College debuts menu ratings

Author: Annabelle Fowler

MiddCORE Winter Term students launched an online menu rating system for the dining halls at Middlebury College in February. The online menu rating system, named Middelicious, stemmed from a project for the MiddCORE Winter Term class, which focused on the development of entrepreneurial skills, and was designed with the hope that the new program will help reduce dining hall waste.

Kazuaki Okumura '10 was a member of the team that addressed the campus' food waste problems. The team realized that one of the reasons why students wasted food revolved around the fact that they did not like what they chose to eat at dining halls or had different food expectations. The solution Okumura helped to think up focused on improving communication between students and dining services to reduce waste.

Yuki Yoshida '10, who was not part of the original team, thought the project was an excellent idea from the start.

"I was barely sitting through the presentation," she said. "Food waste is one of those things I saw and let go so often that I felt it was about time to do something about it. I could hardly wait to jump in [on the project]."

After Winter Term ended, both Okumura and Yoshida began to work together to make the Middelicious project a reality. They decided to make dining feedback easier by setting up an online rating system.

Around 20 students tested the initiative in its beta version, which used a free online blog with a poll system to gather data.

Yoshida and Okumura selected their acquaintances for the trial, yet they chose a diverse population so they would be able to collect more accurate results that spanned the spectrum of student preferences on campus.Ratings were easy to place on the beta blog, but updating the blog's information and analyzing and processing the collected data was cumbersome. Okumura explained that he would have to change the polls manually every evening, updating them with menus for the following day.

He also pointed out that the fact that the blog was an independent Web site created user inconvenience, as students might have difficulties or not have the time to access a new Web site.

The official version of Middelicious tackled these problems by integrating the rating system with the official Dining Services Menu page on the Middlebury College Web site. The ratings opened to the public in February.

On the first day of the Middelicious launch, 398 ratings were collected. The number of responses was so overwhelming, the system had to be shut down to fine-tune some programming.

Now, the average number of ratings since then has been around 250 per day, and is expected to grow.

The Middelicious blog is now used to publish these results, and will continue to be used to post information, ranging from advice on rating to news on campus food waste reduction.

Matthew Biette, director of Dining Services, thought positively of the ratings.

"This project came from a student, for students - and works with Dining," he said. "I think that is a major win for all involved. By focusing on the likes and dislikes, we can make the foods in such a way that they will be hits and not misses and ultimately, we will reduce the waste."

He did mention, however, that students were rating food that had not yet been served. That is not the point of the tool. As with any of the comment cards or Middelicious survey tool, we welcome honest and constructive feedback."

Students who visit the Dining Services Menu Web site can now rate every meal served in the dining halls on campus.

The rating contains both a numerical value for each dish on a scale from one to four, in addition to a space reserved for students' comments.

The feedback reaches Dining Services directly, and staff have already taken suggestions into consideration.

Jean Lin '10 has noticed and used the online dining rating system.

"It's a really good idea, and more effective than comment cards," she said. "By having a rating system and giving my favorite dishes a high rating, I'm hoping they will be made more often. If other students begin to regularly rate the menu, the unpopular dishes will be made less frequently, and thus less food will go to waste."

The MiddCORE class focused on problem-solving, leadership skills and teamwork. According to Yoshida, one of the students in the class who has helped to develop Middelicious, MiddCORE was more of an experience than a class.

Visiting alumni taught each session, and students had to solve real-life problems in teams every week. The final week of the course focused on raising civic engagement in the community.