Texas A&M dining plans to expand and help maintain an easier dining experience.
The A&M dining options are to be expanded throughout the year to allow a more accessible way for students to grab and go with less wait time. These innovations are in the process and will continue to grow throughout the school year. There will be more food options on West Campus, mobile ordering and self-checkout kiosks will be at multiple locations.
Marketing Director for Aggie Dining Brittany Coker said the new technology was launched at the beginning of the fall semester.
“We have our self-order kiosks at most of our retail locations and at most of our convenient stores as well,” Coker said. “A lot of scan grab and go makes it a lot faster for students to get in and out, especially when they’re late to class or they have tight deadlines they need to get to.”
Communications senior Mary-Helen Schuricht said it’s convenient to eat on campus.
“Dining dollars allow for me to purchase food on campus quickly and efficiently without having to bring food from home with me to class,” Schuricht said. “It is also nice that I can just swipe my student ID in order to pay instead of having to pull out cash or a credit card.”
Coker said some of the innovations have had a positive impact on students.
“We have noticed that students use the kiosks when they can just zoom right through, which has been great,” Coker said.
Coker said there are other innovations besides self-order kiosks that allow students to grab and go meals in a more convenient way.
“We launched mobile ordering in September. This is through the transact mobile ordering app,” Coker said. “We have them right now at a lot of our internal brands so Copperhead Jack’s, 1876 Burgers, Houston Street Subs and Rev’s.”
Business administration freshman Jessica Cervantes said more food options available could improve to allow for a great number of students to eat on campus.
“I would like to see more Mexican food and dessert options available on campus,” Cervantes said.
Coker said there is a new transformation happening with one particular on-campus food option.
“Wild Blue Sushi is on campus and makes fresh sushi every morning, every single day and then that sushi goes out to all our convenient stores at all of our locations,” Coker said. “In the spring we will be getting a live counter so that students can actually see them making the sushi.”
Cervantes said the convenience aspect of things could be better when it comes to dining hall hours.
“I would say there could be some improvements with how late they stay open on weekends,” Cervantes said. “It becomes an inconvenience if you miss the dining hall hours.”
Coker said with the new improvements, convenience could make more students reliant to take advantage of the dining hall options.
“I think the biggest thing would be the convenience aspect of it,” Coker said. “They don’t have to worry about going off campus [and] how much time it takes getting on and off campus or just having to plan their schedule around getting back to campus.”
Schuricht said on-campus dining options are useful for students with busy schedules.
“I use my dining dollars almost every single day on campus to buy coffee or lunch in between my classes,” Schuricht said.
Coker said Sbisa Dining Hall won a very special award recently and A&M is the first university in Texas to receive this certain award.
“Sbisa Dining Hall was rated green restaurant certified 3 stars which is the first university dining hall in Texas to reach a 3-star level,” Coker said. “This is all related to sustainability and our sustainability efforts.”
Coker said there are many ways to keep in touch with the new updates continuously growing with Aggie dining.
“We do have a website dining.tamu.edu, we are very active on our social media @aggiedining on Instagram on Tiktok and Facebook,” Coker said.