Listen Here
By Victoria Hansen
hansenv@findlay.edu
Students returning to the University of Findlay on Monday noticed some major changes to dining opportunities on campus.
“It’s time to make some changes,” said David Harr, director of dining services at UF. “We do what we can to keep things fresh and to keep them moving.”
The two most noticeable changes on campus lie within the Watterson Center, with one new restaurant in the Refinery and a familiar spot with a new name.
The sandwich restaurant, SubConnection, has been replaced with Flipp’d, a grilled sandwich and quesadilla restaurant. With the addition of the Subways on Trenton Avenue and South Main Street to the Derrick Dollars program, dining services declared SubConnection superfluous.
“We’re looking for ways to change things up,” Harr said. “You can get your subs and stuff, you just need to go to Subway.”
“Now not everything’s on a sub bun. You can even get a quesadilla if you’d like,” Harr said. “It’s gotten very positive reviews from students when we tested it during the summer.”
Flipp’d is not the only change in the Refinery. Chef’s Table has become Flavor Lab, a new design for the only restaurant in the Refinery that takes meal swipes.
“When we put in Chef’s Table, it was during COVID-19, in 2020. We had a sign that said Chef’s Table, and it became Chef’s Table,” Harr said. “The design and the way that it looked was an old brand that was there called Tres Habaneros.”
The Flavor Lab branding was created by UF dining services in collaboration with Sodexo’s marketing team to evoke UF’s emphasis on science programming.
“We have a lot of labs on campus, and a refinery always has a lab,” Harr said. “If you go to another university, you won’t find a Flavor Lab.”
Flavor Lab will have the same meal rotation as Chef’s Table, with the addition of a Mac and Cheese bar.
On the other side of campus, a minor change has been made at Simply to Go that creates a five-minute cool-down between meal swipes at checkout.
Off campus, the Derrick Dollars program has once again been expanded to the two aforementioned Subways in Findlay along with the Chick-Fil-A on West Trenton Avenue.
Along with these three restaurants, dining services has added a new dining fund called Flex Fund that can be used at Derrick Dollar locations along with the campus bookstore and on the GrubHub app. Flex Funds must be purchased separately from a dining plan, but will roll over to subsequent semesters.
