<p>What is the best way to find out what dining services schools use? Is there a place that ranks all the different dining services that colleges use?</p>
<p>TIA!</p>
<p>Most schools have a head of dining services that you could contact. Some schools have more extensive dining hall information than others on their website. </p>
<p>Many schools have moved to outside providers and I know the food went down hill at one of our kid’s schools when Aramark took over from in-house dining services. I see by googling that several schools are in the news for switching from them to other providers, though this may be reflect a trend industry-wide for all I know and it may be there are many places that are happy with their services. Talk to students when visiting and ask about the food. Some schools seem to modify dining options on major visiting or accepted student days, according to students my kids chatted with in the dining halls.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>I think a dining hall visit is an important part of a college visit. There are some sorts of awards related to institutional food services and the colleges that win them are proud to announce it. Many are doing local sourcing, now. On the other hand, I worked at a place where it was all so crappy I couldn’t believe there wasn’t a revolt.</p>
<p>Princeton Review has a list of “Best Food.”</p>
<p>Try googling- I’m seeing positives for Emory and WUSTL.</p>
<p>Last year, my daughter’s system couldn’t tolerate the food at the school she transferred into. She’d had no problems (other than her manageable lactose intolerance) at her prior school. I did lots of googling and looking at best campus food/worst campus food lists. My impression is that Sodexo (sp?) and Aramark each appeared more than once in the worst list. But Aramark also appeared (once) on the top 50 list. Bon Appetit appeared more than once in the top 50 list, but I also encountered an article about a school that was having issues with them. Bottom line: even if you know the dining service, it’ll only give you a feel for the likelihood of whether the food will be good or bad.</p>
<p>P.S. D opted to live off campus, partly because of dining issues. We’ll see how that goes this year…</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies. Golly, I had forgotten that I had posted this question!! Good grief!</p>
<p>Best dining service: learn to cook (if you have a kitchen in your dorm).</p>
<p>Both my college kids cook because the school dining services are expensive, not tasty, and not healthy.</p>
<p>Usually cafeterias in college and workplace are not good. My company has a cafeteria but many people go to outside restaurants for lunch.</p>