A convenient all-you-can-eat meal plan is included in your residence fees when you become a resident of United's undergraduate residence, which means you will never run out of money for food!
Watson’s Eatery offers a range of food options at meal times, including vegetarian, vegan and halal meals, as well as a variety of sides including soups and salads. Our menu changes weekly to reflect the preferences and requests of our residents.
Watson's Eatery
At Watson’s our goal is to be recognized as a “best-in-class dining operation”, creating a sense of home for our residence students and delivering a high-quality, customer driven service to both students and guests.
Our partnership with Brown's Fine Food Services prioritizes food quality, variety, customer service, sustainability and supporting local vendors, producers, and suppliers.
Student Ombudsperson
The most effective way to engage with students and really understand their needs is to provide them with the opportunity to express their views and know their comments are heard and acted upon.
Your student ombudsperson will have the freedom to interact openly with their peers and provide us with open and unbiased feedback regarding any issues which the students feel are of importance in their food services.
What's on the menu
Keeping our menu offerings diverse and interesting while still offering all your regular favourites is what challenges our chefs and keeps our customers engaged. We constantly do industry research, seek input from staff and colleagues and encourage customer participation to introduce new menu items and ingredients into our menu. We encourage students and residents to share their favourite recipes or dishes with our head chef or food services manager, or simply let us know how we are doing by filling out the Watson’s online feedback form.
In addition to our regular daily choices, Watson’s features unique pace changers weekly.
We love food, and it shows
Our kitchen starts early to prepare our menu items for the day. Our menu selections are made from scratch every day. Meats are roasted on site, entrees freshly prepared and specialty breads and desserts fresh-baked daily by your chef.
This ensures our guarantee of food that is delicious, sustainable, diverse, and safe is always achieved.
Working together for a zero waste campus!
Focused on local purchasing, made from scratch recipes, organic composting, and recycling in our kitchens, coupled with a strong education and sustainability awareness programming Watson’s enthusiastically supports the Zero Waste Campus Initiative. Learn more about our programs and initiatives that we have in place at Watson’s Eatery.
Allergy and special diet management
The health and safety of our customers is our single most important priority. We encourage students, staff and faculty with allergies, sensitivities and special dietary needs or restrictions to reach out to our food services team as early as possible to ensure a positive dining experience.
For meal plans from September 2024 to August 2025:
- Full meal-plan holders have unlimited access to the eatery during hours of operation
- If you are unable to make it down to Watson's during regular hours of operation, please fill out our pre-order meal form. You can pick it up from the fridge located in the hall behind the cash register.
- Special dietary needs are supported on request
Important things to know:
- Students do not pay tax on a full meal plan.
- You are not allowed to let friends use your swipes or purchase food on your friend’s behalf.
- Unless you request takeout through the pre-order meal form, food must be eaten in Watson’s Eatery. No dishware or silverware should leave Watson’s.
Working together for zero waste campus!
We define being socially responsible as always thinking about how our actions affect our community and the environment.
At Watson’s, we support United's Zero Waste initiative by doing the following:
Local purchasing, made from scratch recipes, and organic composting in our kitchens, all coupled with effective training for our staff, and strong education and sustainability awareness programming in Watson’s Eatery to support our initiatives.
- We design menus to reduce ingredients and re-purpose food to prevent overproduction.
- Our team is trained on reducing waste during food preparation, service to the customers, and during daily cleaning routines.
- Trayless dining which reduces water usage and excessive food consumption.
- We strive to purchase our products from local suppliers with proven reputations for high standards.
- Products are purchased, stored, prepared, and cooked to maximize flavour, appearance, and nutritional value.
- We give preference to fresh ingredients over frozen, processed, or dehydrated products.
- Products are purchased daily to ensure freshness.
- Donation of overproduced or purchased food whenever possible.
- Recyclable and compostable packaging is used.
We love local!
We have set ourselves a target of 80% local ingredients for all our needs at United.
We work with local suppliers to establish a “Super Local” supplier category that will give purchasing priority to producers within a 50k radius of our campus.
Fair Trade
The Fair-Trade Campus program recognizes universities and colleges demonstrating a strong commitment to fair trade. It has a long-term vision of broad awareness and support for fair trade on Canadian campuses and in their wider communities.
We will work with the Canadian Fair-Trade Network and engaged students, staff, and faculty to retain the Fair-Trade Campus designation.