by Alex Arnold ’27

There’s something mysterious and alluring about the kitchens which hide behind cafeterias and the way they prepare high volumes of food at a lighting pace. This fact doesn’t change whether you’re in Germany or the US. One thing that does change, however, is the word that we use for cafeteria. In Germany, the cafeteria is known as the Mensa. While Dickinson’s slings out food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week (minus Sunday mornings, of course), the Mensa at the University of Bremen is open only during weekdays for lunch. And unlike the cafeteria at Dickinson, it is the great equalizer: students, staff, and faculty alike can be seen making the pilgrimage down the Boulevard at 12 o’clock towards the Mensa. A trend partially reinforced by the wonderfully cheap prices for high-quality food achieved through subsidies.   The Mensa is a mystery hiding in plain sight. It is an essential cog within the university, (literally) fueling the work that is done here. Yet, although it is a part of our everyday routine here in Bremen, no one seems to think twice about how the Mensa succeeds at delivering tasty, fresh, and diverse food options for a university of nearly 18,000 students and 3,500 more staff each day.

It’s time we lift the curtain and see what’s going on behind the scenes. How does the Mensa operate here in Bremen? Who calls the shots? Who is cooking the food we eat and where is it coming from? These are the questions that I wanted to answer. On a June weekend, the perfect opportunity presented itself! Each summer, the University of Bremen hosts an “Open Campus Day” on which members of the community are invited to visit the university grounds to see what sort of work is being done – and, importantly, where their tax Euro are being spent; after all the university, like most others in Germany, is a public, entirely state-funded institution, enabling tuition-free study for its students. On this particular Open Campus Day, a guided tour through the University Mensa was being advertised online. Upon hearing of the opportunity from our Dickinson program coordinator, Antonia (Toni) Gabler, I jumped at the chance to learn more about this beloved and mysterious campus feature and quickly signed up for the tour. Below, I will recount my fascinating excursion behind the scenes of the Mensa and share what I learned in the process.

The long-awaited Saturday finally arrived. The start of the tour could perhaps be best described as the exposition in a gruesome and frightening thriller novel. I and the other perhaps 20 people who had signed up for the Mensa tour, including program coordinator, Toni, were guided through the glass doors which serve as the entrance to the Mensa. The group hushed in anticipation, gathered around two employees wearing black chef’s uniforms. We stood in the entryway of the large, familiar space. Normally bustling with the din of lunch-goers laughing and chatting, today oddly still and empty. We were divided into two groups; my group followed the interim operations manager of the Mensa, our expert tour guide for the day, as he led us back outside. Outside? Yes, he muttered, something about a “back entrance”.

It was a confused type of day. One moment rain would pour from the clouds, the next, the sun shone through patches of blue sky. Back on the Boulevard, the wind whipped, spattering rain across our faces. We followed our chef leader down the stairs to the lower level of the university complex. For those who haven’t been there, the University of Bremen’s campus is somewhat labyrinthine, with utility entrances and loading docks located beneath the main level of the academic and administrative buildings. Having reached the gloomy lower, semi-outdoor space beneath the brutalist concrete structures, we were sheltered from the rain. A particularly violent gust of wind blew through the tunnel. Bang! The wind had caught the metal door of a cage surrounding some trash bins which reverberated loudly as it slammed into the solid concrete facade. Still, our leader marched on in front of us, guiding us somewhere. Was the cold drop sliding down my back merely from the rain we had recently walked through or the result of a nervous sweat? Our guide stopped outside a large garage door, we stopped too. Where are we? I had never been to this part of campus before and everything was unfamiliar. The wind whistling, a large menu card appeared in my mind’s eye. Messy red letters spelling “Today’s special: You”. These frightening visions were, however, thankfully extinguished as soon as we entered through the door. The tour proved to be highly informative and very fun. First, we were told how the Mensa receives deliveries every morning beginning at 6:30 from a wide variety of suppliers, depending on the goods being delivered. The group was still rather quiet at this point, no one wanted to pose questions yet. I suspect this had to do with the fact that they, too, were recovering from reveries about the newest kitchen murder mystery. From the loading bay, we moved to dry storage where all of the shelf stable items used by the Mensa are stored. Here, the sheer volume of the ingredients struck me. Pallets laden with 25-pound bags of salt, sugar, and coffee. All, our guide explained, are used by the Mensa in only about a month’s time. Then they must be restocked. Some canned goods and preserves were also to be found in dry storage, but the operations manager emphasized that he didn’t much like using canned goods and tried to use fresh whenever possible.

Next, we got to see a few of the Mensa’s many walk-in refrigerators and freezers. Having worked in food service myself, I was impressed with the degree of organization and meticulousness in the storage areas. Everything had its place and all is kept in a neat order.

