Why universities like Texas Tech are leveraging cooperative purchasing to implement catering programs

Written by Michael Keating

As a university or college administrator, you may not realize the benefits of adding a catering program to your labor retention strategy. By implementing a full catering service, you open the door to more jobs as well as more year-round jobs so your food staff can feel at ease knowing the summer months won’t mean they will be unemployed.

“Yes, university foodservice departments are creating affiliated catering operations,” says Kathleen Stoehr, director of community and content strategy at Catersource.com & Conference-Informa Connect Meetings & Catering Group. “If you are talking about catering at its basic level, say, a spin on drop-off/delivery, then yes, I’d say that colleges and universities are definitely stepping up in that capacity. To me, it’s little more than any other fast-food operation with workers pulling tickets, making food and packaging it to go.”

Stoehr explains that higher education institutions have always had some form of a catering operation, due to events and activities always taking place on campus that require foodservice. These events can include: small events such as board and advisory meetings that will need grazing-style accommodations; larger end-of-school-year celebratory gatherings for graduations; and social gatherings like dances, etc.

Schools like Texas Tech University (TTU) and Purdue University utilize a cooperative contract through OMNIA Partners to ensure that they are getting the best value out of their food service distributor. Not only does a cooperative contract negate the need for a lengthy RFP process, but it also allows the institution to leverage more purchasing power than they could on their own to realize deeper savings and enjoy additional value-adds like inflation and market-swing avoidance, analytics to identify additional savings opportunities, and much more.

Texas Tech University views its catering operation as a community-builder, first and foremost, says Kirk Rodriguez, senior director, hospitality services and student union & activities. “There’s always a need for food. Food brings people together. Food and hosting events—they are always a part of what happens on the campus and beyond. In a lot of ways our catering department is the connection to the campus community. The catering operation creates connections among groups and individuals on campus.”

Rodriguez says the catering operation is an integral part of the university. “In a lot of ways our catering department is a key connection to the campus community. It’s often a link to campus organizations because the catering crews are frequently meeting and working with all levels of the TTU community, and off the campus as well. We’ve built a good reputation, and so there’s a desire for our campus catering department to do events for the community outside of the university. We have a lot of requests for our catering team to serve at major events.”

The university has long had a catering department that’s been part of hospitality services, Rodriguez explains. In 2005 the catering unit was re-branded as Top Tier Catering. Rebranding was not done to differentiate the catering operation from what the university does with its hospitality services enterprise, Rodriguez tells Co-op Solutions. “The re-branding certainly shows the distinct level of service and the image we wanted to build with Top Tier.”

Rodriguez runs a good-sized food establishment. About 1,000 are employed across TTU’s hospitality services. This workforce includes full- and part-time staff, temporary workers and students. Core employees within catering number between 35 and 50; this includes full- and part-time staff and students.

Rodriguez says the primary focus of his catering team is the university community. “With a campus of 40,000 students and 7,000 faculty and staff, we do a very healthy catering business.” He says the catering operation is building back to its previous performance post-pandemic. “Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were doing about $3.8 million in revenue, and we were just a hair shy of hosting 3,100 events annually. We did everything from a coffee and danish for two to catering events for up to 2,000 attendees.”

His department also caters to off-campus venues and events. “We are one of only two or three catering operations that can handle very large events here in Lubbock, Texas.” His catering team will soon be serving at a local group’s annual fundraiser for a seated service for 1,500 to 1,600. “You need the ability to scale up to be able to execute an event that size. There is only one venue locally that can handle those kinds of events both from a staffing and equipment standpoint,” Rodriguez explains.

Dodging seasonal layoffs
Avoiding layoffs during slow periods is another benefit achieved through TTU’s catering group. As at other universities, TTU’s catering unit operates year-round, including the summer. This way, administrators can escape furloughing workers and keep staff busy during a potentially light calendar. “In our case, a big part of what we do during the summer is freshman orientation,” Rodriguez says. “This activity can attract, depending on the class size, 5,000 to 6,000 students and their parents and grandparents in a lot of cases. Families will come to campus for a university visit; it’s a requirement for students prior to attending classes in the fall. And so, our catering department primarily handles that piece of the business. So, for our university foodservice department, the catering operation helps us maintain employment for staffers when it is typically not a very busy time of the year.” He adds that the catering group is an important and additional revenue stream.

Rodriguez estimates that among his colleagues in the National Association of College & University Food Services(NACUFS), about 90 percent of them operate a catering department, probably for the same types of reasons. These include the additional revenue stream the catering operation provides, and keeping staffers employed in the summer, when it is typically not a very busy time of the year for foodservice. The institutional members of NACUFS include private colleges, large public universities, two-year colleges and four-year universities.

College catering gives a boost to staff recruiting and skills development
Yet another benefit of TTU’s operating a catering enterprise is that it enables hospitality services staffers to develop new foodservice skills. Rodriguez explains it thusly: “We are always hiring front-line staff and servers. We are hiring cooks. We have a culinary training program that our executive chef leads. It’s a two-year culinary program that we use to improve kitchen skills of our workforce. The program helps our workers to become trained culinarians and then they can work to pursue their certified executive chef credentials. To date, some of our culinarians have gone through the program. It is department wide.”

Rodriguez adds that TTU has an extensive training program for all new employees (including catering staffers) to help them develop more skills. “The program is a combination of university-required training and then departmental instruction.”

Rodriguez has 30 years of experience in foodservice that includes stints in the private and public sectors, as well as university foodservice. Along the way, he earned a master’s degree in hospitality management. With his extensive background, Rodriguez believes continuing staff training is essential.

Rodriguez says TTU’s catering program is still in recovery mode. “The pandemic was a tough time for us as it was for so many. Our focus is to rebuild our program and get it back to what we were pre-pandemic.” For 2023, the TTU foodservice executive hopes to continue to expand the good work of the catering operation.

“Our primary focus is serving the campus community, and we have a volume of business and a level of exposure just with the diversity of the campus. That is what drives us.” Rodriguez says his team is not motivated strictly to expand the catering program’s footprint or to reach a certain sales level or number of hosted events. “We are driven to manage the business so that we can continue to be successful. We want to be the caterer of choice—not the caterer that our customers are required to do business with.”

Purdue University’s catering program—another success story
Founded in the fall of 2020, the catering program within Purdue University Dining & Culinary is thriving. The catering operation, called Purdue Food Company Catering, serves a variety of customers, says Gretchen A. Jewell, associate director of auxiliary dining services.

Skills development takes place in the Purdue catering operation that enhances workers’ resumes, Jewell tells Co-op Solutions. “Our catering employees learn a variety of skill sets. Some are job-specific, such as customer service and event setup.” She says other skills taught are more job-transferable, such as delegation, leadership and organization.

Purdue Food Company Catering aims for revenue growth and potential build-out, Jewell says. “An expansion in services that we provide and customers that we serve is always on the horizon. We’re always looking at new ways to drive revenue through our services and menu options we provide.”

OMNIA Partners Public Sector offers a robust portfolio of high-quality cooperative contracts in the public procurement space, including school districts, colleges and universities. Participation gives agencies and institutions access to all the products, services and public sector procurement solutions available in the OMNIA Partners contracts. The contracts help public sector agencies achieve their strategic goals.

Michael Keating is senior editor for American City & County. Contact him at [email protected].