It is reason for a college to lose accreditation if the student is forced to eat the same thing twice in one week.
Somewhere I saw that the “buffet” trays of foods are thrown out after a short time…so lots of waste. To have variety, there are a lot of trays, and therefore a lot of waste during less peak times.
obnoxious comment:
Celiac is an auto-immune disease. It is not a lifestyle “choice” for those so inflicted. Would the author also claim that peanut-free cookies is a “demand” by high income students?
btw: while the cost of labor is discussed, what is missing is the fact that colleges try to pay a living wage (however defined), making the college cafeteria labor (much?) more expensive than a public cafeteria down the street. (where they exist, of course.)
That’s true, @bluebayou, but it is also true that many people eat gluten-free as a health trend, not for medical reasons.
^^no matter. I personally can’t stand the taste of nuts, and refuse to eat anything that contains nuts, but I am not allergic. And I certainly would not ignore that there are those that are allergic, and conflate their medical needs with my (personal) taste choices.
Really? Or did I miss the sarcasm alert?
Makes sense. I wonder how much is “special snowflakes who can’t eat the same thing twice” kind of conventional wisdom on CC and how much is actually labor, facilities and profit? I’d think those would be much larger but the article doesn’t say.
I’d be interested to know the price difference from restaurants to dining halls, since restaurants also have labor, facilities and profit to consider. Article says student dining hall costs averages $7.50 a meal.
Honestly I think the expectations on all things at school are much higher than previous generations – I had a teeny tiny room and a community bathroom down the hall and I thought it was awesome. Now every kid wants a suite, and great food variety, and a big recreational facility and we wonder why it cost so much.
Costs vary a lot depending in the school attended.
I wonder how much is due to inefficiencies brought on by it being a monopolistic enterprise and not having to deal with competition since, at many schools, a good chunk of the student body is required to participate in the meal plan and there is little to no competition on campus.
There’s not a lot of incentive built into making it efficient and lower cost.
This is a large part of it…and not a new phenomenon. When I was an undergrad back in the mid-late '90s, when comparing notes on cost/meal from friends at different colleges/universities, it ranged from a low of $6 to a high of $10. My LAC’s dining hall meals averaged ~$10/meal.
At that time, I could have had 2-4 reasonably sized meals at the nicer restaurants in my NE college town easily and still have some change left over.
And some residential colleges like my LAC mandate students stay in dorms for all 4 years and being on meal plans/join a dining co-op* unless one meets some narrow medical or other exception which exempts them from this requirement.
- One trade off with dining co-ops is that there's a weekly labor requirement AND IF poorly managed(totally managed by student co-op members), the possibility food may run out for some students during mealtimes...especially towards the end of the semester concerned.
A few classmates ended up getting burned this way and having to use their handful of allocated dining hall meals or having one of us sneak them in so they can have a full meal.
@OHMomof2 I made tha comment based on several posts here on CC by students who were complaining about having to eat the same thing twice in a week.
My kid eats a 99 cent greek yogurt for breakfast every single day
@doschicos the Claremont Consortium is unusual in that there is competition among the dining halls. CMC and Pitzer use Café Bon Appetit, Harvey Mudd and Scripps use Sodexo and Pomona is independent. The different dining rooms essentially compete with each other for “swipes.” I think that contributes to better selections, variety, etc.
@TomSrOfBoston I didn’t mean to call you out 
It reminded me of the “kids are so spoiled today” stuff that gets posted on CC a lot.
What’s the best of the bunch in your opinion, @Corinthian? I know Bon Appetit generally gets high praise and Sodexo does not on other campuses, but maybe Sodexo tries hard with competition around. Do you find that students tend to favor CMC and Pitzer at all?
I recalled a few alums from a Boston area college who recounted the dining hall contractor used when they attended in the early '90s was so bad that at one mealtime, the food actually smelled like rotting garbage.
Not too surprisingly, that contractor was replaced towards the end of that decade and from accounts of younger alums including a younger friend who was a student there in the early-mid '00s, the contractor was replaced and the students were much happier with the results.
When I brought this up with a family friend whose work as a consultant in the food industry included college dining services, the instant I brought up that college’s previous dining contractor and the abysmal quality of food served to students, he immediately indicated that he wasn’t surprised.
@doschicos wrote:
My D says she mostly eats at Frary (Pomona) and Scripps. She goes to Pitzer when they have Pad Thai. The only one she seems to not go to is Mudd. Here’s the 5C menu link: https://aspc.pomona.edu/menu/. @intparent @ClaremontMom where do your kids prefer to eat?