Chapman restaurant services creates recipe request form

To provide more food options in the dining hall, the university unveiled a form for students to recommend new recipes that will help to diversify students’ personal and cultural palettes. Photo by SIMRAH AHMAD, staff photographer

After Chapman students have been calling on Randall Dining Commons, the dining hall on campus, to create more diversified meal options for students, new recipes are on the horizon.

According to an Oct. 24 email announcement from Dean of Students Jerry Price, there is now a recipe request form available for students to fill out for the possibility of the dish being served at either the dining hall or for a student organization event. 

In the past, it has been difficult for student clubs to request certain food options when Sodexo, the company which is in charge of all food catering services on campus, did not have the materials or ingredients needed to make them. However, now with this form in place, requests can be made to help meet each student’s specific needs.

Alexis Reekie, a third year political science, philosophy and law and liberal arts triple major, is currently the president of the Student Government Association and has collaborated with Sodexo on this initiative.

“There are certainly more steps that can be taken, and we are having ongoing conversations with Sodexo to ensure that we provide as many resources to Chapman students as possible to obtain more diverse dining hall options,” Reekie told The Panther. “We are currently discussing the broadening of takeout options that will hopefully aid our pursuit of ensuring that each student has access to dining options that are suitable for their personal needs.”

Riya Belani, a junior health science major who serves as the upperclassmen senator, worked alongside Reekie on this project.

“This form will affect Chapman students as it will allow Sodexo to be able to better support cultural organizations (and) it will help strengthen the connection between the Sodexo team and the Chapman students,” Belani said. “They will be able to work with the team to see their recipes come to fruition.” 

This form will most notably be used for organizations on campus who need help catering certain foods and dishes for their events. While this form will be used to help different clubs and meetings on campus, it is mostly geared towards helping diverse and cultural organizations on campus. 

Students in these clubs are encouraged to fill out the form to work alongside dining services to provide suggestions and new ideas for recipe and meal options.

On the request form, students must include their email, student organization name, the recipe and a few other details pertaining to their dish and event.

In order for the request to be considered to be fulfilled, students must send in the request a few weeks before the event is set to take place for their organization.

Now that clubs on campus are able to request different recipes that they would like to see from Chapman dining services, there can be more representation and diversity seen throughout this space of the school.

Junior history major Brittany Garcia is currently the secretary for Chapman’s Latinx Club.

“It does sound like a positive step towards diversifying and incorporating culturally diverse foods,” Garcia said. “I personally love to try new foods and am a big fan of certain ethnic dishes, so to have some of those dishes become more accessible to me would be appreciated.”