WASHINGTON — The Army continues to make big strides in modernizing how it feeds Soldiers across its installations.
Army leaders outlined the Army food ecosystem at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting during a panel on warfighter performance optimization, detailing how initiatives like Campus Style Dining Venues (CSDV), Flexible Eating and Expanded Dining (FEED) and partnerships are bringing generational change.
“We are evolving the Army’s food program from a 20th century chow hall to a modern 21st century network that’s part of a larger food ecosystem on all of our installations,” said Jay Condrey, acting Army Materiel Command G-4. “It’s not just something we are doing out of convenience. It’s about quality of life. It’s about community, and at the end of the day, most importantly, it’s about warfighter readiness.”
Central to this effort is a deliberate shift to separate garrison dining operations from tactical field feeding, ensuring Soldiers receive balanced nutrition while military culinary specialists sharpen their combat readiness. What makes this shift possible is the ability for the Army to partner with commercial food service providers.
“Bringing in a commercial partner to focus solely on garrison feeding absolutely reduces that burden of Tactical Field Feeding Specialist redundancies inside of a brick-and-mortar facility,” said Sgt. Maj. Damarco Wyatt, AMC G-4 sergeant major. “Now what you have is more opportunity for field feeding proficiency and concentration on equipment as we prepare for large-scale combat operations.”
One example of partnering with industry is the CSDV initiative. CSDVs feature varied daily menus curated by professional chefs, a registered dietitian, grab-and-go choices, lounge areas with couches, Ping-Pong and foosball tables, mounted flat-screen televisions and free Wi-Fi. Compass Group USA currently manages the first wave of campus-style dining facilities, located at Forts Hood, Carson, Drum and Bragg, with Fort Stewart coming in 2027 with additional expansions at these sites in the works.
The venues allow meal-card holders to swipe their Common Access Cards and use meal entitlements. While Soldiers on meal cards is a primary audience, families and other patrons are welcome to purchase meals à la carte.
“For the past 29 years, we’ve never seen a highchair inside of a dining facility,” said Wyatt. “That captures that moment where we’re allowing family members to actually come inside of the facility. They can eat with their Soldiers. That’s where the community comes back, because first impressions are long-lasting.”
This approach has driven a sharp rise in meal service. For example, looking at the same facilities a year apart, Fort Hood has seen an increase of more than 312% meals served. Fort Carson and Fort Drum are seeing increases of 385% and 534% respectively.
“Soldiers are voting with their feet,” said Sydney Smith, director of supply policy for the Department of the Army G-4. “The contractors are innovating because they want the foot traffic. They only get paid when our Soldiers go there to eat. It incentivizes them to make sure that it’s well done.”
While the CSDV initiative is the Army’s flagship effort, the service is providing Soldiers with even more options. Starting with Fort Stewart, Georgia, the Army launched the FEED program which enables meal-card holders on essential station messing to use their meal entitlements at select Army & Air Force Exchange Service restaurants, including Qdoba, Starbucks and Subway, with plans to expand to Morale Welfare and Recreation and Defense Commissary Agency locations.
To safeguard nutritional standards, Army dietitians work directly with vendors to configure menus based on the military’s traffic-light nutritional framework. Participating eateries are limited to “green” and “amber” categorized foods, such as lean, high-protein options, fresh produce and whole grains. “Red” designated items are excluded from entitlement purchases.
“About a third of the Soldiers at Fort Stewart are using the AAFES locations for their meals or at least a portion of their meals now,” Smith said. “Overall, the feedback has been great, plus we know they’re getting nutritious food.”
With these new efforts, Army leaders acknowledged that broad implementation faces logistical hurdles, including infrastructure reinvestment for aging facilities, flexible contracting mechanisms and sustained funding.
The Army is also coordinating with the Office of the Secretary of War to establish cross-service guidelines and IT interoperability, enabling service members from the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard to use dining entitlements interchangeably at joint installations.
“As we begin to roll out the CSDVs, everybody’s asking, ‘Hey, when can I have one?'” Wyatt said. “We’ll ensure that we have a deliberate plan to roll these out accordingly.”
By Samantha Tyler
