Why Choose Harvest Table?
Who is Harvest Table Culinary Group?
Driven by our food-first philosophy, Harvest Table Culinary Group brings innovative, authentic and personalized food experiences to life for each unique college and university we serve. The main tenets of Harvest Table are quite simple:
- Focus on fresh, local, and sustainably sourced food, to align with students’ and campus partners’ sustainability goals.
- Create extraordinary culinary experiences, developed by world-class chefs, featuring great-tasting, inventive flavors, from down the street and around the globe.
- Deliver personalized service in an environment that fosters collaboration and conversation.
Our tailored programs are developed on each campus, for each campus. We are dedicated to bringing progressive food concepts and venues to life, while helping students understand the impact food choices have on their health, environment, and communities. And because people are the heart of great hospitality, we train and inspire our teams to deliver on the Harvest Table commitments through a model of respect, empowerment, and engagement.
What makes Harvest Table different?
Harvest Table’s team includes world-class chefs and hospitality managers, as well as experts in every area of campus dining planning and execution, so we can develop programs for every unique campus we serve. One critical program is MarketMATCH™, a proprietary master planning process that helps us gain insight from your entire community. From there, our team of diverse and talented experts recommend unique dining options and solutions customized for your specific needs.
Achieving Campus Dining Success.
Our experts deliver a food-first program in an engaging way that achieves high-impact results—including greater student participation, higher overall guest satisfaction, and increased revenue generation. We maintain excellence by listening to our guests and gathering feedback in real-time; creating local recipe collections with all the variety and sustainable options students expect; and providing the highest level of hospitality. Further, we employ the latest technologies to engage with students, faculty and staff. Our cutting edge and flexible tech solutions deliver real-time feedback, social media integration, mobile ordering options, and digital menu boards. In addition, our e-commerce-enabled web portal gives students access to daily menus and nutritional information, and allows meal plan membership sign-up and social media feedback, making dining participation easy and enjoyable.
Chef Driven Recipe Collections
Our Goal—Create a food-first, local, customized approach to campus dining that increases student satisfaction, campus pride, and retention.
We understand our guests’ dining preferences and deliver a range of inspiring, world-class dining experiences that students love. Our venues include innovative residential restaurants, local retail brands, popular regional and national retail brands, and convenience stores. We feature chef-created pantry lists and recipe collections that take advantage of local, fresh, additive-free, and sustainably sourced foods. When it comes to retail dining, we offer the same food quality and authenticity as our residential restaurants while bringing established and relevant brands to campus. And we deliver additional convenience with our marketplace convenience stores.
Marketing Our Food Stories
Our Goal—Boost sales of campus dining options with appealing marketing and social media campaigns Achieving reliable, recurring meal plan revenue has become significantly more challenging as off-campus dining options expand. Harvest Table boosts sales with a word-class culinary program and proven marketing campaigns that keep guests coming back. Our guests want to know where their food came from, how it’s made, and who prepared it. By bringing these food stories to the front of the house, we create authentic, unforgettable, and Instagram-worthy experiences. Further, our guest experiences teams create social media programs that have a real impact on meal plan, retail, and convenience purchases.
Catering Services
Our Goal—Boost revenue and community appreciation via exceptional event services Harvest Table recognizes that catering is not only a valuable service for campuses to offer, but also an added source of income. Based on years of experience catering for everyone from U.S. presidents to Super Bowl crowds, our catering teams ensure memorable events every time. Our wide-ranging catering systems help create successful events that are delicious, inspiring, and on budget each time.
Listening to Our Guests
Our Goal—Deeply understand student habits, behaviors, tastes, and trends. Your students are the inspiration. Behind every great hospitality experience is preparation, and understanding students’ ever-changing dining preferences cannot be left to chance. We start with the basics—understanding today’s student generation before they set foot on campus—and then build on that knowledge once they arrive. Harvest Table goes directly to students every year with our DiningStyles™ survey, where we analyze responses from more than 130,000 college students. Further, our campus-specific Your Voice Counts™ program provides real-time data so campuses can immediately respond to guests’ feedback and preferences. Plus, we respond to students every day via social media so they feel listened to and appreciated.
Universal Well-being
Our Goal—Delivering what students want, including healthier menu options and sustainability. Today’s students are all about healthy food choices and sustainability. When it comes to wellness, we approach health holistically and empower our guests to make positive choices every day. We offer fresh, locally sourced ingredients and dishes that make healthy choices easy, nutrition education, and wellness programs for your campus. Further, we develop sustainable dining programs that are unique to each campus we serve, including responsible purchasing, waste minimization, and green building operations.
1 Voice of the Consumer Guest Satisfaction Survey 2 DiningStyles Survey
