Your Campus Foodservice Provider

lifesaver · #1 02-19-2003, 01:07 PM

I did a search and came up with nothing, so...

Who is your campuses' food service provider?

My university currently has ARAMark, and they SUCK. I cant begin to tell you how bad they suck. Not as much as the VP of Business Affairs who inked the sucky ass contract. Yeah, he actually allowed a contract to be written for 10 years (its up this fall) which allows them to set their own prices, only pays the univ 8% and only requires them to provide foodservice at one location somewhere on campus for 12 hours a day. So they could actually set up a lunch wagon (aka roach coach) in the parking lot and meet thir contractual obligations for 22,000+ students.

When I started they were acceptable, at least you could eat on campus past 2:30 pm. Then there wa sa period where they didnt care and you couldnt find food past 2pm. Seriously, were a non-traditional campus and what about all the folks who come to campus at night for class? We, as an org, arent allowed by the contract to bring our own food to our own chapter meetings, any food consumed on campus for events or meetings has to be purchased from ARAMark catering, at (for example) $75.00 for a cheese tray. Under the contract as it is in existance, we couldnt even have a mixer picnic on campus without having to buy the food from them.

There was actually a 2 year period where they didnt even offer foodservice at the dorms. So if you lived at the dorms, you better hope you had a microwave, and a fridge. Did I mention that our campus is pretty much in the country? Theres a McDonalds, Texaco, Subway and Whataburger within walking distance of campus. Thats it. If all your food money is locked up on the meal card, youre screwed on the weekend. Did I mention that 2,000 students live on campus? A Whopper cost $2.19 (without cheese). THis last fall, they realized their contract was coming up, so they re-tooled and began staying open till 6pm (big deal

) offering better quality food. and making an attempt to please the students. I have heard that before I got there, (and this is from administrators) that they have always sucked. My view which I expressed to a couple administrators last night at a meeting was the improvments recently made were too little too late. Theyd be fools to resign ARAMark. I am sick of their broken promises. I am sick of seeing a foodervice director get hired, tell us he cares and wants to make a difference, then quit after 3 months. UGH. Seriously, I hate ARAMark with the white-heat of a thousand suns.

The other two companoes in the ruinning are Sodexho and Chartwells. I know that Chartwels has the contrat at SWT and peeps there seem to be somewhat happy with them.

Give me your opinion of foodservice, on your campus, and quality, variety, retail offerings on campus, (pizza hut, taco bell, etc.). Just wanting to knwo how things stack up here.

ARAMARK sucks! Did I mention that already?

#2 02-19-2003, 01:24 PM

we had Chartwell's at UW-Whitewater for a few years, they seemed pretty decent... I forget what the other one we had was, but it was horrible....

SATX*APhi · #3 02-19-2003, 01:25 PM

Ugh, St. Mary's goes through Aramark and blah! I don't like them. The only time I thanked God for their service was once when the electricity on campus went out and it was pitch black. They BBQ'd in the parking lot of the gym for free.

We had a good amount of fun that night, trying to pack clothes in the pitch black dorms so that we could go and stay at a sister's apt. Good times. But anyway, I'm sooo off topic!

Point: You are definitely right. Aramark sucks! Their prices are extremely high and their food is just gross. Ugh!

Since our campus is extremely small, we have the caf, run by Aramark, and a Subway.

AchtungBaby80 · #4 02-19-2003, 01:39 PM

Haha, your post made my day! I'm still laughing. I do feel sorry for you, though--I can't believe the school would let the foodservice clowns get away with not offering food past 2 o'clock in the afternoon, at any point in time! That's nuts. I thought OUR campus foodservice was bad, but trust me, my friend, yours is much worse. I'm not exactly sure which company UK uses, but we do have a pretty wide selection of food available on campus any time from around 7 in the morning to 11 at night or so. Let's see...there's three main cafeterias with burger places, Italian places, deli places, etc. There are also three "specialty" places--a grill, a cafe in the library that tries to come as close to gourmet as school food can, and another cafe in the office tower that has mostly coffee and pastries and stuff with sprouts on it (beuuuurk). The problem is, even though we have all this variety, the food sucks. Well, all except for the specialty places--they're tolerable. But I learned freshman year to stay out of the cafeterias, especially the one next to the dorm I lived in...unless you really wanted to spend the night in the bathroom. Aside from that, it's not bad, but prices are a little steep and I'm glad I don't live in the dorm anymore so I don't have to buy a mealcard (dorm residents are required to put $650 per semester on their mealcards). It sounds like you all really need to do some homework and find a foodservice company that treats you all a little better.

PS. My campus has roach coaches, too. I haven't ventured near one, and I won't, either.