From storage, we moved on to the areas where the true magic happens. The prep areas and the kitchen. First, we walked through the salad and pasta prep areas. All of the Mensa’s nearly 100 employees are divided into teams of 3 to 4 people, the manager explained. These teams work together and rotate through the various tasks which need to be accomplished each day for the Mensa to run smoothly. For instance, one week, Team A might be on salad prep station, washing lettuce and cutting up ingredients for the daily salad bar. Team B, meanwhile, might be on sauce duty, whipping up the various sauces and dips required for that week’s menu. The Mensa operates a six-week menu cycle, by the way. All recipes are created in house. After a certain number of days, the teams rotate and get a new assignment. This way, the guide explained, the Mensa is never left in a bind if someone doesn’t show up for work. All the employees are able to accomplish all the tasks and jump in where needed. Additionally, the rotating teams method breaks up the monotony of peeling carrots day after day.

In the prep kitchens, too, the scale was impressive. One could see jumbo-sized versions of familiar kitchen appliances like a 30-liter stand mixer or pasta maker. Even the kitchen tools, like whisks and spatulas, had to be scaled up to handle the high volumes of food they are used to prepare. Two of the most special sights were still to come, however.

One of these highlights was the main kitchen itself. Located back upstairs on the main level, the kitchen is a particularly exciting sight. This is because, as a regular customer of the Mensa, one catches tantalizing glimpses of the action happening in the kitchen when the double doors swing open and piping hot batches of whatever-the-day’s-dish are efficiently bustled out to the service line on shining silver carts. A full and unimpeded view of the main kitchen did not disappoint. Here, it is also divided neatly into stations. You have the friers at one end (oil changed weekly), kettles – which more so resemble bathtubs – for soups in the middle, a large selection of flattops and grills, and a row of 6 large, high-tech ovens in the back.

At this point, I was able to ask a question that had been on my mind for some time. Namely, how much food waste is generated by the Mensa and where does it go? It is clear that quite some thought has been put into this matter, and our guide emphasized how little actually gets wasted. For one, initiatives like the “Zero-Waste Plate”, first implemented a few years ago, during which leftovers from that day’s service are sold at closing time for reduced price, have helped cut down on prepared food waste. The unavoidable waste that is generated through scraps and byproducts is sorted thoughtfully into bio-waste bins, which is a staple of the fabled German “Mülltrennung” or trash-separation system. This bio-waste is then presumably mixed with other municipal bio-waste and either composted or turned into biogas.

But I have left one stop unmentioned, and intentionally so. I wanted to save my favorite moment until the end. I invite you, reader, to take a moment and consider which essential part of any dining hall kitchen I haven’t described yet. Imagine you have just finished with an extraordinarily satisfying lunch of risotto-style barley in tomato sauce with succulent vegan meatballs. You scrape the last grain from your bowl and mentally prepare to return to work. Picking up your tray, you walk towards the exit. And what do you do? You set your dirty-dish-laden tray upon the rolling conveyer belt (Fließband) which takes them conveniently out of sight and delivers them… Where? Perhaps the most overlooked and most wonderful part of any dining hall is this conveyer belt. Day in, day out, we simply set our tray down, and it is carried smoothly out of our consciousness.

It was a great joy to see where this magical invention takes our dirty dishes and what happens thereafter. The dish return belt at the Mensa snakes out of sight, around a corner and through a small gap in the wall. Before we entered the main kitchen, our guide took us to a special doorway. Before entering, he turned to face us, expression stony, and said, “before you stands two and a half million Euro”. And he opened the door. Before us, central in the small room, stood a great gleaming beast of stainless steel. At one end of the chamber, the conveyer belt could be seen entering the room through the small gap in the wall. The belt followed the wall right to the other end of the room and then curved into the mouth of the beast.

Here, shared out guide, stand two employees on duty during service, scraping plates clean, removing lingering napkins, rearranging silverware, before they are fed to the great machine. They have to work fast; the belt doesn’t stop. They pick up the plates and bowls, removing them from their gray plastic chariots on which they arrived and arrange them neatly in the likewise constantly moving belt which is designed with bumps and ridges to hold the dishes in place as they move onward. The beast has three bellies: one for dishes, one for silverware, and one for trays. After the trays are free from plates and bowls, they travel through a separate section of the machine. Hidden within this next metal-plated tunnel is a powerful magnet. It snatches the silverware up off of the tray and deposits it all onto a separate silverware-specific belt (the second belly). The trays themselves, now freed of all their cargo, travel through the third belly where they are washed and sanitized like the other items. On the other end, the clean dishes and silverware roll slowly out and are sorted manually by employees. The trays, on the other hand, stack themselves neatly onto carts. Then, the cleaned items are wheeled back into the dining area and the process repeats itself.

I hope that this post encourages you to think about and have more appreciation for the miraculous feat that is the university canteen. And next time they’re out of your favorite soup or there is a traffic jam at the dish return, maybe you’ll have more understanding armed with the knowledge of just how many moving pieces hide behind this system.