Evolution of dining halls better suits student needs

Luis Martinez has seen old dining locations modernized and new ones built since he started working for dining services in 1986 as a first-year student.

“I don’t feel like I graduated since I’ve been coming here for the last 27 years,” he said.

Martinez began working at one of the dining halls as a student worker, becoming a student supervisor by his senior year. After graduating from UCLA in 1990, he was offered an assistant manager position.

“I always knew I wanted to do something with people and I had a notion to do business,” he said.

Now an assistant director of dining services, Martinez said he has seen UCLA Dining Services reinvent itself many times to accommodate the evolving student body.

“That’s the beauty of being on the Hill for so long – you get to see how much it’s changed,” he said.

In the 1980s, dining halls only offered students one kind of entree per visit and students were only allowed to visit the dining facility corresponding to their residence hall, Martinez said.

He remembers that during his first year, workers dressed in white shirts and paper hats served square pizzas and daily casserole dishes, but rarely prepared vegetarian options.

“You had to eat in the facility you lived in,” he said. “The menus were different, so each had their own niche.”

Martinez said the dining halls had a centralized kitchen where the food for all the halls was prepared.The central commissary was first in Sproul and then De Neve.

Rieber dining hall opened after renovations in 1996 and featured UCLA’s first buffet-style dining hall instead of limiting entrees. It was also the first hall where workers prepared the food in front of students, he said. Soon after, the Hedrick and De Neve dining halls were remodeled into buffet-style dining halls too, he added.

Martinez said Bruin Café replaced the deli bar in Sproul Hall. Students planning to eat there would fill out a list of sandwich ingredients at night to have workers make them the next morning.

“If I needed to take some food to campus, I would have to list ingredients the night before so the dining staff could make sandwiches for the morning,” he said.

Jeffrey Garell, who graduated from UCLA in 1985, said he thought it was difficult to find out what dining halls were serving while he was a student since there wasn’t a website to look up menus.

“There used to be a paper posted outside the dining hall, or you had to go inside to see,” he said. “You would have to hear someone say what’s for dinner.”

Another alumnus said he was fond of the dining options UCLA offered when he was a student in the 1980s, eating at almost all the available times.

“I had all three entrees they offered all three meals,” said Rob Pattison, a UCLA graduate from 1986. “I liked anything with meat, especially chicken and fish.”

Martinez said he thinks dining halls have come a long way to better fit students’ needs, through offering healthier options and being more aware of students’ allergies, among other changes.

“We are 180 degrees from what we offered in 1986,” he said.

Dining officials want students to think of dining halls more as restaurants than college cafeterias, he added.

“We wanted to be known as a restaurants,” he said. “You don’t feel like you’re on a university campus when you’re in a dining hall.”