Chefs Mark Bennison and Benjamin Blodgett arrived last spring and added their own unique twists to Dining’s daily offerings

Kingston, R.I. – April 17, 2026 – From the honey habanero shrimp fajitas and beef bulgogi to the rocky road brownies, the University of Rhode Island’s Dining Services cooked up some exciting menu items this year thanks to two key additions to its kitchen staff.

The arrival of Mark Bennison, chef manager of URI’s commissary bakeshop, and Benjamin Blodgett, chef manager of ops and outreach, added new variety to Dining’s daily offerings, including tasty dessert treats, chef-inspired full-course meals, and exciting special events with custom themed menus.

Both are Johnson & Wales University graduates who joined the team in the spring of 2025 – Blodgett started in January and Bennison followed in April – with more than five decades of experience combined in culinary arts instruction, management, and hospitality.

Their shared experiences in the kitchen and classroom make for an effortless rapport where the two bounce ideas off one another to create a new layer of excitement and anticipation to the daily menu items at Mainfare and Butterfield dining halls. Whether it’s an elaborate flank steak with chimichurri sauce and a porchetta sandwich with grilled broccolini, or simpler comfort-food classics with a twist, like Korean friend chicken nuggets, there’s something for every taste bud at URI, and Bennison and Blodgett are having fun bringing their creations to life.

“It’s a growing process,” Benisson said. “It takes a good year to figure everything out, and we’re now at that one-year mark. We just throw everything against the wall and keep working.”

Bennison, a 1997 JWU grad, spent more than seven years as a pastry chef at the Radisson Airport Hotel in Warwick while earning his bachelor’s degree in food and beverage management. In addition to planning menus for the hotel and banquet facilities, he developed the university’s pastry arts practicum program. His teaching extended to the International Institute of Culinary Arts, where he led the school’s two-year pastry arts program, in addition to more than 17 years as a pastry chef for Job Corps in Exeter educating students in basic culinary food preparation and presentation. Bennison also held management positions at Johansson’s Bakery and Café and Eastside Marketplace, bringing a unique blend of retail and higher education experience to URI.

His time at Johansson’s – a popular pastry shop staffed with JWU students at the downtown Providence Arcade – prepared him for what he handles daily at URI serving the more than 5,000 students on campus who have meal plans and eat at the dining halls.

“That was a good learning experience for me because I learned how to manage large volume,” Bennison said. “We made everything from fresh bread to cakes. It was a million-dollar operation.”

While he’s mainly behind the scenes with his team churning out the many popular dessert items that students have grown to love, Bennison hopes for a more interactive approach next fall where he can meet students, gather feedback, and provide a greater glimpse into the process for those interested in learning more.

“Who wants to be in the kitchen all day long? You want to get out and see people,” Bennison said. “I also want to work with student organizations to develop menu items, because those groups really represent key populations of our student body.

“If they see our faces, it makes a difference. They know who to talk to. ‘Can you make something this way?’ or ‘I used to have this at home.’ It makes them feel comfortable to be involved in the process.”

Blodget graduated JWU in 2013 and spent the last decade as an instructor in Florida and Rhode Island, including his role as a career and technical education teacher in Broward County and his most recent position as the vocational instructor of culinary arts at Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School in Massachusetts.

As chef manager, he prepares menu rotations at the start of each semester, drawing on student feedback – mostly from Dining’s large number of student workers – and trends from other universities to determine which items are a hit and which don’t go over as well with students. Blodgett develops a five-week meal plan that typically cycles through three times during a normal semester while mixing in specialty dining events, including the Feast of the Northeast in March, a medley of iconic regional favorites like calamari and clam chowder, and Wicked, a special night of Emerald City vibes and menu items based on the 2024 movie remake of The Wizard of Oz.

Blodgett also introduced the URI Dining Food Show in October, an interactive event where students sampled and voted on potential new menu items at Mainfare from buffalo battered potato slices and cornflake-crusted fried chicken to s’mores cookies and jackfruit burgers.

The menu-building process is time consuming with work on the fall 2026 slate already underway.

“It’s fun to see where things fall,” Blodgett said. “We look at where Halloween, for example, falls in that cycle. Do we need to tweak a few things? Are there any other major holidays? Then we take it a step further and look ahead at any changes that need to be made.”

While the dining hall classics are at the top of most students’ lists – “Our No. 1 seller is still chicken fingers and French fries,” Blodgett said – there’s a campus-wide craving for international options, so Blodgett and his team are already beginning to plan ideas for new Asian, Latin American, and Native American dishes in 2026–27. Blodgett also likes to add new twists to existing menu items.

“One example is our paella night,” he said. “We were serving that prior to me starting here. It was very complicated from an execution standpoint, but we reworked it, changed the rice to be a little bit more authentic, changed the seasoning to get a better vegetarian base, and then we added in the proteins on the side, so students liked it better because they can customize it.”

Appeasing all tastes and dietary needs on a campus with more than 17,000 students is tricky, but Blodgett and Bennison welcome the challenge and look forward to building on this year’s success in the fall.

“Students want things that are customized to what they want,” Blodgett said. “They don’t want to have to compromise. They like international flavors, but they also want those creature comforts.

“You can toy the idea of an Indian style mac and cheese to add more international flavors, but you still need the go-to regular items. Part of the fun is figuring out how to balance it.”

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Michael Parente, director of communications and marketing in the URI Division of Student Affairs, wrote this news release.