With a customer count of approximately 25,000 students and 325 associates serving, Tiger Dining rakes in close to $120,000 from Monday to Thursday, according to William Sallustro, resident district manager of Tiger Dining.
In harnessing student traffic, Sallustro said it’s more about the production needed to support the venues rather than the volume of customers.
“The volume of students obviously increases how much product, how much items you need to be able to service them,” Sallustro said. “There becomes a threshold where you can only have so many bodies in a space to be able to service the students. At one point, there’s not enough room. Everyone has to be productive without bumping into each other.”
Sallustro gave Chicken Salad Chick as an example, which he said was initially overstaffed.
“There are inefficiencies at the beginning, but as they progressed they get a little more efficient,” Sallustro said.
David Anderson, Dining Services director of the Student Center, said there are three things that drive the speed of service: the concept, staffing and the unexpected.
“Each concept has a different capability of providing the speed of service,” Anderson said.
Sallustro said concepts vary throughout campus. Chick-fil-A has a double-sided structure and a pre-defined menu, whereas venues such as Go Greek and Plains to Plate are constructed in an assembly line fashion with a pre-determined, yet customizable, menu. Au Bon Pain balances made-to-order with pre-made orders, while Outtakes and grab-and-go locations prepare products in advance in a production kitchen.
“There are different styles,” Sallustro said. “Obviously we know based on experience, history and information from the University when those peak times are for the students. We staff accordingly. We try to make the best out of a design of the venue.”
Bryan Andress, manager of Au Bon Pain, said the University’s layout is opposite of typical Au Bon Pain venues. To ease traffic flow, standard Au Bon Pain venues present hot sandwiches first, followed by soups, drinks, pastries and desserts.
Andress said if Auburn’s Au Bon Pain was structured the original way, it would slow traffic down.
“It would make a higher emphasis on the hot sandwiches and salads and that would create a backlog of people,” Andress said. “Aside from Chick-fil-A, we’re the second-busiest spot on campus. For what we do and the amount of people we do business, it’s very efficient.”
Andress said the best was to expedite traffic is to be fully staffed.
“During the normal peak period, we would have 14-15 people on hand,” Andress said. “It’s an interesting balance of the amount of business you have with keeping a profit market, which we do very well.”
According to Sallustro, venues create position-based schedules centered on business needs. If necessary, during peak times managers and staff members will assist busier venues. Sometimes dining outsources to a temporary staffing agency for additional help.
“You have to balance it carefully,” Sallustro said. “It’s not always 100 percent productive. We have to look at the whole picture and say, ‘OK, how productive is the labor that you have?’ We have to make sure we have enough staff that makes the flow go through as well as managing it.”
Managers also look at their specific venues and staff appropriately, according to Sallustro.
“It’s a challenge,” Sallustro said. “Managers work very hard to make sure they have coverage and they’re able to expedite as much as they can. Are there times that we do get short-handed? Of course. We do as much as possible to cover those positions within the staffing that we have.”
Sallustro said he looks at data and receives feedback constantly to analyze how dining can further prepare for more people and move faster.
At the beginning of the semester, dining performed time trials at Chick-fil-A, according to Samuel Holt, marketing manager with Tiger Dining. They told students to start a stopwatch when they got in line and stop it when they received their food. They also told them to count how many people were in front of them.
“On average, it took about eight to nine minutes to get from the back of the line to get food,” Holt said. “That was with at least 30 people in front of the person with the stopwatch. We found that it takes a 12-second transaction time when you swipe your TigerCard.”
Holt said Chick-fil-A was the focus because it produces the most transactions per day on campus, and it’s the venue generating the most feedback. Tiger Dining hasn’t done time trials on any other venues yet, but Holt said their next focus might be Go Greek or Panda Express.
“The whole point of this was the try to make students aware that we are the busiest Chick-fil-A on any college campus in the country,” Holt said. “We are aware of the time it takes you to get through the line at Chick-fil-A.”
Sallustro said what’s beyond his control is students’ desire for customizable options, which take longer to prepare.
“We want the students to have that flexibility, but we’re also trying to say look at places where there are items that don’t need to be customized,” Sallustro said.
Anderson said options to increase speed and handle moments of being understaffed at the Student Center include cross-staffing employees to work at different venues and hiring floaters who report to a different specified venue each day.
Other options include buffet-style dining, food trucks and flexibility of the student’s choices, according to Sallustro.
Sallustro said a possibility for the future would be a technology that predicts waiting time at specific venues.
“We try not to make any excuses up,” Sallustro said. “We try to service out customers every day to the best of our ability and serve as promptly as we can.”
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