AXJules · #5 02-19-2003, 02:01 PM

Funny you mentioned it, this was in our local paper today.
Apparently Bon Appetit is the way to go

Mizzou is ok, we run our own dining halls through Campus Dining Services. The problem is that several dining halls have absolutely no intent on producing anything edible, while the really nice dorm has stir fry, take out, and a dessert bar.
My favorite thing the dining halls do is midnite breakfast. They make free french toast, pancakes, hash browns, and whatever else from 11-3 during finals week.
I guess the most important thing to remember is that dorm food might suck, but it's fancy cuisine compared to sorority house food.

sigmagrrl · #6 02-19-2003, 02:44 PM

I was VERY lucky in this area. I attended a culinary school, so the grub was always good, second rate at the very least. I don't remember a bad meal! I find that if a school at least offers cereal at a meal, most students can walk away happy! I loved our dining halls! Hell, I even worked in them when on my internship! We had rotations, and I worked in our dining halls, quick service restaurant, and our hotel kitchens! JWU ROCKS!

Kevin · #7 02-19-2003, 02:49 PM

We have Chartwells. Their contract as far as I know only extends to the University Center (Student Union). Technically we couldn't even bring a soda from home and drink it there... Maybe if it was Coca-Cola brand (our campus is a Coke-only campus). The food is fairly normal as they have bought franchises in some of your smaller, less regulated restaurants like Chic Filet, Blimpies, etc. Their generic food court stuff isn't too bad. The stuff in the dorms is another story though.. While it doesn't taste bad it's almost all fried and just generally unhealthy. They do their part to contribute to the freshman 15, 20 or whatever.

Their prices are fairly high for hors d'ouvres in the conference rooms but not too bad.

CC1GC · #8 02-19-2003, 02:53 PM

wow holy shit, i thought we were the only ones putting up with aramark...hearing what life said, Aramark at ottawaU's campus gave us all the same problems that you're experiencing...I don't know how long they've been around, but i do know the student federation has been trying to get rid of them since i started over 5 years ago. I think they might be gone soon....

low hours of operation, ridiculous prices, no selection at all....well at least they're consistent.

I've never heard of chartwell's, but from my experiences with sodexho i don't know if they would be any better....but Aramark does %*($# suck...

at times the selection was so low i felt like being herded among other sheep to a trough...we had no option but to eat whatever slop they'd throw at us. I ate so many damn whistle dogs that yr. i could challenge that japanese kid for the hotdog record.

Roseblum15 · #9 02-19-2003, 03:44 PM

We have Sodexho here on campus. I guess they do a decent job, I haven't heard to many complaints except for the fact that it is just cafeteria food. I don't think we could get anything on campus that everyone would be happy with. They have a breakfast lunch and dinner meal during the week and a brunch and dinner on the weekends. In addition to that we also have a snack bar type place were you can get a hamburger, chicken sandwich and other stuff like that. The snack bar is open from like 10-6:00ish. Then when that closes we have a pizza and sub station that is open from 6:30-10:30. So looking back our campus isn't really that bad. You just tend to get sick of the food because there isn't really a great variety in food.

cherub · #10 02-19-2003, 06:34 PM

We were lucky, in that our school didn't contract out or food - everything was taken care of by the university. My rez had a late-night caf open till midnight, which was handy. We have pay as you go plan, so you buy so many meal points based on how large your appetite is. There's opportunities to buy more points if you need them and you can carry over a certain amount of points per semester. We had 4 big cafeterias, 2 variety stores, two coffee houses/cafes and a Second Cup cart, which was my fav.

Best part was that certain restaurants, cab companies and stores on campus took meal points so you could buy things like magazines, candy and nicer dinners. Only prob is the prices were jacked up a bit.

Food was ok - I think anytime you're preparing mass meals, the taste is never as good as home cooking. But at least we had variety.

aephi alum · #11 02-19-2003, 07:29 PM

Back in the day, my school used Aramark (I think they were still called ARA). One word: UGH. Their food literally made me sick.

Fortunately, I had alternatives. I lived in a dorm with suites; each suite had a full kitchen, and I'm a good cook (if I do say so myself

). We had a grocery store in the student center (not Aramark-run) that had a good deli counter. We also had the lunch trucks - some were roach coaches, but there was one truck that served really good Chinese food. And not too far from campus we had places like Au Bon Pain.

