Before the school year started, Vice President for Finance Maryellen Skerik sent an email out to all students about the changes made to dining services on campus. The email described the additional services provided on campus, as well as the change in dining hours.
“While the College’s additional offerings have proven to be wildly popular, it was determined that schedule and service adjustments were necessary to continue effectively and efficiently meeting the needs of the campus community,” Skerik said.
For example, Au Bon Pain experienced long lines and overcrowding last year during breakfast hours. To fix this issue, the hot breakfast hours at Kaufman Dining Hall were extended. Other options include sandwiches and made-to-order omelets.
“We experienced a significant decline in participation at Kaufman, but the operating costs remained the same,” Davis said. “Removing swipes at ABP before 10:30, coupled with the additional food offerings, allows us to maintain existing costs and meet the demand that exceeded our original projections.”
Soon after students received the email, a petition was created to change the hours back to last year’s schedule. With more than 100 signatures, some students were angered when the petition was removed. Senior Director of Dining Services Josh Davis said that he immediately reached out to students to address their concern.
“We’re part of a campus community that works together to solve problems, address concerns and respect each other’s viewpoints,” Davis said. “While we didn’t remove the petition, we also didn’t believe a petition was the best method for initiating a discussion. It is never our intention to upset the campus community, but there is a level of responsibility that we share to make decisions based on what’s best for the business and the community we serve.”
Dining services have experienced some financial stress that needed to be addressed quickly. Rather than increase food prices, they thought it would be better to reduce service hours and keep low prices. “Our belief was that the student population would better appreciate the necessary changes instead of increased costs,” Davis said.
Not all of the changes were appreciated, however. Many students did not agree with changing the Freshens menu to only smoothies on weekends. Due to limited space and resources at Freshens, Kaufman makes the food and transports it there. This created an issue due to the limited labor, causing more work to be done at an additional cost. This also created more food waste. “We also observed limited weekend demand for the full-service menu, which resulted in lower-than-expected revenue and an adjustment to the Saturday and Sunday menu and hours,” Davis said.
Davis and his staff are working to continue improving the dining experience for students. For example, they would like to add more food options at the Cage. Kaufman has also become more sustainable and Chartwells now donates overproduced food to Hesed House every Thursday through a new food recovery network.
Many changes have been made to NCC’s dining services, and there are still more to come. Davis encourages students to be open with him about any concerns and to be patient with the changes. “We value student feedback and have made some tweaks to the operations based on the feedback we received and will continue to work with students to meet the needs of the campus.”
