Dining at Coastal: Your experience dining at CCU

Coastal Carolina University is located in Conway, South Carolina, and has a student population of 10,473 students. CCU has a beautiful campus with various dining options throughout, where students can stop by in between classes or even sit down with friends to enjoy a meal. There are various different dining options on the campus that students, faculty, staff, and the community have access to through cash, credit/debit, or a meal plan. The CCU dining services have a wide variety of options such as Hick's Dining Hall, Chick Fil a, Starbucks, Port City Java, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Cino Grille, Chauncey's Choice, etc. There are many different food options for students, faculty, and staff to choose from while spending their time on campus.

I am a current senior here at Coastal Carolina University and I chose the research topic on dining options at CCU because personally, I didn't have the best experience using the meal plans offered. I wanted to hear from other students, faculty, and staff on their opinions on using the dining options on campus to see if there was any overlap of opinions throughout each classification of the campus. Throughout the survey, I was able to get 125 respondents with different classifications (roles on campus) on CCU's campus.

The target population for this survey was Coastal Carolina University students, faculty, and staff. Due to the topic of the survey, it only made sense to narrow down the target audience to people directly affiliated with the university itself. This audience uses the dining facilities on a daily basis and would have the strongest opinions on the dining options.

This interactive map shown below displays a visualization of the exact locations of the dining options on CCU's campus. Within the survey, there was a question that asked the respondents to choose their top 3 favorite places to dine on campus and their responses were recorded through a bar graph. When you're looking at the interactive map the dark blue pinpoints are the dining locations that have high percentages, which means that they are the most popular places where people dine. The teal blue pinpointed locations are the dining locations that have average percentages of where people choose to dine on campus. Lastly, the light blue pinpointed locations have the lowest percentages, which means those dining locations had the least amount of respondents who voted for them. When you click on each of the pinpointed locations, a description will appear with a statistic on how many people chose that location as one of their favorites, which will help visualize which dining option is the most popular in the CCU community.

In this section, I will be looking closely at the 4 major dining halls that are located on Coastal Carolina's campus. Within my survey, I asked my respondents to answer where they dined most frequently inside each of these dining halls and their responses are visualized below.

Hick's Dining Hall is located in between Eaglin and Ingle Hall, which are both freshman residence halls. Hick's has various different stations that are available to students, faculty, and staff with meal plans. The Home Zone station, which 16.8% (21 out of 125) of respondents chose as their most frequently visited station, usually contains meat, veggies, and a potato, which varies by the day. The Salad Bar, of which 9.6% (12 out of 125) of respondents chose this station as visited most frequently. This station is a full salad bar with many toppings such as tomato, cucumber, cheese, carrots, onions, croutons, etc. The American Grill station, which 24% (30 out of 12) of respondents chose as their most visited station, usually contains hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, french fries, tater tots, grilled cheese, etc. The Bakery Station, which 0% of respondents chose within the survey as most visited. This station usually contains cookies, brownies, cupcakes, and slices of cake. The Deli Station, which 26.4% (33 out of 125) of respondents chose as their most visited station, usually contains a create-your-own-sandwich option. The Soup Station, which 0% of respondents chose within the survey as most visited, as well. This station contains various types of soups such as chicken gumbo or two-bean soup for the CCU community to choose from. The Oven Station, which 1.6% (2 out of 125) of respondents chose this station as visited most frequently, usually contains pizza. Lastly, I gave the respondents an option of 'Not Applicable,' which means they don't dine at Hick's Dining Hall rarely ever, and 21.6% (27 out of 125) of respondents chose that option. Overall, the top 3 most popular answers for Hick's Dining Hall were the Deli station, the American Grill station, and Not Applicable.

UP Dining Hall is located at University Place, which is an off-campus apartment-style housing facility that is located 1.2 miles from campus. UP Dining Hall has various different stations that are available to students, faculty, and staff with a meal plan. The Home Zone station, which 8% (10 out of 125) of respondents chose as their most frequently visited station. This station contains the same as Hick's Dining Hall, which is meat, veggies, and a potato, which varies by the day. The Deli Station, which 13.6% (17 out of 125) of respondents chose as their most visited station, usually contains a create-your-own-sandwich bar. The Produce Market station, which 0% of respondents chose as their most visited station, contains salads, fruits, veggies, etc. The Grill station, which 5.6% (7 out of 125) of respondents chose as their most frequently visited station, usually contains a sandwich bar. The Bakery station, which 0% of respondents chose within the survey as their most visited station, contains cookies, brownies, cake, cupcakes, etc. The Sauté station, which 1.6% (2 out of 125) of respondents chose as their most visited station, which contains many different ingredients to choose from. Lastly, I gave the respondents an option of 'Not Applicable,' which means they don't dine at UP Dining Hall rarely ever, and 71.2% (89 out of 125) of respondents chose that option. I can assume that the Not Applicable option was very popular because UP Dining Hall is off campus and it is less convenient to get to for a quick bite to eat unless you live in the apartment complex. Overall, the top 3 most popular answers were Not Applicable, Deli station, and Home station.

