By Arden Berry | Staff Writer
Inclusivity is now on the menu at East Village Dining Commons, as Baylor Eats recently added halal chicken to the dining hall.
Prior to this initiative, Grayson Contreras, senior executive chef, said Baylor Eats had been receiving feedback asking for halal options for years.
“We’ve heard from many students through surveys, focus groups and professional outreach asking for our halal options, we took the feedback to heart, worked with our vendors, introduced halal chicken to East Village — where we wanted each student to feel welcome at our table,” Contreras said.
Contreras said students emailed him directly, and Baylor Eats then recognized the need for halal options.
“Individually, our Dine On Campus website has all of our contact information,” Contreras said. “[They] got in contact with me, and then we worked closely with international students and scholar services to launch a program to communicate the initiative to our campus.”
Kirsten Hancock, campus dietitian, said they launched a pilot period at Penland Dining Hall with the students who had reached out to see how production and cost would work with their distributors and how much demand there would be on the student side.
“That pilot program went really well, and we decided to expand it from just a pilot to the entire East Village Dining Hall,” Hancock said.
According to the American Halal Foundation, “halal” means “lawful” or “permitted” in Arabic. For chicken and other permitted meats, this term means that the animal it came from was slaughtered in a certain way.
“The students have been very excited about the halal program and, again, expressed their interest and appreciation in the initiative,” Contreras said.
Hancock said some students had even said that East Village was one of the best places in Waco for halal food.
“There’s just not a lot of halal options, and if there are, they’re expensive,” Hancock said. “And so what this meant to them was the ability to eat — not only eat on campus, but eat safely in Waco without having to travel far.”
Hancock said additions like chicken are especially important for students living on campus.
“If they’re living here on campus, we understand that we are their primary provider of all their meals,” Hancock said. “And so getting to hear student feedback was a huge way for us to implement that.”
Contreras said East Village currently carries halal whole muscle chicken, but they are working to add halal fried chicken patties, fried chicken sandwiches and meatballs. Additionally, he said they are working to have a halal turkey option at All-University Thanksgiving Dinner.
“We want to increase the overall variety of halal options,” Contreras said. “We wanted to work on our back end to make sure that it’s currently stocked, like it is all the time.”
Haleigh Dean, Baylor Eats senior marketing director, said students looking for more dietary-inclusive options should share their feedback through the Baylor Eats website, email, spring focus groups, Text 2 Chat and the kiosks near the dining hall dish returns.
“We have a huge variety of ways for guests to submit their feedback, and ultimately, we do desire for every single student to have an opportunity to eat safely and like foods they can eat here in the dining halls,” Hancock said.
