Student restaurant Garenmarkt creates safe environment for students

The catering service of the College of Europe Bruges campus makes every effort to make sure that the recently arrived students of the Mário Soares Promotion can enjoy lunch and dinner at the Garenmarkt restaurant in the safest way possible in times when protecting each other's health and well-being is crucial. Hans BASTIAENSSENS, Chef Catering - Hotel Services at the Europe Bruges campus, explains how his dedicated team has organised everything in order to be in line with all the necessary COVID-19 regulations. 

"What prevails is that we have a seat for every student in our student restaurant so that everybody can have a meal in a safe environment that guarantees respecting the rules of physical distancing. Initially, we had a capacity of 90 seats, which meant that each seat had to be occupied 3,5 times in order to have a place for each student visiting Garenmarkt, which was going to be a challenge. Therefore, we have decided to make every room within the restaurant complex available for students only, including the mezzanine and the two private salons, from Monday 7 September onwards. Altogether, that means that we can offer a larger capacity of about 150 seats, and consequently each seat only has to be occupied twice", explains Hans BASTIAENSSENS. 

"It's the intention of the college to schedule the timetables of the student courses in a way that we can avoid all students arriving at the restaurant at the same time. We have to coordinate in order to make sure that every student can enjoy a seated meal. We also kindly ask students to leave once they have finished eating.  Another important measure is that we have changed the opening hours, students can now visit the student restaurant from 11:30 am until 2 pm, which means an extra hour of catering service. In the evening students can have dinner from 6 pm until 7:30 pm", mentions our Chef Catering. 

"By consequence of the enlarged capacity for students, staff members wishing to eat, can still take a meal but only on a take-away basis. They have to take their personal microwave resistant boxes with them and they can go to the Dijver or Verversdijk foyer or use their own office to enjoy a lunch. It's important to emphasize that staff and students cannot be seen as members of the same bubble."