Operations, Planning + Design Back to Top

Operations, Planning + Design

LEED buildings

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a globally recognized certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for sustainability in buildings. NC State Dining operates in several LEED-certified buildings.

  • Talley Student Union: LEED Silver Certified
    • NC State Dining operates One Earth World Cuisine, along with several retail dining locations. 
  • Wolf Ridge: LEED Silver Certified
    • On The Oval Food Hall is located within these LEED-certified buildings. 
  • James B. Hunt Jr. Library: LEED Silver Certified
    • One of our Caribou Cafes; Common Grounds is located within Hunt Library.
  • Carmichael Gym Addition and Renovation: LEED Silver Certified
    • NC State Dining hosts events at the Teaching Kitchen, located within Carmichael Gymnasium. 

Sustainability in Our Dining Operations

Fountain Dining Hall recently unveiled a new dish return wall design meant to capture students’ attention and initiate thinking about the sustainable, closed-loop system on NC State’s campus. The dish wall features bright graphics related to dining halls and campus eating, the compost facility, agroecology, and the growth of new food. 

Dining provides food waste to the compost facility, which creates a nutrient-rich soil amendment that goes to the agroecology farm, which grows food that Dining serves in our Dining Halls. Increasing the visibility of this process helps students understand their role as stewards on campus and contributors to this system.

New Equipment Lifecycle Tracking

In Fall 2024, Dining began implementing a new asset tracking system to increase operational efficiency, lowering costs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. With this new tracking system, Dining will be able to track equipment lifecycles and money spent on repairing old equipment. Over time, the system will help Dining spend less money on repairing outdated and inefficient equipment, which will free up resources to spend on newer, more efficient equipment.

CBORD

CBORD is a sophisticated computerized food production system that NC State utilizes to manage recipes, food purchasing, recipe demand and more. Using CBORD, we are able to forecast how many portions of each recipe students are likely to eat on a given day. These recipes are then linked to our purchasing schedules, which allows us to order only exactly what we need for a given day/week. Using this system, we are able to drastically reduce our food waste that would normally be caused by over-ordering or overproduction.