Chauncey's Choice is located on campus between the Williams-Brice Building and the Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts. Chauncey's Choice has various different healthy food stations that are offered. The Home Zone station, which 40% (50 out of 125) of respondents chose as their most visited station, usually contains turkey, ham, or chicken along with veggies as a side, but varies by the day. The Salad Bar station, which 7.2% (9 out of 125) of respondents chose as the station they visited most frequently, usually contains a variety of salad toppings and dressing. The Flex station, which 1.6% (2 out of 125) of respondents chose as their most visited station. This station is a newer addition to the facility and I haven't been able to check it out yet. The Sandwich station, which 5.6% (7 out of 125) of respondents chose as their most visited station, usually contains pre-made sandwiches. Lastly, the respondents were given an option for 'Not Applicable,' which means that they rarely visit Chauncey's Choice, and 45.6% (57 out of 125) of respondents chose this option. Overall, the top 3 most popular stations in Chauncey's Choice were Not Applicable, the Home Zone, and the Salad Bar.

Cino Grill is located on campus in the Lib Jackson Student Union and contains Freshens, Queso Corner, a Salad Bar, Chick Fil a, and Burger and Fries ( B+F). Freshens, which 28.8% (36 out of 125) of respondents chose as their most visited station. This station offers a variety of smoothies, customizable bowls, salads, flatbreads, etc. Queso Corner, which 27.2% (34 out of 125) of respondents chose as their most frequently visited station. This station allows customers to create their own burrito, bowl, tacos, taco salad, or nachos and you have the choice of toppings such as chicken, beef, rice, queso, lettuce, beans, pico de gallo, sour cream, etc. The Salad Bar station, which 2.4% (3 out of 125) of respondents chose as their most visited station, contains a full bar that has a variety of toppings for customers to put on their salad along with dressing options. Chick Fil a, which 28% (35 out of 125) chose as their most visited station, contains the full fast food menu along with all the condiments and soft drinks. Burger and Fries station, which 5.6% (7 out of 125) of respondents chose as their most visited station. This station offers hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, french fries, etc. Lastly, I gave the respondents an option of 'Not Applicable,' which means that they rarely visit Cino Grill, and 8% (10 out of 125) of respondents chose this option. Overall, the top 3 most popular stations that people chose at Cino Grill were Freshens, Chick Fil a, and Queso Corner.

This tweet from the CCU Food Crew is just one of many advertising posts that they put on social media to promote national food days. In this case, it was National nacho day, where the CCU Food Crew is offering a free premium topping such as guacamole, mango salsa, queso fresco, or sliced radishes for all students, faculty, and staff who wanted to celebrate with fresh nachos. The CCU Food Crew is very active on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. On these platforms they promote all things going on in the food industry on campus, which encourages people to come out and try new things with their time at Coastal Carolina. Along with posts similar to this one, they also support food truck days, vegetarian/vegan options on campus, students using the dining facilities, and reels/videos of the dining halls in action. The CCU Food Crew social media platforms strongly encourage students, faculty, and staff to come out and take advantage of the different options that CCU has to offer and it also provides a great way to connect with people on campus, as well.

My hypothesis when beginning this survey was that students, faculty, and staff would be dissatisfied with the current dining options on campus. I had a follow-up question for respondents who chose dissatisfied or very dissatisfied and gave them an option to express why they felt that way. As my hypothesis was incorrect, I looked deeper into my respondents answers and found that most people who chose dissatisfied or very dissatisfied were either sophomores, juniors, or seniors. A majority of the freshman that I polled were satisfied with the dining options here at CCU, while the rest of the student body wasn't. The largest class that I polled was freshman, which makes sense that 72.8% (91 out of 125) chose satisfied as their overall opinion of the dining options.

