Freshman Shaliah George makes a plate of food at the Seasons 12 Mongolian Grill station in South Campus Dining Hall, one of the several build-your-own stations at the dining halls.

While Dining Services noticed the student demand for build-your-own options half a decade ago, dining hall stations such as North Campus Dining Hall’s Korean Barbecue are still catching up to the trend.

Korean Barbecue, which opened in 2010, transformed into a build-your-own-food station this semester in response to student and employee complaints.

“Students were constantly wanting more or less of things, and that put a lot of pressure on the line servers, who were supposed to be putting out a set amount for a set price,” Dining Services spokesman Bart Hipple said. 

Senior Executive Chef John Gray said that when he passed by the station, he would hear students complain that they couldn’t customize set portions of vegetables, rice or meat. At employee training, which occurs before each semester, employees complained that they didn’t know how to respond to students asking for larger amounts of food, he said.

“We try to ingrain [in our staff]: Don’t say no to a student. Korean Barbecue was one spot where you really couldn’t do that,” Gray said. 

Gray said the idea to transform the station came in the spring, along with a sneeze guard that allows servers to hand plates beneath the glass rather than over or around it.

With the new sneeze guard approved, Dining Services installed one at the Korean Barbecue station, allowing students to serve themselves. Food now is weighed and costs 49 cents an ounce, as opposed to a set price of $6.95, Hipple said.

Dining Services has seen 150 to 200 more customers at the station each day since the change, Gray said. The station also requires one fewer worker to handle food.

“When we were serving, it was quicker, but the downside was that we got complaints,” said Greg Hampton, a Dining Services employee who was a server at Korean Barbecue last year. “Our biggest challenge now is keeping up with the food and keeping everything clean.”

While the delis in the dining halls were created as build-your-own stations, Hipple said Dining Services began noticing a trend toward this type of service five years ago. In response, it debuted a custom salad bar. It also introduced Sprouts, the build-your-own vegetarian stir-fry station, on North Campus, and Luigi’s and Maria’s build-your-own pasta stations in the North and South Campus dining halls, respectively, followed a few years later.  

“Any time that students have the ability to decide what ingredients are going in, the station becomes more popular,” said Jason Comoglio, the North Campus Dining Hall’s assistant director.  

The pasta station has been the most popular station in North Campus Dining Hall, he said.

“I like the pasta station because I can pick how much and how little I want,” sophomore kinesiology major Jill Flenner said. “When you see something already made, you might want to add to it or build your own.”

Hipple said almost every station in both dining halls offers students the opportunity to customize their meals.

“[Students] like to see their food prepared in front of them, and they like to see what is put in it,” Hipple said. “Some workers find it more challenging and managers have to work with them more, but the change is absolutely worth it.”

Junior management major Eric York said it feels better to have a say in what and how much you are eating.

“The freedom of choice is something we value as students, including when we pick our food,” York said.