Dining Services Wins Third Major Food Industry Award

By Debra Bradley Ruder

Gazette Staff

Director of University Dining Services Michael Berry was pleased as punch when his department won a national award for its innovative menus this past fall.

He was elated when it captured a second honor this winter for being the year's best noncommercial food service in the United States.

So when Berry learned this month that he had earned a national Silver Plate Award for being an outstanding food-service professional, he was utterly floored.

"It's the triple crown," he said. And, with a twist of understatement, "This has been a good year."

"I'm enormously proud that Mike and his team have received the recognition they so richly deserve," said Vice President for Administration Sally Zeckhauser. "We have always known they personify excellence, and it's good to see that recognized on a national level."

The Silver Plate Award, given by the International Foodservice Manufacturers Association, recognizes standouts in the areas of management, marketing, human resources, and industry and civic participation. Berry was one of nine Silver Plate winners in different categories; he won in the colleges and universities division. The winners were chosen by a jury of food-service trade press editors and the 1995 Silver Plate recipients.

Earlier this academic year, Dining Services captured the First Annual Visionary Award for its innovative menus, as judged by editors from seven food-service magazines. The department also won the 1996 Ivy Award, considered the most prestigious prize a restaurant or institution can win as a team. Victors were chosen by readers of Restaurants & Institutions magazine.

Berry will formally receive both the Silver Plate and the Ivy awards in May during the National Restaurant Show festivities in Chicago.

Several people nominated Berry for the Silver Plate award, including John Birchfield Sr., of Birchfield Food Systems, a consulting company specializing in college and university food services. Birchfield, a former Silver Plate winner himself, praised Berry for his "keen mind, high energy level, and thoughtfulness," and said Berry has demonstrated that the quality of Harvard's food service is "among the best in the country."

Berry attributes his department's success to a concerted effort to avoid the fast-food phenomenon that has gripped much of the country.

"College food services over the last 10 years have gone the way of fast food," said Berry, who came to Harvard from the University of California, Irvine, in 1991. "We've tried to say, 'Wait. For Harvard, that wouldn't work; it wouldn't meet the academic and social mission of the University.'

"Instead, we have focused on service, more and better options, and better quality food -- like providing fresh ingredients and ethnic selections, and not coming in with mystery meat. We take our goal seriously every single day, and I have spoken about it all over the country."

Over the past five years, Berry has worked to increase training for staff members, improve communication with students (dining hall managers respond quickly and personally to all feedback cards, for example), and to reduce paper, food, and water waste through a series of conservation efforts. The department also doubled its total sales during that time period.

Berry has added more choice and zest to the board plan, the catering operation, and the campus restaurants that Dining Services manages. For example, he launched a program that brings chefs from fine restaurants in New England and elsewhere to undergraduate Houses to cook dinner for a night. Last year, an executive chef from Seattle tempted Currier House students with such delicacies as pan-roasted Northwest salmon with grilled ratatouille and chocolate-banana croissant pudding.