A student puts pizza in a box at the Bear’s Den. (Photo by Sara Reed / Student Life)

With Bite of St. Louis and local food trucks, Dining Services has been working this semester to expand and improve dining options on campus in an effort to address complaints from students about the variety and quality of campus food.

The complaints come as Dining Services struggles to compensate for supply chain interruptions and staffing issues. 

Washington University Associate Director of Dining Operations Andrew Watling said the food trucks were “brought in largely to help us add more variety and options where we’re having a hard time staffing, especially some of the opening shifts at Bear’s Den.”

Some students have liked the addition of the food trucks in front of the South 40, which have ranged from Seoul Taco to Zacchi to Pappy’s. Sophomore Kiana Angela Macharia said that she has been to the food trucks three times and “two of the three times I really liked the food” and that she would go again.

Other students were frustrated by longer lines at food trucks. 

“A lot of times when they start, I’m on campus and I’m not able to get the food truck stuff, and I know that even if you get there at 5:00 [p.m.] you can be waiting for an hour,” sophomore Lara Briggs said. “It’s often not even an option to get that because I would be joining the line at 5:30 [p.m.] and they might be sold out by then.”

In addition to food trucks, Dining Services has implemented other food initiatives such as Bite of St. Louis, which brings local food to campus dining. Moreover, Watling said that Dining is aware of students’ wishes for more food variety and is attempting to bring back more custom options, such as Danforth University Center quesadillas — a widely popular food choice before the pandemic.

“It is very quickly moved up to the top of my list of things that need to come back at some point,” Watling said. “So the quesadilla was taken off of the menu for a couple of reasons, partly because it takes a lot of labor to do it. It’s also by far the slowest thing in that station of the DUC.” 

Watling added that Dining Services is working to bring back custom options without slowing the lines down. To do this, one idea is a customization option available only on GrubHub so that the food could be made ahead of time without lengthening in-person lines. 

Another central concern of students and parents in recent weeks has been the depletion of meal plans early in the semester. Watling explained that Dining Services increased the prices of some items to account for higher food costs — the cost of food products used for kosher meals, he said, went up by 30 to 40% — but that overall there was only an increase of 4% to cover inflation.

Watling said Dining Services has not gotten complaints from parents or students about meal plans running out more quickly than in past years. “The meal plans at WashU are kind of designed to run out. You’re designed to be supplemented by Bear Bucks a little bit at the end,” he said. “What we’ve really tried to make sure that we do a better job of now is explaining upfront the different sized meal plans and what those are supposed to cover.”

As some food prices increase, students have also expressed concern about the quality of consistent food items. Macharia specifically points to a time where she received a half and half that contained raw chicken — she said that she has not been able to eat another half and half since the incident.

Addressing quality concerns like Macharia’s, Watling said the inconsistent quality is due to supply issues that have prevented the University from repeatedly buying the same product.

“We went through a few different types of chicken tenders at the Bear’s Den at one point because we just had to take whatever product we could get,” Watling said. “We’ve gotten some that don’t meet our standards and so we have to send them back because it’s not a good enough product for us to serve on campus.”

Allergies are another issue that some students have had to navigate. “I have an allergy and I am on the Simply Made menu, which is an allergen-friendly option, but that only has so many options,” said Briggs, who is allergic to fish. “There are certain places on campus that I avoid just out of fear of cross-contamination. So that does constrain what I can eat.”

Watling said Dining Services is trying to expand the allergy program on campus.

“We’re really trying to focus on growing those menus, growing those offerings,” Watling said of the allergy-friendly options. “And just making sure that those students aren’t just given one option, but that they can really thrive and really fully utilize the dining program on campus.”

Despite the limited options, Briggs says that students have recognized the effort dining has put into the allergen program.

“I have been grateful for the support of dining services,” she said. “The dietitians have been really helpful in talking about food concerns and they give me access to the allergen menu, which has been great.”

Dining Services continues to work to have operations return to their pre-pandemic levels.

“We’re focused on how we get the campus dining program reopened and return fully from where we had all the kinds of shutdowns and adjustments during COVID,” Watling said. “There’s some things that are still shut down because of COVID. But a lot of that is bringing staff back and getting that done to the right level.”