Hidden meatballs and spoons in the recycling bin: what’s it like to work in a student restaurant?
Campus restaurants are, most likely, very familiar places for students. But what does a day in the life of a campus restaurant employee look like?
Original text: Helmi Isotupa
Pictures: Aliina Ruuttunen
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The terrace door leading to Etunurtsi is locked for the winter and to get in, you have to walk all the way to the side entrance of Kampusareena. Reaktori, one of Hervanta campus’s four lunch restaurants, is illuminated by a sunny, frosty daylight. In the usually crowded dining hall, there now sit only a few students, with long tables separating them from each other.
The only sound coming from the dining hall is the chatter of the employees as they hustle around. One person brings food to the cafeteria line, another waits for the arrival of customers at the counter, and behind a screen, a third employee arranges the tall warming cabinets. There are meatballs on the menu today, so working at the counter requires extra attention.
There are 18 employees working at Reaktori every day. Seven to nine of them work in the dining hall, the rest in the kitchen or as caterers and waiters. The work mainly consists of customer service, cleaning, tending the cafeteria line and less visible things like placing orders and planning the menus. There is always two people washing the dishes, although it is a shared task and everyone helps around.
We find Laura Uscanoff, the shift manager, behind the coffee pots in the café. She has worked at Reaktori for four years. She describes her work as busy: lots of students visit every day, although it is quite calm at the moment.
Uschanoff has positive things to say about the students.
”Everyone behaves really well; the customer pool is really nice here. It’s lovely to work with young people.”
The often-visiting regulars, with whom she gets to chat and exchange the day’s news, make her especially happy during workdays.
Despite having a lot of regulars, she would like to work more with the guilds and associations, by organising evening events and other collaborations. However, according to her, initiating contact with the guilds is difficult, especially as there are so many of them. Knowing who to contact within a club or a guild can be even more difficult.
”I would suggest that the guilds could come here to introduce themselves so that we could plan something fun together”, Uschanoff encourages.
In addition, Uschanoff wants to remind customers of hygiene issues. Instead of fingers, it would be better to use the given utensils for the bread, and it is best to leave the sneezing after the cafeteria line to prevent germs from spreading.
In some schools’ cafeterias, omitting trays has been found to be a convenient way to reduce dishes and save electricity and time. The same thing has been tired in Reaktori, but it caused so much confusion — a riot even, according to Uschanoff — that the trays were returned to use.
Hidden meatballs and weighed waste
After chatting for a while, Anne Turunen, Reaktori’s restaurant manager, arrives and leads us to a table. Before sitting down, I inquire about the possibility of visiting the kitchens, but the food legislation guidelines are not on our side and we do not get to see what happens behind the scenes.
Turunen has worked as Reaktori’s restaurant manager for two years. She worked previously in a now-closed staff cafeteria in the Helsinki metropolitan area, so the university environment in Tampere was a leap into the unknown. Turunen says that Reaktori’s team works well together and is communal and professional. It is easy to share everything, even difficult things, with the team.
Turunen loves the fact that day-to-day customer service allows her to meet people from various backgrounds and occasionally improve her language skills. She is pleased with the diversity of the clientele.
”People from all age groups come to eat here, and we meet multiple nationalities every day.”
When talking about customers, she mentions several times that the students are ”absolutely wonderful”. She likes that the students give on-the-spot feedback. Turunen says that the customer encounters are not only limited to the cashiers: greetings between the cafeteria lines makes both employees and students happy.
”Sometimes it feels like everything is just thrown into the first bin. We even find spoons in there from time to time.”
Sometimes the amount of food per student is restricted, like when there are meatballs or fish sticks on the menu. Sometimes too many of them end up on the plate, either on accident or intentionally. In this case, an additional fee is charged. Turunen laughs when I ask about enforcing the restrictions.
”The funniest way people try to get around the restrictions is when they hide meatballs under mashed potatoes. After all, this is a business and we have to pay attention to it, but we don’t spend our days counting each meatball.”
Depending on the day and season, about 1,000–2,000 people visit Reaktori every day. Turunen says that each day’s meals are sized for a certain number of eaters. If everyone takes an extra bun, there won’t be enough food for everyone.
While sometimes the food runs short, waste is also an issue. In places that serve lunch to such large masses, it is difficult to avoid it. Turunen says that Reaktori aims to reduce the amount of food waste and monitors it on a daily basis. The goal is to have under 26 grams of waste per meal, and according to Turunen, Reaktori has been successful so far.
”Sometimes people take food just to put it in biowaste. Compass Group tries to guide you to eat smarter. It may be that you eat with your eyes and accidentally take too much, or you overestimate your hunger, and that’s okay.”
Customers could pay more attention to recycling in general, says Turunen.
”Sometimes it feels like everything is just thrown into the first bin. We even find spoons in there from time to time.”
Food from the cafeteria line is less likely to end up in the trash because it is often used the next day. Not all food is displayed immediately but rather filled up when needed. The work includes a lot of estimation and guesswork, as the number of customers need to be predicted to be able to prepare the appropriate amount of food. Sometimes, when it is extra quiet in the restaurant, the other campus restaurants’ menus or a big student event might be to blame.
Students have an effect
I then ask Turunen what she wishes the students knew to make everyday life easier in Reaktori.
She chuckles and gives an answer right away: ”I wish that not every student would come here to eat at the same time.”
Turunen understands that people are hungry after their lectures but wishes students didn’t have to queue. Usually, despite the rush, there is enough food for everybody and the queues move quickly. As a tip, Turunen recommends having your student card readily available, so the paying goes smoothly.
”The student card has to be shown at the cashier every time. It doesn’t matter if you say you were here yesterday, even though that’s nice to hear”, she chuckles.
Finally, Turunen expresses a wish that would make the next customer and all the employees happy.
”Please check that the table is not scattered with leftovers when you leave.”
It might be a good thing then that the trays are still in use.
I expect there to be a rush in the restaurant now that the lectures are over, but only a small queue appears on the cafeteria line. Fluffy winter jackets create an illusion of crowdedness. At the checkout, assistant restaurant manager Pauliina Hallila greets students presenting their student cards. Hallila says that her work is very versatile.
”I’ve worked before in places where it’s been all fake smiles and laughs, so compared to that, the mood here is much more relaxed, and the students are super nice.”
The work can be taxing sometimes, as you are on your feet a lot, and during peak hours breaks have to wait, she says. However, even the busiest days are brightened up by the encounters with students.
As I leave, I’m wondering about the preferred name of the place, so I return to the café counter to the shift manager. What is the preferred way to call the university eating places, cafeterias or restaurants? Uchanoff thinks for a second before giving an answer: restaurant surely sounds better, and to be fair, that is what’s written in the name.
FACT: Restaurant chains on campuses
There are many lunch restaurants run by different companies on the Tampere University campuses.
Compass Group runs Minerva on the city centre campus and Reaktori in Hervanta.
Juvenes, owned by the Student Union of Tampere University (TREY), has two restaurants on each university campus.
Sodexo runs Linna on the city centre campus and Hertsi in Hervanta.
In addition to Juvenes, restaurants on the Kauppi campus are run by Pikante.
In addition to the campus restaurants, Kela-subsidised lunches are served off-campus at Juvenes’s restaurants Frenckell & Piha in the city centre and Rata in the Hippos student quarter in Kaleva.