A dozen or so students in chef coats emblazoned with the “AU” logo hover over stainless steel pots in one of the culinary laboratories at Auburn University’s shiny, new, $110-million Tony & Libba Rane Culinary Science Center.
It is their first day in the food lab, a day that has been years in the making for Martin O’Neill, head of AU’s School of Hospitality Management, and Hans van der Reijden, founder and CEO of the Auburn-based Ithaka Hospitality Partners.
“I can’t get over seeing students in their chef coats for the first time ever,” van der Reijden says during a walk-through tour of the Rane Center. “It’s a big day.”
“You sort of pinch yourself,” O’Neill adds. “To get to the point where there are classes going on, and you’re walking into classrooms, and you’re engaging with students, and you’re watching your staff, I mean, really, it’s tremendous.”
The new home of AU’s School of Hospitality Management, the Rane Center opened for students and guests in August, and Auburn University will formally dedicate the building with a ribbon-cutting and self-guided tours on Sept. 15.
In addition to culinary labs, an exhibition kitchen, interactive classrooms and recharge rooms for students to relax between classes, the 155,000-square-foot complex includes a fine-dining teaching restaurant with a two-story wine room, a luxury hotel and spa, a rooftop garden and lounge, a food hall, a coffee roastery and cafe, and, coming next spring, a craft brewery and a micro-distillery.
The six-story building has so may components, in fact, it’s hard to know where to start to talk about it.
“Between a coffee roastery, a brewery, a distillery, a club lounge concept, residences, pool, gardens, a wedding venue (and) a food hall, what we tried to do is to grab every possible concept in our industry, bring it into one building and teach the elements of it,” van der Reijden says.
Next door to The Hotel at Auburn University & Dixon Conference Center and across the street from AU’s stately Samford Hall, the Rane Center occupies a prime piece of real estate on the corner of Thach Avenue and South College Street – “the front door’' to the Auburn campus, as former AU president Jay Gogue called it.
“It’s at the crossroads of campus and community,” O’Neill says. “We’re in the ideal location.”
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The Rane Culinary Science Center has three side-by-side culinary laboratories for students in Auburn University's School of Hospitality Management.(T2 Photography, Thomas Boutwell; used with permission)
A teaching restaurant with a tasting menu
Anchoring the first floor of the Rane Center is the fine-dining teaching restaurant 1856, named in honor of the year Auburn University was founded.
Students in the School of Hospitality Management will work and train under and alongside professionals -- including chef-in-residence Tyler Lyne and master sommelier Thomas Price -- from Ithaka Hospitality Partners to earn hands-on restaurant experience while they complete their undergraduate degrees.
Lyne, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, cooked in restaurants in The Netherlands, Japan and New York City before he and his wife, pastry chef Jennifer Lyne, moved to Birmingham two years ago and started their Tasting TBL, an intimate tasting experience they host in their Ross Bridge home.
Being in a teaching restaurant like 1856 and getting to share the knowledge he has absorbed on his culinary journey is right in Lyne’s wheelhouse.
“Chefs tend to have a love of teaching, because it’s really what the profession is all about,” he says. “It’s why I like this format so much because you’re not talking about just theory, you’re actually doing it.”
The chef-in-residence at 1856 will rotate annually.
“The intent is for students to be exposed to four different chefs over the four years they are here,” van der Reijden says. “Being able to add it to their resume, there’s no other program in the world that can offer that.”
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Price, the master sommelier, has directed wine programs at restaurants in the Seattle area for 35 years, but he is no stranger to Auburn, having visited the campus as a guest sommelier for the past eight years. Earlier this summer, he made the move to Auburn permanent.
“For me, and I felt it right away, there is a pervasive atmosphere of learning and enthusiasm (at Auburn), and everybody’s glad to be there and be participating in that, whether it’s the faculty or the hotel staff,” Price says. “Plus, I’m a huge football fan, so I’m really looking forward to that component of it, as well.”
Price, one of only 257 master sommeliers in the world, will be active both in the classroom and in the restaurant, teaching beverage appreciation courses while also offering students a real-time education in wine service.
“When the time came to put this building together and start thinking we wanted to be the first (hospitality management school) in the world that has a permanent master sommelier on staff to teach the classes but also teach on-the-floor service at night in the teaching restaurant, Thomas was on top of our list,” van der Reijden says.
The restaurant, which began serving its first guests this week, will be open Tuesdays through Saturdays, offering an a la carte menu at lunch and a $95-per-person, seven- to nine-course tasting menu at dinner. The tasting menu will change every two weeks.
