In Spring 2012, PKC was hired by New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) to assist the Institute with planning and programming the dining venues in a new campus center on its Old Westbury campus. When this was completed, PKC also assisted NYIT with full design services for the dining venues in this new contemporary community gathering place.
To complete the planning/programming portion of the project, PKC spent two days on campus conducting focus groups and interviews with key campus stakeholders to determine their current eating habits and preferences and what they perceived as gaps in the current campus dining program. We followed up this qualitative information gathering with a web-based survey that was completed by the entire campus community. The survey allowed PKC to confirm issues that had arisen during the qualitative market research and to test dining program service options including meal plans. (The Institute was planning to build a new 500-650 bed residence hall adjacent to the new campus center.)
With our market research complete, we returned to campus to present our findings and preliminary recommendations for the dining options in the new campus center along with suggestions for the other retail dining venues on campus in light of the new options in the campus center. We recommended new customer-friendly meal plan options and other service enhancements such as extended hours and a wider variety of menu options that would add value to living on campus, boost meal plan sales and strengthen the social architecture of the entire campus. Our team also completed financial modeling to illustrate the revenue and expense implications of our recommendations and we completed demand modeling to illustrate the sizing requirements for all of the foodservice areas in the new venues in the campus center.
