Pinkberry will no longer be an option for students this fall, but dining services has plans for the vacant space it left in the oaks.
“While Pinkberry was pretty successful we lost all the students during summer, which is the prime time for a yogurt place to exist,” BGSU Dining Services Senior Marketing Manager Jon Zachrich said.
The empty space in the Oaks is now being considered as a potential space for a teaching kitchen.
“The contract the University signed with Pinkberry ran out, we had the opportunity to either re-up the contract or kind of look into doing something new,” Zachrich said.
The new teaching kitchen will be available to anyone in the community who pays the class fee and would expand on some of the cooking classes that dining services has offered in the past. Dining services is in the early stages of planning and University officials have not approved the exact functionality of this experimental kitchen at this time.
In hopes of satisfying students, dining services has made changes in some of their locations around campus.
“We revamped and redid the Sweet Shop which is in Carillon Place, we will be expanding some of the offerings there,” Zachrich said.
Most notably the Kreischer Sundial now has two new late-night offerings called Scrambles and Burger Bar 325. Burger Bar 325 is a customized made to order burger bar, which is named after the street address of Kreischer Hall.
“It’s something that the team at Kreischer has been working on for a while to kind of make it something a little different than build your own burgers, so we’re going to be doing different things,” Zachrich said.
Scrambles is a breakfast for dinner option that offers customizable bowls that diners can choose from sausage, ham, hash browns, bacon and other options.
“Some of our most popular events that we have are our breakfast at night or our breakfast for dinner, so we were looking for an option for those students who kept asking us to do Midnight Breakfast more often,” Zachrich said.
Both Scrambles and Burger Bar 325 are operated through dining services and not a franchise, so they are able to make menu adjustments at any time. They plan on adjusting menus accordingly with events that they put on through the semester like they have in the past at some of their other food places on campus like Chicken Dippity.
The Black Swamp pub will see minor menu changes, but Zachrich is enthused about a new meat option they will be offering soon.
“At the Black Swamp Pub there’s going to be a new 12-hour smoked brisket that Chef Jeremy and the team have been doing,” he said.
Dining services will also be using a mobile dub bus that they acquired over the summer to offer portable concessions around campus. The bus does not have a name at this time, but Zachrich expressed that they are considering a social media contest to decide the name. They are also looking into artisan popsicles as a potential option to be sold exclusively from the dub bus.
