Zag Dining
As we near graduation and the end of a yearlong celebration of Gonzaga’s 125th year and our 53rd year on campus, we start to look at the “Transformation” portion of the year’s theme of “Tradition and Transformation.” Many of you may have heard President McCullough’s announcement of the building of a new Student Center. As you might have guessed, if that building is approved by the trustees, we need to make some room on campus for it! The COG, being 50+ years old, has been the chosen site to tear down and rebuild. We know that this will make many of our alumni, faculty, staff and students sad to say goodbye, but we are so excited about the future and to be able to have the best dining facilities in the United States! For a long time we have felt our facilities do not come close to showcasing our amazing food, so we are thrilled to be a part of this change.
Zag Dining has been working very close with the University in planning and prepping for the tear down of the COG and plans for the new building. While we are not allowed to reveal what our tentative plans are for the new building yet, we can share with you our plans for the Fall of 2013! Don’t fear; we have a plan!
Currently, the COG houses our Resident Dining program, Spikes and SubConnection. Because we have been heavily involved in the University Center planning, we knew ahead of time that the possibility of the COG being demolished in May was very real. So, we acted. We started a Food Truck this Spring in order to help alleviate the loss of Spikes next year and to take some pressure off of Resident Dining. The food truck (student named “The Zaggin’ Wagon”) is currently open for lunch Monday through Friday with a rotating menu every day. It is only $6 for an entire meal and students can use their Dining Dollars, Bulldog Bucks, cash and credit. It has been hugely successful. Here is a list of the menu items. We will be expanding the hours and the menu come Fall and maybe even looking to add a second truck.
Our most recent addition was Jamba Juice. Jamba opened when the student’s returned from Easter Break. It has been wildly successful and students are so excited to have it on campus. Because Spikes also housed a Freshen’s smoothie bar, we thought adding the Jamba Juice would be a great way to make up for losing Freshen’s. So far, so good! Jamba also accepts Dining Dollars, Bulldog Bucks, cash and credit.
Now, onto SubConnection…Our good friends at Security, located in the bottom of Welsh, have kindly condensed their space to make room for SubConnection! This is very exciting news. As one of our most popular spots on campus, SubConnection always was too small for the amount of business we do there. It was too crammed and too slow due to limited space. Our new home in the bottom of Welsh will solve all these issues. We will have two sandwich lines and cashiers and we will have a large seating area with ample tables as well as outdoor seating when the weather is nice!
That leaves us with Resident Dining, aka The Marketplace, aka the COG. Have you been to campus recently and seen that brand new building under construction on the corner of Boone Avenue?? If not, be sure to check it out next time you visit. That will be the new home to our Resident Dining program for the next two years while the University Center is being built. We are so excited to be in a new building! We will be on the main level of the building, being called the BARC (Boone Avenue Retail Center), while a bigger and better home is being built. Once the new center is complete, the BARC’s main floor will consist of retail shops/restaurants. The other exciting news is that the bookstore will also be located in the BARC, so we still get to be neighbors with our friends downstairs. We will also continue to operate Marketplace Express in Cataldo during lunch Monday through Thursday.
This is just the beginning of some exciting things coming for our future. As contracts get signed and new dining options become available, we will keep you in the loop! In the meantime, all of our meal plans will work the same way they have in the past. Please remember, that dining dollars expire at the end of the year, so encourage your students to use them before graduation! Bulldog Bucks do NOT expire until your student graduates. For all of our latest updates, please visit our Facebook page www.facebook.com/zagdining.