SAN DIEGO, April 14, 2025—CulinArt has overhauled the dining services at Cathedral Catholic High School by revitalizing existing service windows, rolling out a full-size food truck emblazoned with school spirit, elevating a snack bar with curated coffees and specialty beverages, and—in the most transformative of all initiatives—adding a Marketplace that generates nearly half of daily revenue.
This independent school, in San Diego, was CulinArt’s client for five years last decade, until the pandemic virtually shut down dining services. Four years later, CulinArt prevailed in a bid process and seized the opportunity to build back a program in line with the habits and expectations of a new generation of students.
- The outdoor service windows, common in southern California schools due to favorable weather conditions nearly all year long, were upgraded with a variety of CulinArt concepts including Chef’s Table entrees, Campus Grill combos, Urban Eats street foods, popular and specialty Pizzas, and international rice, grain, and noodle bowls.
- The Marketplace functions as an alternative service point to the service windows and offers everything they do and more. Installed when CulinArt took over last summer, the Marketplace comprises a hot slide, retail racks, and cold display cases, all of which allow students to see more items on display than they can at the windows and thus make impulse purchases.
- Also debuting this school year was Dons Food Truck (named to evoke the school’s religious history; Don being short for Dominus, a title reserved for church nobles), which offers the daily Grill special as well as a new line of specialty beverages. Music is piped in nearby, and the area where the truck parks has become a popular student destination.
- A service window in the school gym was already a popular destination for breakfast and grab-and-go foods and beverages sold before and after school, in addition to concessions during athletic events. These days, volume is greater than ever thanks to specialty lemonades and sodas at Claver Coffee, the new identity for the operation, which also sells Lofty Coffee, cold brew, Tractor slushies, and smoothies.
Of the total 1,600 students, CulinArt is doing 1,200 covers a day, according to Chris Redd, director of dining services, including all four operations. With nearly 11 payment stations running, lunch lines clear much quicker these days, giving students more time to enjoy their meal break and down time.
The Marketplace generates nearly half of daily lunch sales, Redd notes, attributing its performance to better visibility—that is, not behind a fixed wall of windows—of items. “We sell all the hot food there that we do at the windows,” he adds. “The students like to see what they purchase. We can offer a lot more variety of retail items at the Marketplace simply because it has the space.” Despite access to the Marketplace being controlled to prevent crowding, “they will wait in line there,” Redd says.
Elsewhere at Cathedral Catholic, CulinArt revamped the menu at an outdoor concession stand, offering burgers, BBQ Brisket Nachos and Beer-braised Brats with house-made Bavarian-style mustard, among other favorites; and is now serving faculty and staff their own daily dining perk in a separate lounge.