I carried a minimal balance on my meal card so that I could pick up my morning bagel and tea or coffee, and that was it.

angelic1 · #12 02-19-2003, 08:24 PM

Reading some of these posts and from my experience of visiting other schools.. i can only say that I am lucky here. I lived on campus for three years (two years in the sorority house-- so we had to have an oncampus meal plan). Though I didnt mind. I liked the food and never had a problem with anything not being open. Two places are all you can eat, Hokie grill has pizza hut and chick fila, owens has a good mix of different types of food, deet's place.. good ice cream and pastries, and then there is west end.. steak, wraps, pasta, grill, etc....which they make once you order. My parents were even jealous of how good I ate everyday...

hah, i guess you could say thats one area we are great at and win awards.. food

Betarulz! · #13 02-19-2003, 10:04 PM

We don't contract out foodservice here...I don't think.

We're an all-Pepsi campus which is nice b/c I like pepsi better, plus they've sponsored a leadership scholarship, and you can get all the free pepsi you want for student organizations so long as you submit a request form...actually I guess this year they put a limit on how much you could have. 2 cases for every 40 people at an event.

As for everything else I think it's done by the University. Dining Halls is University Dining service and I guess they try to find out what students will eat.. I just know that the food made by our house cook is a million times better, we have like THE best cook on campus. I think the last dining hall closes at 7pm while the others close earlier.

As for the unions, we have Sbarro, Imperial Palace (chinese), Subway, and Burger King, as well as Starbucks. There is a convience store in the union too and that has just normal 7-11 type food. There are two more conveinence stores on City Campus and one in the East Campus union too. I'm not sure what all is on East Campus, as I never go there. They are open until 5pm on the weekdays, while BK, and the other chain resteraunts set their own hours...BK is notorious for having the strangest hours, particularly on the weekends. They won't be open at noon on sunday but they'll be open at 330 on Saturday, yet close by 430. They are an on-running joke on campus.

The best thing about Nebraska though is that City campus is a block from the Lincoln Downtown area. I've got at least 7 resteraunts within 2 blocks of my house. The bars are on "O" street and my house is on "R" Street which will be great when I finally reach 21. So that's all within walking distance.

juniorgrrl · #14 02-20-2003, 01:07 AM

LSU is all about outsourcing. If they could outsource the students and get a fat kickback for the Chancellor, they'd do it before you could say "screwjob!"

We have Chartwells on campus. The food in the cafeterias was pretty nasty. There are 2 on campus. The one on the "ghetto" side of campus was worse than the one on the other side. Only one of them was open on the weekend, alternating days. So, if you wanted to eat on Saturday, you could either risk your life to get to the other end of campus or just go somewhere else.

The Union has Chick-Fil-A and something called Upper Crust, which is just nasty nasty Subway. And a few other things that I can't remember.

LSU has also sold the bookstore to Barnes and Noble, so there's a Starbucks. We've also got a CC's Coffee House in the Law School, and a PJ's Coffee House in the Union. And a Domino's on campus.

Overall, Chartwells didn't suck too badly. I'd give them a 5 on a scale of 10.

prospectiverushee · #15 02-20-2003, 01:57 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by juniorgrrl
LSU is all about outsourcing. If they could outsource the students and get a fat kickback for the Chancellor, they'd do it before you could say "screwjob!"

We have Chartwells on campus. The food in the cafeterias was pretty nasty. There are 2 on campus. The one on the "ghetto" side of campus was worse than the one on the other side. Only one of them was open on the weekend, alternating days. So, if you wanted to eat on Saturday, you could either risk your life to get to the other end of campus or just go somewhere else.

The Union has Chick-Fil-A and something called Upper Crust, which is just nasty nasty Subway. And a few other things that I can't remember.

LSU has also sold the bookstore to Barnes and Noble, so there's a Starbucks. We've also got a CC's Coffee House in the Law School, and a PJ's Coffee House in the Union. And a Domino's on campus.

Overall, Chartwells didn't suck too badly. I'd give them a 5 on a scale of 10.

lol@you. Yeah, I'm waiting for the day they outsource Res Life. The B&N thing was ughh....don't even get me started on that.

Anyway, I actually liked the food in the Pentagon. At least I was assured that I would be getting chicken in some shape or form 5 nights out of 7. Highland just sucked. The choices were always, Mexican Bar, Breakfast Bar, Pasta Bar, and the Potato Bar. Occassionally they would try to shake things up by serving steak and shrimp, but they even sucked at that. One night, they were having a steak and shrimp night and me and my friend were in line. This girls comes to the serving area and tells one of the kitchen ladies that her steak was green and one of her friends steak's was green when they cut into it. The kitchen lady looked the girl dead in the eye and said "Oh no, it's not green. That's just the jucies." First I fell out laughing at that( whoever heard of green steak juice), then I ordered the shrimp

juniorgrrl- You forgot the ever popular Pizza Hut that located in the Union as well