Mabee Dining Hall and Mabee Market, located near the first-year area, serve as the primary dining services for many Trinity students. However, they have been accused by some students of not being sufficiently clean and serving poor quality or expired food.
After June 1, 2023, Trinity University transitioned the dining services to Chartwells Higher Education, ending a 50-year partnership with Aramark Dining Services.
Reviews from students on platforms like Appily and U.S. News indicate slightly improved quality after changing the supplier, evidenced by the Niche rating improving from C- to C. The cleanliness of utensils, plates and serving areas in the dining hall was rated eight out of 10 by Grace Tran, first-year neuroscience major.
“The staff are wearing gloves and hairnets. It’s pretty clean, unless it’s during rush hour, it does get a bit dirty,” Tran said.
Despite a generally positive outlook, Tran reported hearing about instances of undercooked meat at Mabee.
“I have not seen expired food, but I’ve heard of uncooked meat. What’s usually like chicken or pork and any meat products is usually not fully cooked,” Tran said.
While some students believe Mabee adheres to established food safety policies, others report some mistakes. Kathryn Lemaire, sophomore art history major, rated the food safety standards at the dining hall a five or six, citing issues with hot plates leaving food particles on utensils.
“I do see a lot of hairnets for people with longer hair; short hair, not necessarily. And they [staff] also wear gloves. I know that a lot of the plates are very hot, and so it kind of maybe is the heat treatment. It does kill germs, but sometimes it’s not all the way removed, there’s still some food particles on certain materials like knives, forks and spoons,” Lemaire said.
Despite the goal of food safety practices, unfortunate situations involving food-related issues may still arise. Lemaire said that she complained to the dining hall that her suitemate got food poisoning.
“I’ve complained a couple of times to my friends, mostly about just watching out for certain food items, because either that’s what I got, my suitemate [got] food poisoning, or other people I’ve heard,” Lemaire said. “My suitemate, she had eaten sausage and eggs at Mabee Dining Hall, and then she had gotten food poisoning, which resulted in her violently throwing up. It was until late at night, we couldn’t get her to sleep.”
She noted that last year, there were numerous cases of food poisoning among students. She also said that the quality of Mabee has declined from last year.
“It’s worse by a little bit, not drastically much, because last year there were food poisoning cases, but it wasn’t as prevalent or talked about, because it was COVID going on at that time,” Lemaire said.
According to Isabelle Sanders, senior sociology major, however, concerns about food poisoning incidents and expired food in the marketplace (POD) have been reduced. Sanders stated that she has not observed any expired or undercooked food.
“I’ve never seen anything bad happen, any undercooked meat, or any expired food [at the POD]. I’ve seen food that was about to expire, but it wasn’t. The roll sushi has a pretty short shelf life,” Sanders said. “They make sure that they don’t have food laying out for a long time, which is pretty important.”
Sanders said that Chartwells has made improvements and changes in food safety practices over time. They now offer a wider variety of vegetables and vegetarian options, and have significantly improved their fresh fruit offerings.
“I think they actually put a lot of effort into making the vegetables taste good, which is great for me … And I think overall [quality of food and food safety] is better. I feel compared to other colleges, this is actually pretty good,” Sanders said.
Update: An email was sent out on Sept. 9 by the Director of Health Services Marcy Youngdahl stating that the recent outbreak of gastrointestinal issues on campus are a result of a norovirus outbreak and not food poisoning.
