Auburn University’s campus dining options are expanding with two major projects at The Edge at Central Dining and the Welness Kitchen opening up for all students. Renovations will take place on the ground floor to create a frictionless convenience store and a three-stall food hall.
At its most recent meeting, the Auburn University Board of Trustees approved the proposal to renovate approximately 2,400 square feet of the Central Dining Commons to make way for the new dining venues.
Renovations will begin this summer to create Auburn’s first frictionless convenience store, with plans to open in the fall of 2025 and a budget of $800,000. Upon entry, patrons will either use a credit card or students can scan in with TigerCard via their phone. There will be no traditional checkout stations. Instead, the system automatically identifies selected items and charges the linked payment method when shoppers leave.
Students can simply tap in, pick up their items and walk out. The store will use a combination of AI technology, cameras and weighted shelves to track items as customers shop.
"It's literally all cameras and weighted shelves," said Glenn Loughridge, director of Campus Dining and Concessions. "It should be a very simple way for students to walk in and walk out.”
The store will be slightly smaller than the War Eagle Supply in the Melton Student Center, but will carry similar offerings such as the same snacks, sandwiches, salads, drinks and more.
Adjacent to the new convenience store will be a three-stalled food hall. Projected to open in the fall of 2026 with a $3 million project budget, the food hall is being designed to quickly respond and cater to student tastes.
To bring this concept to life, Auburn Campus Dining is partnering with Everybody Eats, a company based in Miami that offers over 70 food hall concepts. These range from trendy global cuisine to popular vegan and vegetarian options. The idea is for these stalls to be dynamic.
“The idea here is we bring it to campus and if everybody loves it stays. If everybody's not so excited about it, then we go back to the drawing board and we talk to students and we try something new,” Loughridge said.
Some potential options for the three-stalled food hall consist of a dining option called Soom Soom which creates mediterranean food, a high-quality ramen stall and a concept that is similar to a Spanish version of Chipotle.
The hope for this is that Campus Dining will be able to receive feedback from students about the food hall’s dining options and will be able to make changes where needed.
Students will be able to purchase from the three-stalled food hall by pre ordering on Grubhub using their dining dollars.
Due to the small space, seating for the convenience store and food hall will be mostly outdoors, taking advantage of the shaded green space surrounding the development.
In addition to the new dining options coming to The Edge, next school year the Wellness Kitchen will be open to all students.
Currently, the Wellness Kitchen is only serving student athletes, but will now be opening up for all students to dine for breakfast and lunch.
Auburn Campus Dining is partnering with the athletic dietetics team and the nutrition staff to help athletes maintain training table standards at various dining halls, creating flexibility across campus.
“The idea here is not necessarily that we're letting everybody else in, it's that we're also letting the athletes out,” Loughridge said.
The Wellness Kitchen will now operate as a traditional dining hall, meaning students can use meal swipes or dining dollars to eat there. The space will serve breakfast and lunch, focusing on areas where demand is highest.
With around 200 seats and a few outdoor tables, the venue will be one of the smaller dining halls on campus.
One of the kitchen’s unique aspects will be a plant forward station, where vegetables take center stage on the plate. It’s not strictly vegetarian or vegan, proteins will still be available, but the spotlight will be on produce driven meals.
Another addition in the Wellness Kitchen will be a dedicated smokehouse station. Following the popularity of Smokehouse Fridays at The Edge, the Wellness Kitchen will now feature a permanent smoker and a station designed to deliver that classic barbecue flavor.
The reopening is also part of a broader evolution in Campus Dining. Each dining hall is developing its own identity: The Edge will focus on chef driven, composed plates with innovative menus, while Tiger Zone at The Village will lean focus on customization and the Wellness Kitchen will be plant forward. Across the board, students can expect rotating menus.
“At any point a student can access, when you look at them from a menu standpoint, you won't seem to see the same menu in the same building again for four weeks. And you won't see the same menu at any one of those spaces,” Loughridge said. “So when you add up all of those options, you have a lot that students can choose from every day and that's really what we're about, is just trying to give students as many different choices and as many different experiences as possible every single day.”
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