1856 is believed to be the first teaching restaurant in the world to offer a tasting menu, van der Reijden says.
Reservations for both lunch and dinner at 1856 have already sold out through the end of October, and reservations for November and December will go live on Oct. 1
The dining room seats 46 guests plus another five at the bar, and a private dining space, which can open for an up-close view of the kitchen staff at work or close for more privacy, seats an additional 12.
The smaller capacity not only makes for a more intimate dining experience for guests but also a more efficient learning environment for the students, van der Reijden says.
Junior-level students will work the lunch service, and more experienced, senior-level students will help with dinner service.
Jacob Hoop, a 2017 graduate of the AU hospitality management program, is putting that degree to work as the general manger of 1856. He’s the perfect example to the current group of students working in the restaurant.
“I was a student,” Hoop says. “I was in their spot not that long ago. That’s why we’re doing this. We’re going to be able to send you anywhere in the world to do anything you want.”
Tyler Lyne is the inaugural chef-in-residence at the training restaurant 1856 in Auburn University's Rane Culinary Science Center.(Photo by Mason Erwin; used with permission)
A luxury hotel and spa
The Laurel Hotel & Spa, which bills itself as “Auburn’s most elevated hotel” occupies the fourth, fifth and sixth floors of the Rane Center.
The hotel, which also opened this week, has 16 king rooms, 10 luxury suites and six private residences. King rooms begin at around $425 a night, and luxury suites with a parlor and a bedroom start at about $925 a night.
“The suites are 950 square feet,” van der Reijden says. “That’s a good-sized New York apartment.”
Two-night weekend packages good for all eight Auburn home football games sold out when they became available in February, nearly seven months before the hotel opened, van der Reijden says.
The rooms feature automated window shades and lighting, marble bathroom countertops, a soaking tub and a rainfall shower.
Each room is also decorated with food-and-beverage-centric artwork, stocked with a small bar set-up with fresh lemons and limes delivered daily, and accented with flowers grown on the hotel’s rooftop by AU’s Department of Horticulture.
“Every guest that checks in has a fresh flower in a crystal vase with a little card that says, ‘Grown with love,’” van der Reijden says.
Hotel guests will also have exclusive access to The Library, which will offer complimentary breakfast and lunch service, as well as afternoon snacks and evening desserts.
On the rooftop, a heated infinity pool with poolside cabanas is also available to hotel guests.
The other end of the rooftop terrace, which is open to the public, includes a small outdoor wedding venue; a vegetable, herb and flower garden cultivated by the horticulture department; and starting Sept. 12, a lounge serving afternoon and evening cocktails and appetizers.
The rooftop setting offers guests an eagle’s-eye view of such AU landmarks as Samford Hall and Jordan-Hare Stadium.
“Look at the jumbotron,” van der Reijden says, pointing toward the football stadium. “You can follow the game from here.”
The Laurel Hotel & Spa, a 32-room luxury boutique hotel, occupies the top three floors of Auburn University's Rane Culinary Science Center.(Photo by Heidi Geldhauser; used with permission)
A food hall and gathering place
The Hey Day Market, a food hall and gathering place, opened in mid-August, just in time for the start of the fall semester, and has already proven to be a huge hit with AU students and the neighboring Auburn community.
The name is a salute to an annual Auburn tradition known as “Hey Day,” when students are encouraged to wear name tags on campus and greet one another as a way to “unite the Auburn Family.”
The 10,000-square-foot market has stained concrete floors and steel-framed windows that look out onto the green space that connects the food hall with the culinary center.
Late on a Tuesday morning, the Hey Day Market is bustling with students lining up for everything from Malaysian street noodles to pressed Cuban sandwiches, poke bowls to birria tacos.
“It’s been an unbelievable success,” van der Reijden says. “We’re serving on average 2,000 people a day.”
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One of the 10 food stalls in the Hey Day Market will be designated as an incubator space that, starting in Fall 2023, will be available to graduates in the hospitality management program who want to start a food service company.
“They don’t have to pay the entry fee to go into the space,” van der Reijden says. “It’s a fully furnished stall, and we help them with their business plan, licensing agreements, health and sanitation (requirements). So, it’s a true incubator.”
The common areas in Rane Center are open for visitors to walk through the building and get a peek at what’s happening inside.
“We’ve always adopted this very open-door, open-mind approach to the center,” O’Neill says. “Beyond mere teaching and education, we want to embrace the community.”
One of the final pieces to the puzzle, a craft brewery and tasting room, should open in March 2023.
