Q&A: Andrew Mankus

MIT’s Director of Dining, who has been on the job since June, brings a wealth of energy and experience—and a problem-solver’s sensibilities—to food service. “We will lead with a students-first mentality,” he says.

Q: You came to MIT from UMass Amherst, which has won the top prize in student dining nine years in a row. How did you do it?

A: You start with the obvious thing: the food’s got to be good. You can’t just serve pizza and chicken tenders, but you also can’t leave them out—students want and need their comfort food. 

Students also want food that’s authentic. The dining hall is like their home away from home on campus. So if you’re calling something “Northern Indian,” it can’t taste like Southern Indian because the student from Northern India knows exactly how it’s supposed to taste. And if someone tells me it doesn’t taste like what they had at home, I need to ask, “How should it taste? Let’s talk to our chefs.” Students should see that we’re willing to do that, willing to go there for them. 

Collegiate dining is not like anything else in the food industry, because we are an integral part of the whole campus-life experience. We look at how dining can help build community around food and how to elevate cultural aspects and authenticity through food. 

Q: How do you manage authenticity at a large scale? 

A: It sounds silly, but it’s really one meal at a time. But as somebody who comes from an operations background, it’s also about standard operating procedures. We follow recipes, we know how many people are coming through the door, we know how much to prep—a whole bunch of things. You need to know how many students like certain things and how to be ready for them—so when you’re cooking things like stir fries, students can customize their own ingredients. It turns out you can cook something hot and fresh and make it authentic at the same time. 

I like to tell people I didn’t go to school for culinary. I went to school for management. So basically I’m a professional problem solver. I just found my passion in food service. I like to solve problems, and MIT likes to solve problems. What better place to have this skill set? 

Q: What were your first impressions of dining at MIT?

A: The thing about MIT is, the product is here. We just need to do the things we should be doing here—like integrating technology, providing service, updating meal plans, and the like—and do them better. There’s nothing earth-shattering about it. We just need to elevate our program to new levels. 

I will say, the geography of MIT’s campus is a real challenge. Many colleges have dining programs that are built around concentrated residential housing. This lets them serve a lot of meals in fewer locations. MIT has 11 dorms spread across campus. There are six dining halls and a dozen retail locations. Students who live on the west side of campus are often on east campus, away from their dining halls and meal plans, for most of the day. It’s a complicated landscape, and none of it is easy to change. 

Q: What are your biggest lessons so far?

A: So many… To start with: every college student has limited time, and MIT students are certainly busy. In addition to course work pretty much everybody is involved in an extracurricular activity or athletics for a couple of hours. 

This is where campus dining can help. When students only have a 30-minute window between classes, we need to figure out how to feed them. If we can figure this out, it’s a win—and if we can do that with their meal plan, they’ll be more likely to eat on campus.

I’m also starting to understand MIT students’ value equation. That’s always the number-one thing—and I’m not just talking about the price of a meal plan. Value could mean a lot of different things. It definitely could be the cash, but it could also be quality, access, nutrition, convenience, operating hours, using swipes—whatever. I want to know how to make their meal plan as valuable to them as possible. 

I don’t have the data for MIT just because I haven’t been here long enough, but it’s broadly true that college students eat a little more often than four times a day. They snack. They graze. Here, students don’t have the same options because of their schedules, the meal plans, and geography. We need to figure out where MIT students are and try to meet them there. 

Basically, I want campus dining to lead with a students-first mentality. Does this or that idea bring value? Does it contribute to campus life and the student experience? If the answer is yes, then we move on to the next step. Let’s put all the ideas on the table, and let’s be transparent and tell the students: there are going to be things we try that work, and some things we try that might not. 

Q: What’s an example of something you’ve tried since you got here? 

A: I’ll give you three: First, we started a new grab and go lunch program in Baker. That’s very popular. 

Second, we ran a promotion to give away MIT Dining Dollars to students on the meal plan and to students in cook-for-yourself locations. It was basically to provide more value in the meal plan and raise awareness about Dining Dollars, which students can use at any dining hall or retail location on campus and the Concord Market. When I met with students about it, they asked me: “What’s the catch?” I told them: “It’s pretty simple. I want you to eat with us. I don’t want you to go across the street.” Also, it helps build morale with dining staff. People get into dining to make food for people to eat. They don’t make food so people can throw it away.

Third, we’re starting a student ambassador program. They will be an extension of our management team and will help us tell the story of campus dining through the lenses of students—how things are going on campus or in their houses. 

Q: Do you have plans for working with graduate students at MIT? 

A: This is a huge area of opportunity for dining at MIT. Graduate students are not on meal plans because the plans don’t fit their needs, but many of them live on or near campus. What if there was some kind of pilot program that was more Dining Dollar based, where it suits a graduate student and their family, or it doesn’t expire and can be very portable? I’m pretty sure we can come up with something that fits their needs better than grocery shopping and cooking for yourself in Cambridge. 

Q: What’s your favorite thing to cook? 

A: Lately, it’s been a chicken fricassee. It’s my wife’s father’s recipe. It’s Hungarian, like a paprikash chicken. You boil onions and water for a really long time and load it up with paprika. It takes hours to make. But when you do it right, it’s really, really good. 

Q: Have you ever worked in a restaurant? 

A: Not in a restaurant, but I have worked in civic centers and large commissaries—large-scale environments with a lot of people. I have washed more than my fair share of dishes.