Wesleyan dining services will be radically different within two years, reconfiguring how and where students eat, according to Director of Auxiliary Operations and Campus Services Manny Cunard. By the end of this semester, Cunard will release a Request for Proposals (RFP) based on the WSA’s new dining concept statement that will likely draw bids from four major food services providers: Sodexho USA, the Compass Group, CulinArt, and the current provider, Aramark. The founders and owners of Wes Wings and Red and Black Café, Edward Thorndike, Jr. ’89 and Karen Kaffen-Polascik ’89, initially expressed interest in bidding but have now decided against doing so.
Even if Aramark is selected for a new contract, Cunard claims, there will be changes in the way campus dining operates.
“By going to this process, we’ll be able to renew our relationship with a company, Aramark or whatever company, and provide an entirely new kind of dining service,” Cunard said. “The opportunity couldn’t be better because we’re building new spaces and crafting new dining concepts.”
As it currently stands, Aramark, a multi-billion dollar international food services corporation, has been the campus dining provider for the University since fall 1989. During that time, it has weathered student criticism and union tensions, but its food has nonetheless become an accepted part of campus life at Wesleyan. Still, grumbling about the rigidity of meal plans and food quality abounds, though the WSA has sought to create flexibility with its new dining plan for next year in its recent “Concept of Dining Purpose Statement.”
“I think that Aramark’s hours of service and quality of service are uniformly bad,” said Luke Schleusener ’07. “They take advantage of their monopoly position to overcharge on points, offer limited and equally unhealthy options, and reduce hours. I feel as if we should follow Bowdoin’s lead, or Middlebury’s, and establish our own food services.”
Others have placed blame for current shortcomings in the quality of dining services on structural limitations outside of Aramark’s control.
“Another major difference between Wesleyan and other schools is that, with the exception of Mocon and the redesigned Summerfields, none of our dining facilities was ever designed as such, Davenport being the most glaring example,” said WSA Finance and Facilities Committee Representative Gabe Tabak ’06. “Wesleyan has been sticking square pegs in round holes for years. Aramark takes a lot of flak from students, but I honestly don’t know if any vendor could have managed dining effectively with the physical limitations we have. There’s minimal space, outmoded equipment, and fire code limitations for a building that size.”
According to this line of thinking, it is the University that is to blame for inefficient configuration of dining venues, inefficiency which, according to Cunard, has lowered worker productivity and increased the price of food.
“We have not done well as an institution to control our physical plant effectively,” Cunard said. “We’re all over the place. We’ll be much more efficient when we open the new campus center.”
The requirement set out in the WSA’s new plan, which include “high standards for quality, value and community cohesiveness,” will have to be met by the next dining services provider. Additionally, the statement calls for an all-night dining venue, alterations to the meal plans to make meals more broadly available and less restrictive, community-fostering meal environments, and the creation of a composting system in collaboration with Long Lane Farm.
“My biggest problems with the dining program are the hours and the prices,” said WSA Dining Committee Representative Zelda Ferguson ’06, who co-authored the WSA’s dining concept statement with fellow WSA Representative Max Ornstein ’09. “Prices on everyday items like fruit, yogurt, [et cetera], are way too high, especially when compared to prices at Stop and Shop.”
High prices, one common focus of complaints, may not substantively change, claims Cunard, who points to the fact that students pay a premium of 10 to 12 percent on food to cover labor benefits not seen in non-union dining service providers.
“Yes, there is a premium cost, and to support the union, students pay 10 to 12 percent more for their products,” Cunard said. “I strongly support the union here.”
Another proposed plan would create a limit on how much higher campus prices can be than comparable area prices.
“Basically, we make sure that campus dining prices don’t get more than a certain percentage higher than that of nearby vendors,” Tabak wrote. “Thus, if we calculate that our labor costs add X percent to the cost of food, we make sure that the price of a pint of ice cream—for instance—at Weshop is no more than X percent greater than the A&P price for that pint. This would allow Wesleyan dining to support our union labor while making sure that prices stay within a fixed range. Obviously, the current system does not do this, and many prices are horribly out of whack as a result.”
According to Aramark Director of Dining Services Bridgett Stapleton, such high prices find justification in the fact that Aramark employees at Wesleyan have “almost three times” the benefits and wages standard as set out by the University’s Employment Code for Service Contractors.
“Our pricing strategy includes intense, competitive shopping (we obtain pricing from all local establishments with similar products, other area colleges and universities, and local convenience stores) before marketing any of our items,” Stapleton said. “The prices of the products we serve are comparable with other University venues.”
The process to select the next provider will begin when Cunard synthesizes student and University needs into a document which will be released for potential bidders, who will then respond within a fixed amount of time with their proposals—what they can provide for and at what cost.
“The University is in the process of settling costs for next year,” Cunard said. “Two things could happen [after the companies send in their bids]: we choose one winner, or we have two or three come to campus and give us a presentation of their proposal. In all probability, we’ll have some on-campus presentations.”
The committee that will review the bids, the WSA Dining Services Advisory Committee, is composed of students, faculty, and University administrators. Cunard stressed that flexibility and ability to accommodate student needs as laid out in the WSA plan are the top criteria for evaluating bidders.
“We know what our students would like to see in regards to meal plans and dining options,” Stapleton said. “We know the pulse of the Wesleyan community as we move into the developmental stage of devising our proposal that we will present to the University.”
Thorndike, however, questions whether it will make a difference which one of the bidders, each of them big corporations with many different operations, is chosen by the University.
“Is it the devil you know or the devil you don’t know?” Thorndike said. “While we don’t think you have to be a multibillionaire corporation to run the meal plan, that’s who we would be competing against. That’s our general sense of who the University feels more comfortable with at this point.”
Thorndike and Kaffen-Polascik, founders and owners of Wes Wings and Red and Black Café, have decided that they would stand little chance against large corporations such as Aramark and Sodexho USA.
Thorndike points to his and Kaffen-Polascik’s long-standing involvement with the University and campus dining, counting off the number of Food Service Directors with whom they have worked during their time at Wesleyan. But they are still looking to be a part of campus, no matter which company is selected come the end of the semester.
“By not being a bidder, it allows us to be a little more involved in the bidding process in order to make sure that as new concepts are being developed, we ensure that WesWings and Red and Black [Café] are integral parts of the new dining program,” Thorndike said.
The dining committee is beginning preliminary evaluations now by visiting universities serviced by the potential bidders, such as Boston University and MIT.
Notwithstanding which corporation is selected to run campus dining, Cunard and Ferguson claim that the most dramatic change will occur when the Usdan University Center, which will contain a new “marketplace,” is opened. They claim it will centralize food services and thereby make all of campus dining more efficient, lowering prices by increasing the productivity per worker.
“We can have the best dining service for a small college in the country,” Cunard said. “I’d love for students to say, ‘We have, as a residential college, the best dining in the country.’”