By Andrew Shah and Andrew Rowan

Nearly a year into its role as Moorestown Friends School food service provider, SAGE Dining is working to improve the food quality and lunch experience. They just need one thing: more feedback.

This request for more feedback from the school community comes after a January Meeting for Worship for Business in which upper school students listed nearly three dozen concerns about the food quality, experience, and prices.

The App

“I urge the students to use the app more,” said SAGE Regional Manager Charlie Bunin. He added that the app is the best way for SAGE Dining to get a sense for what students want.

Bunin said he knows community members have thoughts on the food but said students do not voice their opinions to the SAGE staff, which explains why changes are so difficult to make.

The app, which is available in the Apple App Store and Google Play, allows users to see the menu, individually rate items, and write comments which are sent directly to the dining hall staff.

“You’ll get a response back from myself or [Head Chef Stacy Mischkin] within 24 hours,” said Bunin. “It might not always be the answer you like, but it will be an answer.”

Currently, only 80 users are registered on the app, which includes parents.

“That’s a really small amount for us, even for a school of this size,” said Bunin.

He added that if they receive enough app requests for a particular dish or food item, SAGE may be able to implement it. “If we don’t know it, we can’t do it,” said Bunin.

Bunin and Mishkin said that if they can get a community mandate, a change is likely to be made. For example, if one person said they did not like a dish and one person said they did, there is not much they can do.

Bunin said the burden is on the student side at the moment: “Tell us what you want. We’ll do our best. . .Work with us. Communicate.”

The Pizza

SAGE’s Pizza generated a number of complaints during the tense January Meeting for Worship for Business. According to the minutes, the MFS Community lamented the pizza served by SAGE and described it as “not up to par” and “like Chuck-E-Cheese’s.”

Concerns surrounding the quality of the pizza were made known to SAGE Dining during the Food Quality Committee in February.  When asked if SAGE implemented a different recipe, Chef Mischkin said, “[The old recipe had] a little too much cheese that was making [the pizza] mushy in the center.  We now have a certain amount of cheese we use.”

Not only did SAGE Dining alter the recipe, but Bunin said they worked with an outside consultant to do so: “We reached out to somebody who specialized in pizza, brought them in, and had them show us what they were doing at their store.”

Furthermore, instead of putting pizza into the boats for students and faculty to take to their lunch tables, SAGE opted to serve the pizza on “pizza stones” in order for individual slices to “remain more crispy on the bottom.” Students walk up to the stones, cut a slice, and place them in their own boats.

Bunin added that the feedback regarding the pizza since the changes were implemented has been overwhelmingly positive. He added that SAGE is working with the school to provide a more comprehensive survey on the dining hall experience.

Could The Deli Bar Possibly Make A Return?

During January’s Meeting for Worship for Business, Upper School students complimented SAGE on bringing back made-to-order sandwiches, which SAGE calls ‘Classic Cuts,’ on Wednesdays.

Bunin said this is one of SAGE’s three main goals going into the 2019-2020 school year.

“We are hoping to do a deli all the time,” said Mishkin, though Bunin noted that space is limited in the Dining Hall.

He said they are working with the school to figure out what would be best: “We are thinking of concepts and looking out of the box.”

Bunin and Mishkin did note that there will “always be a protein” out on the salad bar, SAGE’s Improvisation Station, but it may not “always be a cold cut, because they are mostly processed food.” They urged students to suggest sandwiches for the Grab-and-Go area if there are certain varieties they would like to see.

Freshman Lauren Articolo said she favors the idea of bringing back the deli bar: “Sometimes when there’s nothing to eat, it’s nice to always have a different option.”

Other Changes On The Way?

In the months following the vocal Meeting for Worship for Business, SAGE Dining has gone to work to resolve complaints about both food and the process of buying lunch; however, Bunin and Mishkin made it clear that not all of these issues are going to be solved by the end of the 2018-2019 school year.

One community member pointed out in MFWFB that SAGE registers only accept cash, even though some students only carry a credit or debit card. Bunin said the implementation of registers that can accept credit or debit cards “is up to administration.  We’ve discussed that [possibility] with them, but we’re still in discussion over what we should do next year.”

A common complaint regarding the transition from Healthy Foods by Choice to SAGE Dining was the fact that SAGE Dining uses sunflower butter as a substitute for peanut butter.  Even though the sunflower butter is used to prevent an accident with a student who has a peanut butter allergy, members of the Upper School questioned if SAGE could offer peanut products during Upper School lunch, assuming that Upper School students with a peanut allergy were responsible enough to know what products not to buy. However, Director of Finance and Operations Lisa Carbone-Warren noted in the Food Quality Committee meeting that the kitchen serves all grade levels and therefore needs to be peanut-free.

Carbone-Warren initially approved the addition of peanut butter to the menu earlier this year; however, her decision was overturned by a committee. The committee, made up of division directors and parents, felt that parents would need more notice after they were assured that no peanut butter would be used in the kitchen.  Bunin added that SAGE plans to work together with the committee to come to a solution for next year.