A veteran in the war against collegiate hunger has joined the fight at Saint Louis University. Paul Taylor, previously a Chartwells district manager, has been hired as the regional district manager at SLU.

“He seems very qualified,” Chartwells student manager Andrew Miller said. Previously, Taylor’s job had him working with several Chartwells programs across universities in the Midwest, including SLU.

“I always liked SLU. This is a beautiful campus, it’s great to see a city campus as nice as this one. I’m looking forward to getting to know the campus and St. Louis,” Taylor said.

Taylor is joining SLU’s Chartwells office in the midst of several changes to the program.

Several of these changes are products of cooperation between last year’s Chartwell’s administration and Miller, who is also the Student Government Association Vice President of Internal Affairs. One of these changes is the beginning of a secret shopper program.

“We set a general goal for the year to increase customer service quality,” Miller said.

While some details of the program are being worked out, the general idea is that students will be compensated for anonymously visiting eateries on campus and completing a feedback form about service and food quality. Taylor agreed that the program will be useful.

“It will be great to have their input. We just need to work on a few details of the program [before it begins],” Taylor said. Beyond that program, his goals at SLU are to “make sure we are offering quality food and service… to make sure we are a creative and innovative program.”

At least one student feels that changes made last year have put Chartwells on the right path.

“[Chartwells food service] is pretty good. I’m happy with the changes they made at Gries, removing trays and making it brighter,” John Newcomer, a SLU junior with a 10 meal-a-week plan said. Still Newcomer has seen some shortcomings.

“At the cafeteria the foreign language students get yelled at a lot for pointing at food instead of asking for it,” he said.
Another new facet to Chartwells this year is the hiring of student workers. Though he wasn’t behind the initial planning for this program, Taylor is supportive.

“I enjoy having students as employees. As a district manager, I encouraged accounts to them. It’s great to have them involved,” Taylor said. According to Miller, some students have already been hired and more are being hired each week.

One visible change is Yan Can Cook, the new Asian food booth in Grand Market. Martin Yan, a culinary celebrity who has appeared on The Food Network, works with Chartwells to develop a menu as one of their internal brands, which also includes TerraVe.

“The nice thing about using our internal brands is that we can control the offerings,” Taylor said.

Taylor also clarified a few issues that often concern students. First, that the franchises on campus, which are all run through Chartwells, such as Pizza Hut and Subway, are not always given access to menu items or included in national promotions by the corporation.

“For example, Pizza Hut Express only provides personal-sized pizzas. At Texas State we tried to get full sized pizzas and delivery, but they said no,” Taylor said.