Captain Growley’s Pirate Adventure Named Best Theme Dinner in the U.S.

BLACKSBURG, Va., July 16, 2007––Virginia Tech has been named by the National Association of College and University Food Services (NACUFS) as the 2007 grand prize winner for best theme dinner in the United States in the 34th annual Loyal E. Horton Dining Awards Contest. The award was presented at the association’s 49th National Conference in Seattle, Wa., on July 14 in recognition of Captain Growley’s Pirate Adventure, held in September.

Open to all institutional members of NACUFS, the Horton Award contest is a highly competitive and prestigious peer recognition program. It was designed to recognize exemplary menus, presentations, special event planning, and new dining concepts, and to provide an avenue for sharing ideas and creative presentations in collegiate dining services.

Virginia Tech was one of ­­­three schools to be awarded a gold medal in the theme dinner category and was later chosen from those as the grand prize winner. The California Institute of Technology and the University of North Dakota were the other two gold medal winners. Virginia Tech also received the silver medal in the theme dinner category with a “Southern Nights” dinner, also held in September.

The event was held on International Talk Like a Pirate Day in Shultz Dining Center. Named for original mess steward J.H. “Growley” Shultz, the dinner showcased a ship-shaped buffet, a slideshow of pirate jokes and trivia, huge scene-setting backdrops, and Cap’n Jack Sparrow himself from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, impersonated by a local actor. The menu featured foods such as golden-fried conch fritters, steamed crab legs, a pit-roasted pig, salmagundi, and plenty of bags of traditional pirate booty. Outside on the lawn, students played interactive games such as Walk the Plank and Douse the Pirate. The enthusiasm was electric and students showed up in droves––many even dressed up for the occasion.

A weeklong treasure hunt led up to the event, with clues designed so that participants had to actually go inside each dining center on campus to answer the riddles. This provided an opportunity for new students to familiarize themselves with the dining centers and where they were located on campus. Nearly 100 students completed the treasure hunt and were entered into a drawing for a flat-panel HDTV, a DVD player, and a Pirates of the Caribbean DVD.

Goals to attract new customers and draw more than 1,000 students to the dining center––which has a typical dinner volume of around 350––were readily accomplished. A crowd of 1,020 students flooded Shultz Dining Center, which averaged 12 to 13 percent more customers per night that semester than in previous years.

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