The announcement last semester that Brigaid would be collaborating with Dining Services came and went without much of a visible outcome, from the perspective of students. The company Brigaid (a play on the cooking hierarchy term brigade), founded by fine-dining chef Dan Giusti, has piloted a new approach to the National School Lunch Program. Instead of using the $1.75 allotted to each meal per student to reheat cheap processed food, Brigaid meets state nutrition requirements while cooking from scratch. It was launched in 2016, the same year Giusti chose to serve the New London School District. Since Brigaid settled in New London, the district has served more nutritious, better tasting, and more adventurous meals, which Giusti argues benefits our cultural understanding of food and overall wellbeing of young students. The national recognition that Brigaid has received motivated Conn to partner with Giusti in the hopes of creating an “even more distinctive dining experience for our students,” according to an email sent by President Bergeron to the college community on August 27, 2018.
Prior to this announcement, Conn students had interacted with Brigaid in two, fairly limited ways: some students have attended Brigaid’s “Community Meals,” which are monthly $5 dinners prepared by Brigaid chefs and held at Bennie Dover Jackson Middle School, while others have interacted with Brigaid staff members through Professor Rachel Black’s Anthropology classes that focus on the role of food in society. These students were excited to hear that Brigaid was coming to campus. Emma Keaney ‘19 attended a Community Meals dinner last year and said that she was “thrilled” to hear that Brigaid would be collaborating with Dining Services, since the food she had at the dinner was both “affordable and delicious.”
Last fall, hope for Brigaid’s positive influence on Dining Services only increased when “Community Meals” was served in JA Dining Hall and was met with generally positive feedback from students, according to surveys completed by Professor Black’s “Food and the Senses” course. Although students criticized the limited selection, they found that the meal of chicken and biscuits was delicious, cohesive, and a welcome change from the usual Dining Services options. According to Professor Black, a common complaint about Harris’s services is the lack of cohesion. There is a “desire for choice,” she says, because we eat in the dining hall three times a day, but the result is fragmented meals made up of sushi and pizza instead of elements that hit all the food groups at each station. She hopes that Brigaid can help with this predicament, since its strategy focuses on fulfilling all nutritional requirements with one delicious meal.
Despite the hopes of students and faculty, the reality of the relationship between Brigaid and Dining Services is much more complex. Dining Services has not historically worked with outside consultants. According to their page on the College website, “Dining Services is self-operated, meaning that all staff is employed by Connecticut College” and they “do not use an outside food service.” However, the administration, in particular the Dining Committee and the Vice President of Administration and Finance, Rich Madonna, spearheaded this particular Brigaid project. Therefore, Dining Services did not have a large role in the dialogue with Brigaid despite being the subject of the consultation.
Professor Black, who is a faculty representative on the Dining Services committee, made clear that despite the official announcement, the staff of Brigaid was primarily on campus in the fall to act as consultants and compile a report. This report was sent to Rich Madonna, who has not shared the feedback with The Voice. Professor Black stated that she had not seen the report, and all questions regarding Brigaid and its presence at Conn were forwarded to the Vice President by members of the Dining Services staff.
Students feel that, in the immediate future, Brigaid will have little influence over the food that Dining Services serves on a daily basis. In order for a program like Brigaid to work at Conn, some believe that the campus culture around dining must change and people must recognize the importance of food in our everyday lives. Although students are beginning to grasp this idea, they feel that the commitment from the administration is not yet satisfactory. •
