The Bean passed its most recent city health inspection in October with an A.

This marks an improvement from the inspection the previous month, in which it was hit with 14 health code violations.

Ken Weaver, senior director of dining services, said the score is directly attributed to the actions taken to fix the violations and improve the dining experience. The Bean is managed by Chartwells Higher Education Dining Services, a division of North Carolina-based Compass Group.

“It really gave me a chance, and it gave our team a chance, to coach our employees on how important it is to take care of the little things,” Weaver said. “The big picture, definitely we want to focus on, but just focusing on the little things that add up to those potential negative points that cause us to fall below.”

Weaver said working with a large staff, mistakes are bound to happen, but it is the managers’ job to make regular “figure eights,” which is a technique used to monitor each section of the dining hall.

The Bean received a total score of 93 points, still leaving a few issues marked. Weaver said it’s almost impossible to receive a perfect score, but he still plans to address even small-scale issues like the temperature of rice.

“The rice was actually mounted a little bit too high, and so the rice at the bottom was warm, but anytime it’s exposed to ambient air, the top of layer is going to cool faster than the bottom,” he said. “So we need to do a better job, in my opinion, of making sure we decrease that portion so that it stays in temp longer.”

As The Bean continues to seek improvement, they have added a new mac and cheese bar, a DIY pizza bar and SGA-sponsored to-go cups. Weaver also said he hopes to bring back the panini press, waffle makers and a DIY pancake station.

“I’ve only been here for five months, so these are things that I’m talking and working with my team in order to raise that level of service,” he said. “We want as many options as we can without overloading the area.”

Weaver said some of the products will take time to ship, but he hopes in the near future to make changes to the dinner service. This would include having the full service from 5-9 p.m. and potentially bringing back the pasta bar at night. Changes also may be made to the late-night service.

“A lot of changes on the way, a lot of changes already here, but we’re listening, and I’m listening, and I’m passing that on to the team, and we just want to be the best partners we can,” he said. “We want the students to have a good experience, and so we’re going to do everything we can to make that happen.”

If students have questions or suggestions, contact Weaver directly or locate a staff member inside The Bean.

View the complete results of the city health inspection at ACU Health Inspection 2024-10-21.