Although Wash. U. Dining Services has provided students with high-quality food, many have been frustrated by some of its practices. Many students feel that Dining Services’ prices are unreasonably exorbitant. Others have been upset to find that many of the foods they enjoy have been dropped from the menu in the Danforth University Center (DUC) throughout the year, without any prior warning or communication. Students have every right to raise these legitimate concerns, and Dining Services should be criticized when it fails to live up to their expectations.
Still, Dining Services has made real efforts recently to improve their operations, and these should not go unnoticed. Student purchases will now be tracked in order to observe and match food offerings more closely with student preferences. In addition, Student Union (SU) representatives will be consulted in order to address students’ concerns. We think that these measures are a good start for improving Dining Services, and support Dining Services’ efforts to implement them.
Dining Services has begun, for the first time, to track student purchases at eateries around campus and to analyze that data to better understand what students actually look for. Market research of this kind is standard business practice around the country and is long overdue at the University. This plan is a solid step toward overhauling the menus at campus eateries and ensuring that the food offered reflects the real desires of the student body—not just those voiced in surveys. In the long run, Dining Services’ new system will ensure that the foods most consumed by students are not mistakenly eliminated from the range of campus food options.
Dining Services has also utilized SU representatives’ advice in deciding what foods to offer in the new Wohl Center cafeteria. This will increase the likelihood that students on the South 40 will have more appealing food options than they might otherwise, and is an encouraging signal that Dining Services may value student input more highly in the future.
Other interesting ideas have been proposed as well. In order to deal with the long lines students often face in the DUC, Dining Services is considering the addition of a system wherein students could place food orders in advance from a computer, and then pick up the food once they arrive.
Dining Services’ operations have not been without their problems. We would like to see more effort from them to communicate what they plan to do and why prices often seem unreasonably high. More effort could be made to publicly inform students in advance when a menu item will be dropped, so that students have a chance to respond, and Dining Services should do a better job of explaining why their prices remain so high. Still, these proposals are a step in the right direction, and credit should be given where it is due.
