The Goa Campus of BITS Pilani has a resident-strength of 2500, living in 15 hostels. There are two main messes – Dining Hall ‘A’ and ‘C’, which cater to students and many staff members. The messes have a seating capacity of about 1200. Outsourced caterers – Aditya Caterers and Shetty Sons are responsible for the management and functioning of the messes.

The managers of the messes decide upon the working after collaborating with the campus Mess Committee (MC). The MC comprises of elected mess representatives (MRs); mess conveners are selected from amongst them. The appointed faculties-in-charge of the MC serve as the point of contact between the MC and the caterers. The faculty side has a mess coordinator, chief warden, SWD head, hostel superintendents, and 3 other faculty members while the student side has mess conveners, girls’ convener, Hygiene and Branding heads for each dining hall. The MC is responsible for planning menus, quality control, hygiene checks, and responding to complaints from diners.

The menu is decided for a period of fifteen days, and consists of essential staples like rice, chapati, dal, vegetables, desserts with minor variations, while salads, curd, pickles, condiments are ever-present accompaniments. Breakfast, lunch and dinner times extend over 2.5 hours roughly, with a separate time-window for “snacks”, one plate of which costs Rs 20. The three main meals are reasonably priced, with the mess bill adding upto Rs 113 per day. Both messes have a head cook, who supervise assistant cooks. The latter assume responsibility of tasks like vegetable cutting, preparing breakfast, preparing rice or chapatis, etc, and supervise utility workers and sub-cooks. To help break the monotony of the menu, students generally approach the counter inside the messes that sells ice-cream, soft drinks etc. Apart from this, both messes operate the hugely popular NCs – Night Canteens, where one can get dishes of choice at reasonable prices.

A very important issue is hygiene and quality control. All the vegetables and plates are washed with warm water before use. The dining and cooking areas are cleaned thoroughly after every meal. Random hygiene checks focus on the following things: gloves for those who serve, head caps for cooks, cleanliness of the cooking area, use of separate utensils for vegetarian and non-vegetarian food, quality of vegetables used, and brands of different ingredients. Appropriate measures, proportional to the severity of the situation – like setting up inquiry committees, issuing show-cause notices and warnings, levying monetary reparations, etc. are taken to ensure that glitches in food preparation are avoided.

Since the number of people coming at a time is not fixed, accommodating in terms of seating and food, at any given time poses a challenge. Additionally, catering to the demands of people from different regions is an uphill task. To account for the increased student intake, more counters have been set up. Preparation of food has also started earlier after complaints of delays in serving. The mess management does its best to listen to feedback and make improvements for the better.