Engineering students redesign reusable food containers for Foy on the Fly
Published: Sep 1, 2026 10:00 AM
By Dustin Duncan
Students gather inside Foy on the Fly, where a student engineering team developed a redesigned reusable food container aimed at improving dining efficiency and reducing plastic waste.
More than 600 students visit Foy on the Fly each day during the fall and spring semesters, most leaving with a meal in a reusable container that is later returned.
Students probably don’t think much about a cookie sitting next to their fries or the time it takes dining staff to individually prepare cups of ranch dressing and other sauces. But Glenn Loughridge, director of Campus Dining, has.
He believes a student project developed in the Thomas Walter Center’s Business Engineering Technology (BET) capstone course could improve efficiency and reduce waste.
Auburn Dining’s reusable-container program has already eliminated thousands of single-use containers, but the standard three-compartment design is not an ideal fit for Foy on the Fly’s menu of sandwiches, fries, cookies and sauces. Employees also spend time preparing individual plastic ramekins and wrapping cookies separately, adding labor and plastic waste to the process.
“It’s really kind of unproductive labor to sit there and fill ramekins,” Loughridge said.
The capstone course, taught by Adam Ficken, lecturer in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, connects students with real clients to develop functional prototypes based on actual needs.
“If we find a real problem with a real owner that wants the solution, we get better engagement from the students and it’s more realistic,” Ficken said.
Madelyn Torrance, a senior in chemical engineering, said the team toured the kitchen, container drop-off room and dishwashing area, interviewed dining staff and gathered feedback from students before redesigning the container.
From there, they had to design around Auburn Dining’s existing operation. The container needed to match the dimensions of the current version to work with the dishwashing equipment and still be practical to produce at scale through injection molding.
“We strategically created food compartments that aligned with this manufacturing technique and did not require additional lids or inserts,” Torrance said.
Ultimately, two designs were developed: one for typical Foy on the Fly meals and another for salads. Torrance said the final layouts took “a lot of trial and error,” particularly with the built-in sauce compartment.
Students designed the lid to seal the sauce section when the container closes, allowing dining staff to dispense sauce directly into the container instead of using a separate plastic ramekin.
“To cut costs and reduce plastic waste, we decided to design a sauce section to replace the single-use plastic containers that are added into the boxes,” Torrance said. “Preparing, filling and clamping the single-use compartments bottlenecks the kitchen.”
Loughridge said the bigger benefit is efficiency. Reducing prep work could allow dining employees to spend more time serving customers.
“If I can increase the productivity of the labor, that’s an operational improvement,” he said. “If we can go from 650 to 700 students here or serve more customers or shrink wait times, I think that’s the ultimate benefit to the customer.”
Loughridge said the opportunity for students to work on real campus problems is one reason he supports projects like this.
“This is an opportunity for students to actually get out, walk into space, watch what’s going on, understand the problem intimately,” he said.
The students produced a 3D-printed prototype of the redesigned container, and Ficken is exploring whether the design can be manufactured at a reasonable cost.
Torrance said working on a real campus problem made the project especially meaningful.
“Working on a tangible engineering challenge to support campus operations was one of the most rewarding experiences I have had at Auburn,” she said. “Improving staff ergonomics, reducing plastic waste and enhancing the student dining experience showed me that you can make an impact with an engineering degree anywhere, even in your backyard.”
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