UMass Amherst Dining named best campus food in the nation for second year in a row
MassLive, July 31, 2017, by Diane Lederman
AMHERST – For the second year in a row, University of Massachusetts Dining Services received Princeton Review’s number one ranking for the best campus food in the nation.
The announcement further cements UMass Dining’s reputation for serving up healthy, sustainable and delicious food prepared by award-winning chefs, according to Ken Toong, executive director of Auxiliary Enterprises at UMass Amherst.
UMass has continually been ranked among the best.
“What an honor,” Toong said in the release. “We are overjoyed about the recognition. Thanks to our hard-working staff and support from our students and the university community. You inspire us every day to create a memorable experience, one meal at a time.”
UMass will again be live on NBC’s “Today Show” on Tuesday between 9-10 a.m. Dining Services chefs Robert Bankert and Anthony Jung are expected to appear.
“We chose UMass Amherst because it offers outstanding academics,” said Robert Franek, The Princeton Review’s editor-in-chief in a press release. “Our selections are primarily based on our surveys of administrators at several hundred four-year colleges. We also visit dozens of colleges each year and give considerable weight to opinions of our staff and our 24-member National College Counselor Advisory Board. Most importantly, we look at valuable feedback we get from each school’s customers–our surveys of students attending them.”
UMass Amherst had ranked among the top three campus dining service providers in the nation since 2013.
“UMass Dining’s outstanding food helps make our campus a great place to live, study and work,” Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy said in a statement. “We’re very proud of our dining services staff and all they do. They’ve always been No. 1 to us.”
UMass Dining is the largest college dining services operation in the country, serving 45,000 meals daily or 5.5 million meals per year.
Since 1999, overall participation the university’s meal plan has more than doubled from 8,300 participants to more than 19,200, according to the release.
