is produced in that area is completely independent of the rest of The Caf so there’s no cross-contamination.”
The work on the dining facility came in two phases, with half of it done last year, he said. Aramark was hired by Harding last year to replace Chartwells.
Lots of feedback was gained last year and Chef Lori Alpers has made a new menu for the True Balance site, Warrington said.
The back three rooms are study rooms that are first-come, first-served. “It a great place to fellowship between faculty and students or just student study groups,” Warrington said. “Each one [room] has its own television monitor in there that they can hook into, white boards for meetings.” He said the rooms are more open know with new tiling and things sound better now.
There is also a new stage area. A piano player was keeping the crowd entertained. One of the songs played was “If I Only Had a Brain” from the 1939 movie, “The Wizard of Oz.”
Representatives from Yarnell’s Ice Cream Co. handed out cups of Bison Tracks ice cream, which was a huge hit. Warrington said the ice cream is so popular, mainly because students picked the school’s flavor last May.
