Senior Jennifer Thorman, an exercise science major from Birmingham, Ala., orders a midday snack from Freshii employee Ramond Tisaby, from Greenville, Miss. (DM Photo/Kayla Beatty)
Two new eating-places on campus, Rebel Market and Freshii, have been flourishing since school started.
The first week of school, from Aug. 25 until Sept. 2, Freshii has served 1,566 customers; out of this number 568 transactions were Meal Plan’s Plus 1. Rebel Market served 20,655 customers, and 17,603 of these were student meal plan customers and 265 faculty and staff member transactions.
Compared to the Johnson Commons last year during the same dates, which is where Rebel Market and Freshii are now, the facility served 5,976 customers. Of these customers, 5,352 were students with meal plans and 180 were faculty and staff meal plans.
Richard Bradley, marketing manager for Ole Miss Dining Center, likes that many of the transactions made for the facilities have been from students meal plans.
“We want people to be able to use their meal plans anywhere, and we want them to find value in that,” he said. “Seeing over a third of the transactions being meal plan-based is definitely something positive.”
When choosing these two facilities, the center looked at a lot of focus groups, according to Bradley. They reached out to students to see what kind of food interest they might have. They wanted the new facilities to have more nutrition value, fresh produce and vegetarian options.
Much of the produce comes from around or near the state. Deliveries are made daily with fresh produce and other goods.
Bradley said over the summer they got their sweet potatoes from Vardaman, Mississippi. Bradley mentioned nine to 10 percent of their purchases are local and that includes a range of items; however, a majority of it is produce. The goal of the center is to get this percentage closer to 20 percent.
James Jankowski, residential food service director, said the amount of food served depends on guest counts for several times and dates. Chefs, nutritionists and Food Service directors, both at a corporate and local level, create the menus for the two facilities.
Jankowski said the facility is a 24-hour operation. Around 2 a.m., a crew comes in and starts to prepare Grab-n-Go products that are sold at the Provisions on Demand (POD) locations. By 5 a.m., a prep crew comes in and prepares food for the residential and catering operations. Rebel Market and Freshii start serving at 7 a.m. and run until 9 p.m. most nights. The staff that closes the two facilities sometimes does not leave between 12 and 1 a.m.
“We are truly a 24-hour a day operation if you look at the fact that some of our PODs close at 2:00 a.m.,” Jankowski said.
Both Bradley and Jankowski want the main focus of the new facilities to be offering fresh and healthy options to students and faculty members.
“We want to make the culture of all our dining options, especially this building to have a very strong focus on nutrition and sustainability,” Bradley said.
Jankowski hopes that students and faculty have a good experience after dining at the new locations.
“We want students and faculty to walk away from the Rebel Market feeling that the value of their experience was worth the cost and time required,” Jankowski said. “I really hope they can appreciate the time and effort that was put into the creation that is on their plate.”
-Maggie McDaniel