The quotes below are exerts from my short answer question, which read, "If you chose dissatisfied or very dissatisfied, please specify why." Overall, all of the write-in answers were negative towards the dining halls provided on campus. One of the quotes focused on there not being enough vegetarian options or healthy options for students and another criticized the behaviors of workers in the dining facilities. The other two quotes described the taste of the food not being good and the second quote is adamant about spreading out the dining options more throughout campus, rather than having a lot of them in the student union.

I feel that food provided on campus has variety but also does not, it has the idea of dining food but not the taste or quality for those to have healthy options or change up options for those that are picky.

The staff is usually very rude especially at queso corner and chick fil a. I also would like to see things that are promoted actually being offered. Need more vegetarian options.

Doesn't taste good, not many options, expensive if you don't have a meal plan, upsets my stomach, soggy lettuce.

More restaurant options outside of the student union would be great. Too crowded in there.

I compared my survey to a dining survey at Auburn University where I found some interesting things when comparing the two surveys. Auburn University is substantially larger than Coastal Carolina, but it's intriguing the see how students answered the survey. The students at Auburn University were fairly satisfied with their dining options, which mimics my respondents answers. The rating systems were slightly different, but overall they had a similar result. Auburn also had a question in their survey for students to pick their favorite dining option, and the most selected dining location was Chick Fil a. In my survey, Chick Fil a is grouped under Cino Grill, which was also the number one selected location for CCU. The final question that I compared to this survey was a healthy eating question. This question allowed students to answer if they thought Auburn provided healthy options for students on campus and the most selected answer was somewhat agree. This is the opposite of my survey because a large reason why students, faculty, and staff don't have a meal plan or eat on campus is that there isn't a large variety of healthy food options on CCU's campus. Throughout this comparison there was some interesting findings between the two survey's and even though these two schools don't have similar student populations they had similar student answers to questions that I had asked.

At the end of my survey, I asked my respondents where they would like to see more food options on campus. From the pie chart below, you can see that all of the options are somewhat evenly distributed among all the answers. Even though the majority of respondents chose that they were satisfied with the current dining options on campus, there is still some room for improvement with the distribution of dining locations across CCU's campus. As of right now, there are dining facilities inside the Kimbel Library, Lib Jackson Student Union, Academic Building, HTC Center, and Brittain Hall. Overall, the top 3 places where students, faculty, and staff would like to see more food options were Brittain Hall, HTC Center, and Lib Jackson Student Union. These answers surprised me because I would've thought that more people would've chosen locations where there wasn't a food option inside one of the buildings already. Throughout the entire survey process, I thought I gathered excellent data on the Coastal Carolina community, and the results proved my hypothesis wrong.

My overall design schema for this project was to keep it simple and neutral with just a little bit of color and I chose to use teal, which represented Coastal Carolina. I decided to keep it a simple aesthetic because I didn't want to distract from the importance of the data that was being displayed on the page. I also wanted to organize it in a logical way, so I decided to go by how the survey asked the questions. I began by going over the classification of my respondents and displayed a pie chart, then I discussed the top 3 places where students, faculty, and staff liked to go the most, next I talked about the 4 major dining halls and gave the statistics on what stations people went to within those dining halls, and lastly, I reviewed the recommended dining locations. In between my data visualizations I provided an interactive map, so people could visualize where these dining facilities were in relation to CCU's campus and a social media screenshot from CCUFoodCrew to show how active they are on social media platforms. I want my viewers to be able to learn something from my survey such as; where do people like to dine at CCU? or What places should I avoid dining if I want to attend CCU in the future? I want viewers to have an educational experience when viewing this story map. My experience when analyzing my data was very eye-opening because I had a good amount of respondents to the survey, so I had to comb through a lot of data to find solid results to showcase. Since I had such large results, I decided to color code my entire spreadsheet, so I was able to visualize the data better without being confused. If I were able to modify my survey in any way I would probably take out the questions asking about if the student lives on campus to specify where they live and specifying what meal plan they had. I just felt like at the end of it these questions weren't relevant and wouldn't bring any strong conclusions to the survey itself. This project isn't like anything I've done with DCD in the past, but I really enjoyed the entire process of surveying and gathering results. I feel like this skill can be used in any avenue in life and can become helpful for a bunch of different reasons. I feel throughout this process that I've learned how to pick through data, how to reach out to people into completing a survey, and how to come to conclusions while dealing with a lot of data.