Allegheny College will be returning to Parkhurst Dining Services as its dining provider in the 2024-2025 school year. This was announced in an email sent on March 28, emphasizing sourcing local vendors and commitment to the college sustainability plan. This comes after a two-year-long partnership with Aramark Higher Education introduced in the Fall 2022 semester.
“After receiving feedback from multiple stakeholders, most importantly our students, we completed an open and robust process in which multiple vendors were invited to provide proposals for campus dining services,” the email stated. “Following this extensive process, we are pleased to share that the College has accepted the proposal from and will proceed with Parkhurst Dining Services to provide the best dining experience at Allegheny.”
The email also mentioned that Parkhurst would be working directly with the Carrden and other local restaurants to implement reliable dining sourced from in and around the campus.
Dean for the Student Experience Ian Binnington spoke about this change and the process behind it.
“It’s a pretty involved process.” Binnington explained. “Basically, the way that it works is that the college, us, creates a proposal. And that proposal lays out what we’re looking for, what sorts of requirements we have in some great detail, and we advertise that proposal. Then we invite vendors to bid.”
Binnington noted that this is a standard procedure that most colleges go through when deciding dining providers. After multiple vendors have responded to the proposal, students and faculty were then invited to listen to vendor presentations and ask questions based on the information.
“We got all of the feedback from everybody who had participated in the meetings, which was, probably all told, 20, 30, 40 people,” Binnington said. “It was a lot of individuals who heard what they had to say and ask questions.”
He expounded on what factors were considered in this decision. Food quality was named, as well as food cost, sustainability and what the future might look like with each dining provider.
Student input was and is still integral to this process. Some of the individuals who were present at these meetings included the Allegheny Student Government’s Co-Directors of Student Affairs Iris Styers, ’26 and London Dejarnette, ’24. Styers attended the interview sessions and provided feedback, noting the importance of communication between students and dining providers.
“Specifically with getting back Parkhurst, because we had them before, they know our campus already, so the transition back to campus is gonna be a lot smoother,” Styers said. “Since they know we have so many concerns, we can kind of communicate better with them now about what we want fixed and what we want different.”
Styers worked along with ASG to bring student concerns to those who facilitate these major changes, such as Binnington and Dean for Student Life Trae Yeckley.
“We were able to go to the interview sessions and they asked for our feedback,” Styers said. “We were really happy about that because, last time we changed dining providers, I guess there was no student input, but this time we were invited.”

As the announcement was just made and contracts are still being configured, there is not much more to be revealed on what the immediate future of dining at Allegheny looks like. For now, students can expect very little changes to take place before the end of the semester.
“Once you’ve selected a provider, then you need to enter into a negotiation about what the contract is going to look like — that’s going on right now,” Binnington said. “I’m not certain what immediate changes students are going to see. I don’t want to overpromise, but I have a lot of ideas. I know that we have a lot of ideas, and we talked about these ideas in these presentations for things that we want over the next couple of years to roll out in terms of improving the dining experience.”
Styers also recommended students who have thoughts or feelings about their current dining experience or the upcoming changes to speak up.
“I would say if you want to see anything different to let people know so it can move up the chain and get implemented, before cabinet transitions happen, because the new cabinet hasn’t been elected yet, you can reach out to either myself or London,” Styers said referring to the handoff to the new ASG administration.
The goal still remains to improve the overall experience of dining on campus. According to Binnington, kosher and halal food, as well as fresh and healthy produce, being available was a large concern for students.
“We are aware that student satisfaction with dining is really important to the student satisfaction of being at Allegheny,” Binnington said. “So, simply asking companies every so often ‘What can you do for us and our students?’ is really, really important.”