Ralph Coughenour is the man behind the menu. As the Director of Culinary Services at the University of New Hampshire, he is responsible for food quality campus-wide. Although he spends most of his time in the dining halls, donning his unmistakable white chef’s hat, he somehow manages to slip by unnoticed amidst the daily student crowds.
A typical day for Coughenour starts at the end of the breakfast wave, when he checks the setup of whatever dining hall he happens to be working at. He checks the breakfast production, how the recipes are working, if the products are right. Coughenour writes recipes and inspects products to ensure that they can be used for multiple recipes, in an effort to keep inventories as low as possible.
“Because we are such a large food and beverage corporation, which a lot of people don’t understand, the more of one product we buy, the better our pricing is,” Coughenour said. “We get rebates from Hormel meats and places like that so we can keep the meal plan prices as low as we can. We’re fairly competitive in the country.”
Coughenour usually spends one day a week in each dining facility, so students can spot him at Stillings hall on Mondays and Holloway Commons on Tuesdays. Wednesdays are typically “special event” days for UNH Dining, so Coughenour goes wherever the action is.
“Last week, Wednesday night at Stillings was all skewered food, food on a stick,” Coughenour said. “I said to the chef, ‘I bet you’ll never do that again,’ after he had to make thousands and thousands of them.”
UNH Dining Services spends around $200,000 a week on food among all three dining halls, serving over 17,000 meals per day, campus-wide.
“People don’t understand the magnitude,” Coughenour said. “It’s quite the little operation to keep track of. We have trucks on this campus almost every day. We take almost a full tractor trailer load, campus-wide, five days a week. On Saturday, produce still comes; nothing comes on Sundays, and then it starts all over.”
Coughenour was the corporate chef at a four-star resort for over six years before being recruited to work in St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, as a director of food and beverage, where he helped open a four-star, four-diamond golf and tennis resort. After a year in the islands, he was ready to leave.
The general manager from UNH’s New England Center called Coughenour, asking for help with the university’s food and beverage department. Coughenour was flown out to look at the center and thought, “Okay, we can fix this.”
“I remember the first VIP function was for Paul Holloway ... we were writing the menu and talking about it and he finally looked at me and he said, ‘Where did you come from? What are you doing here?’ I said two years, three years max, Mr. Holloway, I’ll have this fixed and I’ll be out of here. Well, nine years later they asked me to come to dining.”
He began organizing VIP functions at the president’s residence, overseeing UNH’s catering service, executing a five-course meal for the Republican campaign at the Whittemore Center.
“That was when the director of dining came to me and said, ‘Will you come help me? I want to build the best food service operations in the country.’ And we are one of the best.”
Wednesday.
Thursday.
Saturday.
Sunday.
Monday.
