From Teamwork to Table: What You Don’t Know About Phelps Dining Hall

Considered one of the cornerstones of social interaction on campus, Phelps dining hall has been bringing students together for generations. When students and staff scan their IDs, they’re met with ready-to-eat food options. But how do popcorn chicken bowls, breakfast smoothies and Rooster Wraps make it to serving areas like Comfort Corner, Globe and the salad bar? It takes a team of workers– and student feedback– to turn locally sourced ingredients into classic menu items. 

According to Melissa Smith, Hope’s dining services director, Phelps serves around 1400 people for lunch and 1300 for dinnertime. These numbers are even higher for Anchor days and campus-wide events. “We will sometimes serve four hundred to five hundred people in ten minutes, and that is why we switch to serving instead of self-serve,” Smith said.

This change from wholly self-serve to occasional staff-serving is a part of a larger update that occurred in the fall of 2024. In response to a stagnant menu, long lines and other concerns, the dining hall decided to make some changes. 

“The motivation was just being tired of seeing the same thing,” Danielle Hunter, the Production manager for Phelps dining, said. “It doesn’t feel good to come in and just feel like you’re making the same thing everyday.” 

Hunter described the process of revamping the menu. “There are some things that we create on our daily special area that we realize are a hit, and that can be how something becomes a menu item.” The staff looks at trends, student comments and widespread favorites among those who frequently dine.  

“The cool thing about this sort of dining is that it’s very forgiving. People are more willing to try things than you’d think,” Hunter added.

Student feedback is also incorporated into the menu-making process. Analyzing comment cards, as well as meeting with student congress, helps to guide these decisions. 

“There are a few suggestions that we got and that we implemented right off the bat,” the service manager, Brittany Hernandez, said. Some of these include the iced coffee machine, bringing Bubly back to the soda fountain and serving biscuits and gravy twice a week instead of once. 

“Don’t be afraid to send a suggestion in,” Hunter said, “you might just see it within a couple weeks.”

It’s not just food items that get critiqued, however. “The students notice when we’re not being sustainable,” Hunter added. Phelps has taken multiple initiatives to source their ingredients locally. 

“We order from Crisp Country Acres as much as we can,” Hunter said. Crisp Country Acres is a produce farm local to Holland. Phelps also gets their milk from Prairie Farms Dairy and their bakery items from Aunt Millie’s Bakery; both companies have branches located in Michigan. 

In addition, Phelps has taken efforts to reduce food waste– enacting action both in and out of the dining hall. They’ve teamed up with Hope Advocates for Sustainability to join a food recovery network. “We donate any food that we can’t use,” Smith stated. 

Inside the dining hall, Phelps is working to educate students about how much food they may be wasting. “We’ll have them dump their food into a container that’s weighed,” Smith said, describing the ‘Weigh the Waste’ campaign they’ve periodically held. 

The dining hall also aims to accommodate students with special diets. Phelps frequenters may be familiar with The Zone station, which serves gluten-free meals, but this isn’t the only option for students who may need their food prepared differently. 

Students whose dietary needs are not met by the regular dining options can reach out to Hunter and make arrangements for their specific health requirements. “They deserve to eat just as much as anyone else. This is a time where obviously college students are adults, but they’re still growing,” Hunter noted. 

“We’ve dealt with a lot of different scenarios with students,” Smith said. These accommodations include catering to doctor-recommended elimination diets, organizing dishes for students with severe food allergies and even preparing blender meals for students who’ve undergone recent dental surgery. “We ask them to reach out and we can pretty much help with most things,” Smith said. 

Special meal accommodations are just one way that Phelps aims to help students feel welcome in the dining hall. “We have students who come in and eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, and that can get boring sometimes when you’re going to the same place every day, so we try and make it special,” Smith stated. Phelps staff aims to implement at least one special event a week. These events can range from celebrating food-related holidays, serving a unique dessert or even having station-takeovers by highlighted kitchen staff. “It’s all just as fun for us as it is for the students,” Hunter commented. “It’s different than your six-week cycle; it breaks things up.” 

Participating in special events, especially ones that involve prizes, is one way that Smith recommends making the most of your dining experience at Hope. Hunter suggests utilizing multiple stations to create your meals. “You make some pretty cool stuff just by hopping from station to station,” she said. 

At the end of the day, all three staff members recognize that Phelps is a place where students gather and community is built. “We are pretty flexible with trying to make the students here happy,” Hernandez said. “There was a student that reached out to the dining director and asked if we could play the Beatles during lunch for her friend’s birthday. . . There’s simple things that we can do  to make the experience better.” 

The Phelps atmosphere doesn’t just foster community among students. “It’s also really important that they [students] get to know our employees,” Hunter said. “We have servers who know people by name. It just brings that different feeling of comfort.”

It takes lots of hands to prepare and serve so many students, staff and community members. “For breakfast and lunch, there are five to six people cooking for you,” Hunter added. She also mentioned how there are 13 to 15 people in the dish room at any given time.

While the back-of-house staff rarely make an appearance in the dining areas, they’re doing a lot to bring meals to the Hope community– and in return, shared meals nurture the community here at Hope. To fill out a comment card pertaining to any dining facility at Hope, go to https://hope.edu/offices/dining-services/ and scroll to the bottom of the page.

(Featured image source: Dine at Hope Instagram)