While some degree of grumbling about school food is to be expected at any university, Campus Dining continues to stir significant controversy at Stony Brook with student claims of overpriced food, inadequate standards of service, and a lack of food options on the weekends. Campus Dining Services, in conjunction with the not-for-profit Faculty Student Association (FSA), has been given the authority by Stony Brook University to provide food services to the campus and to maintain the dining facilities.
A typical complaint by a student on campus has to do with the price of food. A bottle of Minute Maid juice costs $2.10, a cup of fresh fruit $4.20 and salad is charged by the ounce. Junior Joshua Greene, resident student and a frequent patron of the Kelly Dining Center, said ‘Everything is so expensive’hellip;I don’t know how, but I always run out of money before the semester ends.’
According to Lisa Ospitale, the Marketing Director for Campus Dining Services, a number of factors contribute to high food prices on campus, including dining employees’ health benefits, relatively high wages for student workers at $7.15 per hour, and a lack of storage that would enable bulk item purchases. ‘We are not like Costco or Wal-Mart and we don’t buy things in bulk because we lack storage space. Hence, we don’t buy and sell food as economically as them,’ said Ospitale. For comparison, a black and white cookie, individually packaged and sold at a retail supermarket, costs 99 cents, while the Union Deli charges $1.60 for the same cookie. That constitutes a 60% difference in prices from a competing retail outlet, which is already in a higher price class than a wholesale store, such as Costco or Wal-Mart.
A quart of milk is $2.05 at the Union Deli, while a local off campus supermarket charges 84 cents. A 14 oz box of Lucky Charms cereal is $6.15 on campus and $4.59 at the same supermarket off campus. A 12 oz can of Skippy’s peanut butter costs $3.15 on campus and $2.49 for an 18 oz jar off campus, which constitutes roughly a 23% surcharge for an item that is only 66% the size. 12 pieces of Ferrero Rocher cost $8.99 on campus and $3.29 off campus.’ A package of Raffaello costs $8.99 on campus and $2.99 off campus. A package of Nature Valley granola costs $13.80 on campus and $3.19 off campus, which makes the on campus price over 430% more than a retail supermarket.
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Food prices are set by a Resolutions Committee that decides the prices after comparing them with offerings from vendors in the Stony Brook community. The committee is comprised mainly of FSA members.
Since each SUNY school must go through a bidding process to determine the best vendor fit, there are different vendors for different schools. Stony Brook employs Chartwells as its main vendor for most of the dining venues in West Campus. For instance, at SUNY New Paltz, all freshman students are required to have meal plans, but it is a carte blanche system, allowing unlimited trips to dining halls for $1,340 a semester. New Paltz employs Sodexho as its main dining vendor. During students’ second semester, they have an all-you-can-eat policy with a basic meal plan that provides 14 meals per week in addition to a declining debit, at the cost of $1,260. The basic meal plan that Stony Brook offers costs students $1,430 per semester.
‘Our standards of living are different so you can’t compare us with other schools from other areas. For instance, a school in Florida has different costs than we do,’ said Ospitale. Yet, a pepperoni pizza slice at the University of Buffalo costs only $1.65 as compared with the $1.70 cheese slice and $2.50 topping pizza at Stony Brook.
Some SUNY schools opt to provide dining services in-house, bypassing vendors altogether. Geneseo University is one such school that has taken this route. The governing body at Geneseo utilizes a national comparison to set prices competitively. According to Ginny Geer-Mentry, the Associate Director of Campus Auxiliary Services at Geneseo, their prices are ‘fair and in line with restaurants in the area.’ While prices at Geneseo have gone up over the years, the increases have largely matched inflation. Students there enjoy a carte blanche system as well as a declining balance.
Following in this vein, the Stony Brook FSA owns and operates the food services at the Health Science Center (HSC). Many of the meal choices at the HSC are less expensive compared to other campus outlets and are greater in variety. ‘HSC targets a different set of audience including patients, doctors and HSC students. But on-campus we serve a different population,’ said Angela Agnello, Director of Marketing and Communications at FSA.
In addition to high food prices, students continually raise concerns regarding the quality of the food offered at different venues on campus, complaining of stale pizza at the Kelly Dining Center and hard sushi offered at the Student Activities Center (SAC). There is also a lack of diversity in food offerings on campus, according to many students.
‘They have the same things everywhere’hellip;at the SAC, Kelly or Union. The only place that is different is at Jasmine but they close early and is so much farther [from Baruch]. I always end up getting the same things at Kelly,’ said a sophomore resident at Baruch College, in Kelly Quad.
Refuting the lack of variety on campus, Ospitale offered, ‘You really have to look at the campus as a whole. You’ve got your H-Quad which serves Taco Bell and you have the SAC, which has a lot of health options including the salad bar and subs. You also have Dunkin Donuts at Tabler and Roth has Chinese cuisine at Deng Lee’s.’
On the future of food offerings on campus, Agnello said, ‘You also have to realize that with renovations comes variety. We always listen to student’s concerns and improve our services based on that. The Caribbean Night in H Quad, for example, was planned because students wanted this. HSC around 2-3 years ago underwent major renovation and that is why you see such an improved service.’ The FSA also plans to add a Starbucks in the Fireside Lounge and renovate the Bleacher Club, both in the Student Union, greatly expanding the offerings of the latter to include Caribbean food and a chicken and gyro station in place of the current Halal offerings.
Chartwells, a subsidiary of Compass Group USA, is the current food provider of all the campus dining centers at the West Campus since 1998. This does not include Jasmine at the Wang Center, which is under a different contract with provider Caf’eacute; Spice.
