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A Recipe for Success
Written by Nick Hansen
Saturday, 08 July 2006
By now you should have all received your letter from Pacific’s fine food service, Bon Appétit. Their goal for you is to “feed your brain” with “organic” and “locally grown” food. They also claim that you don’t have enough time in your busy day to “shop, prepare and cleanup” after you eat. As a senior, I find this grossly unfair and somewhat false.
Last year I lived in the Townhouses, this meant I had a kitchen and a small backyard which allowed for a BBQ for grilling. Every day I would cook a meal, and cleanup after myself. I had time shop, prepare and clean up. I also was taking 18 units of classes. On top of that, I had a raging social life and I pulled through with a 3.3 GPA this past semester.
For students who don’t have access to a kitchen the meal plan is great but it could use a little more overhauling.
After looking through the included brochure, which I might add included the same information I was presented when I first came to UoP about 3 years ago. The 19-meal play with 300 tiger bucks, the 14-meal plan with 200 tiger bucks and the 10-meal plan with 100 tiger bucks. And then the 5 meal plan with no tiger bucks.
The cost of these plans has always been interesting to me. Just looking at the semester based plan a 5-meal plan is $675. That should include some 500 meals (10 week semester) which comes out to $1.35 a meal.
The jump up to a 10 meal plan is more than double the cost of a 5 meal plan. 10 meals is $1,895. Even if 100 tiger bucks were subtracted out, the extra 5 meals raises the initial cost by $1,120. The quality of food is the same for those extra 5 meals, so why the tremendous increase in price?
But then for an extra 4 meals the price difference is only $90 and for another 5 the difference is $88. But yet Bon Appétit is still making a bundle off the students. The catch is this: Any meals you don’t use doesn’t “roll over” to the next week, plus any tiger bucks you don’t use also don’t “roll over” to the next semester.
Other schools of similar size, take Dartmouth College in New Hampshire for example, allow for students to pay a certain amount which gets accredited to their student account and then they slowly subtract for each meal from that amount. So if it’s the end of the year, and they have $250 left on their account, that same number will still be there the following fall.
I guess what I am getting to is the mad rush to use up tiger bucks at the end of the semester is pretty astounding and that Pacific students should have their tiger bucks roll over.
Secondly, some tips for Bon Appétit to include in their “Top Reasons to buy an on-campus dining plan” should include: you don’t have to do your own dishes, or you don’t learn how to cook your own food, or lastly you graduate college without the ability to cook for yourself in a healthy way which makes you a better person in life. Well that last one was a bit long but it is true.
Take any student that never has the chance to cook for themselves, and as I have noticed, several students at Pacific don’t know how to cook, even eggs for example, will find themselves between a rock and a hard place if they don’t get any instruction on how to cook.
So my last statement is to offer to students the ability to teach them how to cook easy and great tasting meals in a one-on-one environment which is greatly advertised as to the benefits of cooking for yourself in a manner which is easy to understand. It would be smart for Bon Appétit to do this as it creates a bond between the food service company and student.
Views: 576
Comments (6)
1. 08:10PM 07-09-2006
Good point on your article, but you should include a plan on how you plan to have bon appetit teach students. There are no kitchens that students could use, let alone a kitchen big enough to teach kids how to cook. And would you really want bon appetit teaching you how to cook?
Guest
2. 03:17PM 07-14-2006
RE:
Good point Richmond, but also they'd have to "test the market" to see how many students would be interested in learning how to cook. Maybe they could do one-on-one teaching or doing a special weekend thing in the main dinning hall using some mobile kitchen like stuff.
Guest
3. 08:51PM 07-16-2006
RE:
According to the school, you aren't paying per meal, you're paying for the block of meals. It doesn't make much sense but the school prices meal plans expecting you to not use around 40% of your meals. And even though you might pay the same for a breakfast or a lunch or dinner, dinners are most expensive.
Guest
4. 01:18AM 08-30-2006
I hope a bon Appetit exec reads this art
I agree with your article up until the teaching the students to cook. The quality, choice, and health of the food offered is below any other private (or public!) college that I have visited. And secondly, what's with the gloomy lighting? I had almost forgotten that dining at the Quad was like being in an Edgar Allan Poe poem, sitting next to some bloke remembering their lost Lenore. As to teaching students how to cook, it would be too costly, not many students would have the time, and I wouldn't want to be taught by anyone who cooks that awful food at Bon Appetit. What needs to be addressed is the points you bring up in your article. I like how you mentioned that Bon Appetit does not allow rollover. They also do not allow using your meals for another person, save Saturdays. I don't understand why, if I pay unruly amounts of money for 19 meals per week, why on Sunday I cannot buy my visiting friend a meal at the 'why are we eating here anyways' dining hall. Over the summer, I took classes at Boston University and ended up working at their dining hall. Firstly, the choice of food was much larger, with designated areas for a grill, with the likes of burgers to stir-fry; a pizza oven for pizza to baked ziti; a pasta zone for, well, pasta; a vegan zone for a different vegan dish every day; a main course area for the likes of roast beef to bbq chicken; I'm not done; a salad bar; a sandwich station (with sandwich meat that is not dry like bon Appetit's); and finally a dessert station. On top of this spectacular choice, the students served themselves. This is the same format that I had experienced when I visited Villanova, UNH, Penn State, and a few other colleges. The only area that was not self serve was the sandwich station, where I actually worked, where the sandwiches made would make a Subway fanatic less partial to the franchise. What I am getting at is the dining hall at the University of the Pacific has a lot of problems. And until they are fixed, students will continue to complain and walk away dissatisfied despite bon Appetit's extensive PR campaign. Maybe if they spent their money on better things, I don't know, say, better food and preparation, rather than on public relations, they wouldn't HAVE to spend that money on PR. And that would make everyone happy.
Guest
5. 02:01PM 09-05-2006
re: I hope a bon Appetit exec reads this
Ben you bring up great points. The part about teaching pacific students how to cook was meant to show others that you can make meals besides mac and cheese and how easy it is. I love to cook but I definitely didn't learn at this school. It could be beneficial to some students. Summit seems to make some decent food... and having one of those cooks, like the guy who was on good day sacramento teach it would be awesome. But yet again, I agree with you totally.
PacificPerspectives ripped on Pacific's Food Service a bunch last year and maybe its time now that The Pacifican is doing it as well with their advertising campaigns that maybe they'll see what the students are saying and change it.
In all reality, Pacific takes things too seriously and need look at what the students are really saying, instead of what they want to believe students are saying.
Guest
6. 08:53PM 09-09-2006
re: I hope a bon Appetit exec reads this
^^^ Agreed, Nick. This calls for an article on Bon Appetit. I'm on it!!!
Guest
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