To:

American University Community

From:

Bronté Burleigh-Jones, CFO, Vice President, and Treasurer;  
Michael Scher, Assistant Vice President Campus Auxiliary Services and Airlie;  
Ann Marie Powell, Sr. Director, Dining and Auxiliary Services; 

Subject:

Welcome Back Dining Update

Dear AU Community,

In December 2022, we outlined our plans for engaging the community regularly about our Dining Program and provided information about our planned actions in 2023 and a summary of our work during the fall semester. In the fall, our work included the September opening of True Burger, which serves our Airlie Berkshire Farm beef, and the November grand opening of our campus’ first Halal-certified venue, Halal Shack and Baba’s Pizza. Halal Shack and Baba’s Pizza continues our work to offer more religious-observant dining options on campus, which also include District Pickle, our first Kosher-certified venue that opened in 2019.  

During the winter break, we continued renovations of our campus retail venues and are excited to announce the soft opening of our campus’ first fresh grocery concept, the East Campus Grocery, in the former East Campus Convenience Store space. This new concept will feature our Airlie Berkshire Farm produce and meat, and will also include a brand-new eatery concept, Freshens, which will serve fresh salads, bowls, and smoothies. In the evenings, Freshens' menu will change to an eatery called Cravetown that will serve a variety of late-night favorites. These new eateries will accept Eaglebucks, cash, credit, and debit cards. Meal plan holders will be able to use their meal swipes at Freshens and Cravetown.  

For the East Campus Grocery, we have carefully selected and competitively priced initial products that we think our community will enjoy, and we want to hear from our community about what products you would like us to carry. Please complete this Instagram poll or share what you would like to see with a team member when you stop by in the coming days. We will share feedback results with the community, including product changes and additions, in the This Week at AU newsletter in February.  

As part of our efforts to improve 24/7 food options for the community, we are partnering with Well Found Foods, a minority, woman-owned, DC business that specializes in modern vending concepts that provide a variety of fresh, health-conscious options made right here in the District. Together, we are installing 24/7 vending options on campus, with the first three machines to be installed in Anderson Hall, Spring Valley Building, and the Butler Pavilion in the coming weeks. We are also working with campus partners to identify additional locations for these machines. As part of this effort, we closed two retail locations during the winter break, Campus Coffee and the Spring Valley Café. These locations had the lowest customer counts on campus and closing them frees up resources for other areas of our dining program. 

In the coming weeks, please look out for additional information on our progress via community announcements and in This Week at AU, which is sent every week by email and posted online at https://www.american.edu/news/.  

As always, we invite the AU community to contact us at mealplans@american.edu with questions or comments. You can find more information about our dining program, including venue information, hours, and menus, online at https://dineoncampus.com/au.  

Onward we go, together! 

Bronté Burleigh-Jones, CFO, Vice President, and Treasurer  
Michael Scher, Assistant Vice President Campus Auxiliary Services and Airlie  
Ann Marie Powell, Sr. Director, Dining and Auxiliary Services