Sean McMinn
smcminn@mustangdaily.net
The difference between name-brand granola bars and ones produced at Cal Poly might have been the last thing on the university’s mind as California State University Chancellor Timothy White visited campus this past month. But for some students, administrators and faculty, it became an important — and confusing — distinction.
Campus Dining’s catering division has apologized to students, faculty and administrators following its use of name-brand granola bars in place of Cal Poly-made ones for a student demonstration in early May, multiple university officials said.
Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong’s staff originally asked Campus Dining to bake granola bars for a May 2 student demonstration in front of the president’s cabinet, presidential spokesperson Chip Visci said.
Because the demonstration did not allow enough time for the students to finish a large batch of granola, Campus Dining needed to make the granola in higher quantities the day before, Visci said. When the catering team finished making the granola on May 1, however, it found the consistency was poor and crumbled before making it into wrappers.
To complete the order, university catering asked a food science student on assignment in the kitchen for a class lab to remove Kashi granola bars from their packaging and wrap them in green cellophane instead, Visci said. The student finished each bar’s wrapping by placing the Cal Poly seal on it.
“If I had known about this at the time, I would have said, ‘You’re doing what?’” Visci said. “Because this is students passing this off as their own work, because they think it is.”
Solutions through Translational Research in Diet and Exercise (STRIDE), the group scheduled to present its recipe to the president and his cabinet, presented the Kashi granola bars unaware of the last-minute switch, Visci said. Armstrong was present for the demonstration, though White was visiting a different part of campus.
Days later, STRIDE director and food science professor Aydin Nazmi learned about the switch from fellow professor Arlene Grant-Holcomb, who assigned the student to the university kitchen where she unwrapped the Kashi bars. STRIDE contacted the president’s office six days after its presentation, which led to a Campus Dining meeting that revealed what went wrong.
Mike Thornton, associate director of commercial services at Cal Poly Corporation, which manages Campus Dining, met with the catering team on May 9. The caterers told him the switch was made because of variations between STRIDE’s original recipe and the large-scale, commercial one used for the president’s cabinet, Visci said.
“It turns out that STRIDE’s recipe as presented to the catering team works fine on a small scale in one’s home if using ingredients and ovens common to homes,” Visci wrote in an email. “However, for production on a large scale on commercial equipment, adjustments were necessary.”
The nature of catering often calls for on-the-spot decisions to finish an order, Thornton said. The catering team had a busier day than usual, he added, and switched to Kashi bars so it would at least have something to deliver to the president’s staff.
After meeting with the catering team, Thornton said there was “no malice” on its part.
“The theory was: Do they give them a bag of the crumbling bits, or do they get the granola bar?” Thornton said. “They were just trying to figure out the best resolution in the short time frame.”
The catering team came to STRIDE to apologize one week later, and Thornton said his employees learned a lesson about client communication.
“Not understanding context of an event leads you to not understanding communication is key,” he said. “Simply contacting the client, which just happened to be some staff in the president’s office … or arriving at the event and letting them know there so they could change something in the presentation (could have helped).”
Nazmi, the STRIDE director, declined to be interviewed for this article. Instead, he provided a statement that echoed Thornton’s remarks: communication eventually turned the ordeal into a learning experience.
“Unfortunately, something went wrong in the production phase and campus dining was unable to provide these granola bars,” the STRIDE statement said. “Unbeknownst to all, including STRIDE, a substitution was made using a commercially available granola bar. The STRIDE team was obviously disappointed and following the event, met with campus dining to learn why our recipe was not used.
“When something goes wrong, it is usually a great opportunity for growth and learning, and in the end, ‘Granola-gate’ turned out to be a very effective teachable moment and learning opportunity for everybody involved.”
In addition’s to STRIDE disappointment with Campus Dining, Grant-Holcomb — the professor who assigned the student assistant — called the catering team’s actions “wrong.”
Grant-Holcomb first heard about the granola switch from a student and didn’t think much about it, but grew concerned after realizing the food was presented to the president and his cabinet as a students’ recipe at the Learn By Doing demonstration. She then told Nazmi about it at a faculty meeting.
“We both were just kind of like, ‘I can’t believe they would do that,’” she said.
More importantly for Grant-Holcomb, she said she wanted her students to realize the situation was an example of why contact with clients is important in food service. Campus Dining’s apology to STRIDE came just one day before a lecture on ethics in Grant-Holcomb’s class, in which she talked about communication.
It would have been better for Campus Dining to have called the president’s office and work with them to create an alternate plan, she said, instead of quietly using replacement granola bars.
STRIDE has since worked with Campus Dining to successfully produce a healthy granola bar recipe in large quantities, Visci said.
Someone should tell Mike Thornton to enroll in the ethics course.
Or they could have done a test run first, figured out it did not work, contacted the STRIDE team and had a chef scale up a recipe for them first, and let the president know what was going on. That’s what they should have done and what any honest business person would have. Anyone who has worked for campus catering knows how much of a joke that the catering company is anyways. They screw up events, they don’t train their staff, the management is a total disaster and they freak out over everything. Oh ya and have fun driving their total POS cars, half of which are stick which 99% of the catering staff, including managers, cannot even drive. Those electric cars die at the drop of a hat too. Hands down the worst job I have ever had. The first day I worked, the manager quit, the other manager screamed at me that she “knew already” when I told her what was going on, and I was left completely alone, with no training at all, to deliver food in a car that was dying. I should have listened to my gut and run far, far away from that place. It’s absolutely no surprise that they would bungle something this simple and then try to cover it up/claim that just because there were no bad intentions that it is somehow acceptable to lie like that and cloud the college name. If they lie to the president of the school about something so trivial as granola bars and not being able to complete them, what else are they lying about? That reeks of poor management. A good manager admits when they cannot complete a task, and takes the heat for it, they don’t hang out their staff to dry and force them to lie about things.
Everything you said is right Melissa. I worked for campus dinner and management was bad. It was disgusting how one of the managers (can’t remember HIS name) would flirt with the girls working there (in 19 metro).
Sorry you had to work there too. They seriously are hands down one of the worst jobs I have ever had. The whole monopoly on the food that they have is ridiculous. It’s sysco food! It’s not even homemade and there’s so much drama with the chefs that they can’t even keep them either. [if you don’t believe me, watch the Craigslist ads for campus dining jobs involving chefs and catering for a few months and see how high the turn over rates really are.]
I just can’t believe that people can run something SO poorly. There was little to no training, they hire new people at at least $3 more an hour than their loyal workers, which is totally stupid and backwards. Anyone with half a brain KNOWS you do not screw over your loyal long term employees by not promoting them, and paying them shit wages while new hires make way more than the managers even do.
You can tell there’s piss poor management when there are passive aggressive signs all over the workroom saying things like “WHY is it SO HARD to put spoons and silverware away where they go in the PROPER PLACES?”
One of the first things I did was rip all those stupid signs down when no one was around because they just create a hostile work environment. The fact that management ignored and encouraged signs like that, along with constantly screaming at everyone, points to lots and lots of issues.
They need to just bring in outside competition. Monopolies breed complacency, and bloated managers who think that they are untouchable. There’s a reason monopolies are illegal in business and it’s really sad that a college would fail to recognize this and does nothing to fix the massive problems.