100 (134) years of Dining

As the University of Reading celebrates its Centenary, it feels fitting to also reflect on another milestone that has quietly shaped campus life for even longer: 134 years of Dining at Reading.

In the years before the University received its Royal Charter in 1926, food was already bringing people together here. Since the institution’s earliest days in the 1890s, Dining Services has evolved alongside the University itself — supporting generations of students, staff and visitors through periods of enormous social, cultural and technological change.

What is remarkable is not simply the longevity, but the continuity.

For 134 years, Dining at Reading has remained proudly in-house. That matters. It has allowed the service to grow with the University community, adapt to changing student needs, and continually reinvest back into the student experience rather than focusing solely on short-term commercial returns. Our oldest continuous site is, Wantage Hall, which is still going strong at just 118 years.

Looking back through the University’s Special Collections, many of the themes still feel surprisingly familiar. Historic images of hall dining rooms show spaces that were clearly about far more than food. They were places where friendships formed, conversations happened, societies gathered, and students found a sense of belonging away from home.

That remains just as true today.

While the scale and complexity of the operation would be unrecognisable to those early dining teams, the purpose remains remarkably consistent. Every day, Dining Services now supports thousands of students and staff across cafés, dining halls, bars and hospitality spaces across campus.

Of course, the experience itself has evolved significantly. Menus that were once traditional and relatively limited have become far more diverse, globally influenced and responsive to changing expectations around nutrition, allergens, sustainability and cultural inclusion.

The introduction of our Digital Dining ecosystem has transformed how students engage with food on campus. Live menu information, allergens, nutrition and sustainability data are now available digitally, while the Clever Cuisine Meal Plan has helped create a more flexible and accessible approach to student dining that reflects today’s student lifestyles.

Importantly, Dining spaces themselves have also continued to evolve. Increasingly, they are social and community spaces first and foremost — places to study, meet friends, collaborate and unwind. In many ways, that makes them more important to the student experience than ever before.

None of this happens without people.

Behind every meal served over the last 134 years are generations, often from the same families, of chefs, kitchen porters, catering assistants, baristas, supervisors, managers and support teams whose work has shaped everyday life at Reading, often quietly, behind the scenes and here when Campus is empty; evenings, weekends, snow days, pandemics and Christmas Day to name a few. Their contribution forms an important part of the University’s history.

As the University enters its second century, Dining Services continues to evolve alongside it — balancing heritage with innovation, tradition with changing expectations, and operational sustainability with an ambitious vision for the future.

134 years on, Dining at Reading remains what it has always been: at the heart of campus life and community. The kitchen table of our community.