Baylor Fall Preparations: Dining

Baylor Students, Faculty, Staff and Parents:

As many of you are making your plans for arriving in Waco to join together with our Baylor Family, we are focused on preparing for a safe and successful on-campus start and completion of Baylor University’s fall semester.

So far this week, I have laid out our cleaning and sanitization efforts across the campus and detailed adding more than 43,000 square feet of usable space for our students with the installation of 16 premium, fully equipped tent structures.

While these precautionary measures are important and take tremendous amounts of planning through external partnerships, they are small pieces of a larger, layered strategy to safely resume on-campus teaching, learning and residential life for the full duration of the fall 2020 semester.

Today, I’d like to offer you a glimpse of what you can expect when you enter any of our numerous dining establishments – an essential aspect of the traditional, on-campus Baylor experience that students will encounter this fall.

Working within the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other state and local health agencies, our reopening plan for the campus dining halls and dining services prioritizes our students’ health and peace of mind, while offering convenient and quality meal options regardless of where you choose to dine.

All of our campus dining options will be offered for the fall semester, including dining halls, retail eateries, convenience stores and coffee shops.

All Baylor Dining locations also will be cashless beginning this fall, with on-campus dining locations accepting Dining Dollars, Apple Pay, Google Pay and all card types, except for American Express.

Other enhancements to dining operations include:

• Meal plans that offer flexibility by adding pick-up locations, continuing the Dining Dollars programs and adding incentives;
• Retail convenience and portability with a focus on making the dining process easier, faster and touchless, including expanded grocery items, grab-and-go meals, expanding the convenience store offerings, such as the Provisions on Demand (POD) at Penland Crossroads, and meal kits;
• Technology solutions with accelerated deployment of mobile ordering, cashless and contactless payments, and an overhaul of the Campus Dish online site to maximize connectivity and convenience for our students;
• Social distancing strategies that include appropriate signage and floor graphics, intentional line management efforts, reconfigurations of the dining areas, disinfection of the entire dining facility between service times and increasing the frequency and focus of the sanitization of high-touch areas;
• Service style adjustments that include the elimination of self-serve and exposed foods to reduce the chance of cross-contamination, adjustments to menus to help increase the speed of service and the conversion to disposable, carry-out and to-go packaging options; and
• Employee safety measures including the required use of face coverings, temperature checks, mandatory handwashing every 20 minutes, daily wellness checks regarding symptoms, exposure or international travel and stringent safety requirements for all vendors to gain and maintain approval to supply our campus with products.

Additional menu modifications and service area adjustments are some of the simplest but most effective ways to mitigate risks to our students and guests in the residential dining areas. Changes to these experiences include:

• Full service at all stations, with Baylor Dining employees serving food to students, including the salad bar, desserts and other stations;
• Wrapped and sanitized silverware that will be handed to students;
• Plexi-glass barriers at cashier stands and points of interaction;
• Reduced and adjusted dining area seating to allow for social distancing and to meet occupancy limitations;
• Floor stickers and signage to help reduce congestion points and to control the flow of students through entries, serving lines, dining areas and exits;
• Increased hand sanitization stations throughout the dining locations;
• Contactless swiping solutions that eliminate both a congestion point and a high-touch area; and
• Increased square footage through tent structures erected across campus to allow for adequate social distancing, as described in yesterday’s email.

Our numerous on-campus national retail eateries, such as Chick-fil-A, Which Wich and Starbucks, will continue to offer full-service meal options, with the brand-specific guidelines implemented along with our Baylor Dining standards. In areas where there may be a discrepancy in safety guidelines, the higher standard will be required.

Note that the Freshii location in the Bill Daniel Student Center will be closed to convert the service area to a centralized mobile ordering pick up site for the other SUB dining locations.

All Baylor students still have access to a free, on-campus dietitian through Baylor Dining, with the dietitian services offered virtually. Services include counseling, consultations, dining hall tours, questions about any nutrition concerns or food allergies, workshops and nutrition events.

Our efforts to provide nutritious food options also will continue, including offering vegetarian and vegan stations, allergy-friendly options at each dining location and the continued operation of the Worry Free Kitchen, located in 1845 at Memorial. All recipes served out of Worry Free are made without gluten, peanuts or tree nuts, with the food prepared in an enclosed kitchen using its own vent system, food storage, prep areas and equipment.

A reminder that your COVID-19 test kits should begin arriving over the next two weeks to your home or designated address. As a reminder, it is of the utmost importance that you take the test as soon as you receive it and return the sample back the same day you take the test. Also, please verify the UPS drop point is open before testing to prevent the potential destruction or contamination of the sample.

I am eagerly looking forward to welcoming all of you back to our Waco campus! Let’s each do our part to protect our friends, family and loved ones by wearing face coverings, washing our hands and avoiding large gatherings or groups.

Together, let’s #SicCOVID!

Linda A. Livingstone, Ph.D.
President