By LI TAO

After serving as associate director of residential dining for six years, Rafi Taherian officially replacing former executive director of dining, Nadeem Siddiqui, on Jan. 14.

“I received a letter from Shirley Everett [associate vice provost for residential & dining enterprises] on Dec. 17,” Taherian said. “It is a privilege working with her in a permanent position to help fulfill her vision.”

Taherian said his main objective is to make the University “the best in the industry and to continue providing exceptional customer service to Stanford students, faculty and staff.”

During his term as acting director of dining, Taherian met with students and Stanford stakeholders often on a daily basis. A typical day involved visiting several of the 20 on-campus dining facilities.

In his new role, Taherian will expand upon these responsibilities.

“Being executive director will allow me to work on strategic initiatives, including dining hall and meal plan enhancements, green business initiatives and sustainability and efficient use of technology to provide better service to students and other customers,” he said.

Taherian described several new goals he hopes to accomplish in the near future.

“We are working with several student leadership groups to simplify the meal plans and give students more choices and more value for upcoming years,” he said. “One of Stanford Dining’s long-term projects is to develop online access to our menus, recipes and other nutritional information.”

In addition, Taherian is working with Stanford Student Enterprise group to enable students to view and change their meal plans online.

“Another goal is sustainability,” he said. “A primary objective is to reduce waste, which comes in many different forms: energy, water, food, non-reusable materials and other non-renewable resources.”

Taherian added that he believes it is unconscionable to waste food and hopes to encourage dining hall managers to reduce leftovers. “When we have leftovers, however, we work closely with SPOON to ensure the good food can still be consumed,” he said. The SPOON program takes leftover food from dining halls and delivers it to local food pantries.

Overall, Taherian said he hopes to improve the quality of the 15,000 meals Stanford Dining serves each day.