The tasting room, O’Neill says, will be a gathering spot for “beer thinkers” to sit down and enjoy a craft brew while also learning about the brewing process.
“People joke about this being my new office,” O’Neill says. “It’s really not my new office. I don’t intend to spend an awful lot of time here other than, you know, educationally.”
The rooftop of the Rane Culinary Science Center offers a bird's-eye view of the Auburn University campus, including AU's iconic Samford Hall.(T2 Photography, Thomas Boutwell; used with permission)
A decade-long dream comes true
The seeds for the Rane Culinary Science Center were planted more than a decade ago, when O’Neill, from the AU faculty, and van der Reijden, who managed The Hotel at Auburn University, began brainstorming ideas for an academic-and-commercial venture that would set Auburn’s hospitality program apart from others around the country.
“We tried to find differentiators,” van der Reijden says. “There are programs that have been around forever. CIA (Culinary Institute of America), Johnson & Wales have been around for over 120 years.
“If all we do is do exactly the same thing they do but in a prettier, newer building, you’re just going to be in third place.”
Their plans got a jump-start about five years ago, when longtime Auburn University trustee and Great Southern Wood Preserving Inc. CEO James W. “Jimmy” Rane and the Rane family committed $12 million toward building a world-class culinary center.
“You need someone to help you along your way, and we got introduced to the Rane family,” O’Neill recalls. “They became wonderful friends of the program and helped us on our way to what we’re in today.”
The Auburn University Board of Trustees later approved naming the center in honor of Jimmy Rane’s parents, the late Tony and Libba Rane, and the university broke ground on the building in April 2019.
The son of Italian immigrants and a World War II veteran, Anthony J. “Tony” Rane grew up in Wisconsin but moved to the small town of Abbeville in the southeastern corner of Alabama in 1946. With the support of his beloved Libba, he ran restaurants and owned Holiday Inns.
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“I don’t know that most people realize just what went into that facility because it was well over 10 years in the making,” Jimmy Rane says of the culinary center. “Dad was still alive when we began to discuss it. He died in 2011.
“But when Hans (van der Reijden) first came (to visit), he and Dad would have lots of conversations about culinary schools and teaching and cooking.”
Over the years, O’Neill and van der Reijden traveled the world visiting other such facilities, taking notes about what worked and how they could do it better at Auburn.
Jimmy Rane sat in on many of their planning sessions.
“A lot of it was really just dreaming,” he says. “Little did we ever really know that it would ultimately result in one facility having all of those disciplines under one roof.
“But as you can see, dreams do come true sometimes.”
Anthony J. "Tony" Rane is pictured here in his home in Abbeville, Ala., in 2006. "Mr. Tony," as a lot of friends knew him, died in 2011.(Birmingham News file/Charles Nesbitt)
The hospitality industry takes notice
Word has already gotten around the restaurant and hotel industry about the new jewel in Auburn’s academic crown.
This past weekend, Birmingham chef Rob McDaniel, a 2002 graduate of Auburn’s hospitality management program and a five-time James Beard Award semifinalist, was the guest chef at an event at the Old Edwards Inn and Spa in Highlands, N.C.
“The general manager and the executive chef at the Old Edwards Inn were talking about the new culinary science center at Auburn,” McDaniel says. “So, it’s much bigger than Alabama.
“I think what they have created and are continuing to create is something that will definitely be a game-changer – for Alabama (and) really for the Southeast and farther than that.”
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Peers at other programs across the country and around the world have kept an eye on the progress of the Rane Culinary Science Center, O’Neill says.
“They’re looking at it going, ‘How is that possible in Auburn, Ala? How did you manage to do that?’” O’Neill says.
“None of it would have been possible without the right leadership at the college level, without the right leadership and support in the industry, the alumni support we got, the community support that we got,” he adds. “Everybody’s been fully invested in it.”
Jimmy Rane attended a private event at the center named for his parents this past Friday, and he got emotional when he watched an old video of his late father stirring a pot of his famous spaghetti sauce.
“Nobody was more important to me than my father,” Rane says. “I know he would really enjoy inspiring those students to be the best and accomplish the things that they’re going to be able to accomplish with all the tools at their disposal.
“As I said Friday night at the event,” Rane adds, “our students will one day be running the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Ritz in Paris, the Claridge’s in London, the Halekulani in Honolulu, the Peninsula. All of the grand hotels of the world will eventually be run by Auburn University graduates.”
That may sound like a dream, but as Rane says, dreams do come true sometimes.
The Tony & Libba Rane Culinary Science Center is proof of that.
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