Dining & Culinary Services

Dining & Culinary Services is proudly owned and operated by Pacific Lutheran University and our thoughtful, professional staff is committed to serving the PLU Community. In addition to The Commons, our state of the art dining facility, we operate Old Main Market, Tahoma Bakery & Café, Kelley Café, Campus Espresso Carts, and University Catering. We are dedicated to providing nutritionally sound meals, mentoring students, providing hospitality with integrity and leading our community in sustainable initiatives. We are Fresh Fantastic!

Dining & Culinary Services implements high standards in sustainability throughout our department. We educate our student guests to recycle plastics, glass, aluminum and paper and compost an unprecedented amount of food waste from trays and our kitchen (over 70,000 gallons last year). Last year saw a reduction in waste to the landfill by over 65% and in the upcoming year we will be working closely with our residence halls to expand their compost programs. In addition to our composting efforts, our culinary team buys local produce and grass fed beef to enhance the flavor, freshness and nutrition we can offer our student customers.

What We Do

Please take a minute to watch our Culinary Operations Manager, Erick Swenson, talk about and prepare some local meat and produce: