The Army has announced six more bases will get new dining halls designed to look more like cafeterias at college campuses.
The initiative, dubbed the Campus-Style Dining Venue, comes as the Army is overhauling how it feeds soldiers living in the barracks on base. Some of those changes include offering more flexible meal options, like to-go kiosks, and expanded dining facility hours of operation.
“We were not getting it right, and we heard the soldier feedback,” Lt. Gen. Chris Mohan, the commanding general of Army Materiel Command, said on a February call with reporters. “It is meeting the soldiers where they are with additional food options, take-out meals, etc, to give that whole enterprise approach to the way that we feed soldiers.”
Army contract documents show that the service is looking for a new private contractor to run campus-inspired dining halls at six more bases: Fort Bliss, Texas; Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Fort Irwin, California; Fort Polk, Louisiana; Fort Riley, Kansas; and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington.
These new spots will join five other dining halls that will be run by the Compass Group at Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Fort Stewart, Georgia; Fort Drum, New York; Fort Carson, Colorado; and Fort Hood, Texas, which opened “Bistro 42” in February.
The expansion comes just weeks after the Army opened its first dining hall at Fort Hood, where the demand has been so high that the dining facility has had to pause deliveries after it was flooded with orders.
Samantha Tyler, a spokesperson for Army Materiel Command, said online ordering was “part of a phased launch” so the service could assess demand and delivery locations across the base. What the Army found is that soldier demand “exceeded initial projections,” so parts of the online system were “intentionally paused to maintain system stability, food quality, and service reliability,” she said.
The Army is working with Compass Group and base personnel “to ensure mobile ordering and delivery are expanded deliberately, informed by data and operational benchmarks,” Tyler said. “Together, we are compiling lessons learned to implement in future [Campus-Style Dining Venue] pilot expansion.”
Rob Evans, an Army veteran who created the Hots&Cots app, which reviews military barracks and dining halls in a Yelp-style format, said that, so far, soldiers enjoy the food and experience of Bistro 42 more than the old Black Jack Inn Dining Facility that it replaced.
“It’s good quality food. It’s really nice, but it takes way too long to get food, whether you’re either delivering or if you are going in,” he said.
Ahead of the Bistro 42 opening, Army officials told reporters that soldiers would have the chance to use an online ordering system for pickup and delivery.
But since the website launched, the system has been down or shows two food options instead of a full menu “which kind of beats the purpose,” of giving soldiers more options to eat on base, Evans said.
“I’m Pfc. Snuffy and I have a short window and I want to get food delivered, or I want to go pick it up, and all I see is a hamburger and chicken,” he said. “I’m going to go down the road to Burger King or something and just get something there, because it’s easier. It’s more convenient.”
