The restaurant locations on the TU/e grounds are: the restaurant in the Auditorium, grand café De Zwarte Doos, lunch café Vertigo and the restaurants in Helix, Paviljoen, W-hoog, the Laplace building, the restaurant of Mathematics & Computer Science in the Hoofdgebouw, N-laag and Traverse. Then there is the University Club in the Hoofdgebouw and Kennispoort, at the front of the TU/e campus.

The TU/e’s restaurant facilities have been farmed out to Albron and Sodexho. René Poierrié, overall location manager TU/e of Albron: “In the future we want to give the locations more individual identities. In lunch café Vertigo for instance the hostesses prepare the dishes and products themselves and everything is presented to the guests.”

“The Auditorium is our biggest location. There we have recently investigated properly what customers actually want. That is why we have added a wok meal to the lunch menu. And as of this academic year there are three different hot meals to choose from at night. We work with a weekly menu cycle, featuring three different meals, including several rice dishes and vegetarian products, soups, sandwiches and snacks. Another change is that we have more fish dishes on the menu. This week, for instance, there is a fish dish with pasta and a Caribbean jambalaya rice dish. Many people do not know that we have been open at night in the Auditorium for quite some time already and serve hot meals there from 17.00 to 19.30 hours. In De Zwarte Doos you can also get hot meals late at night: until 22.30 hours.”

User group
An example of the input from customers mentioned by Poierrié is the user group of the TU/e. This is a consultation consisting of a delegation of students and staff members of the TU/e whereby the catering is scrutinized as well. The Internal Affairs Department (DIZ) passes the suggestions from the user group on to Albron. Poierrié: “Then we start to work with those suggestions. We may not be able to cater for everybody’s taste, but we are still trying to accommodate as many wishes as possible.”

Poierrié also mentions a survey conducted among TU/e students and staff members by DIZ in 2007. The main question there was what students and staff members expect exactly from the catering at the TU/e. Poierrié: “Do people want to eat healthy food? Would they like more biological food? The survey has come up with a number of quite useful answers.”

I turned out, for example, that many students and staff members check out the website to see what the soup of the day is. Poierrié: “There are many soup lovers. We acted on their wishes last season as well. Thus, we have expanded the soup range on offer, among others with a nourishing main course soup. We want to listen well to students and staff members. For one, there are cards near the cash desks on which you can fill in food wishes or ideas. I think we are feeding thousands of people every day. There is always something going wrong, but I hope that, apart from their comments on things, people will also begin to say what they do like to eat and drink, so that we may serve them even better.”/.

Look for more information on www.tue.nl (select ‘TU/e van A tot Z’ and then ‘Catering’) and www.dezwartedoos.nl.