By DEITRA WEDD,
BAILEY RANKIN,
SELENA ESTRADA
Food is one of the most important things for human survival.
It’s also one type of service offered on the Northwestern Oklahoma State University campus. When it comes to food services on campus various opinions arise.
According to Steven Valencia, associate vice president for university relations, the university and their food service distributors, Chartwells, have been listening to students and been trying to better the food services on campus. Valencia encouraged students to speak up and let Chartwells know what they’d like to see.
The university has made some changes on campus as an attempt to comply with what they were informed the students wished to see.
One such change, according to Dr. David Pecha, vice president for administration, was the student center remodel, and other updates that cost approximately $670,000. This cost was split between Northwestern and Chartwells. Approximately $500,000 was used by Chartwells, mostly for the Ranger Market and a few improvements in the cafeteria. Northwestern covered the commons area of the student center, which was $170,000.
After listening to what students wanted to see, both Northwestern and Chartwells agreed on remodeling the student center and making the Ranger Market with a Starbucks coffee. Valencia said students were asking for healthier, quicker options..
According to Charles Craddock, director of dining services, Mondo Subs and Cactus Jack’s Burgers that used to be in the student center were supposed to only be for paying students without a meal plan or others who needed a quick bite to eat.
When students with meal plans could start eating there, the student center was soon overflowing because of the popularity, and the lines grew too long.
Since the arrival of the famous coffee chain, Starbucks, the previously mentioned problems are no longer a concern.
The Ranger Market has been a big hit, even though, according to Ginger Harrison, Ranger Market supervisor, “They [the students] were a little skeptical at first.”
Now however, some students are content with the food service, such as Larry Raven, a criminal justice major who said, “The Ranger Mart is good; everything there is perfect.” Employee Rottana Prak said she enjoys working at Ranger Market. She says happy hours are when they are the busiest.
Despite Tuesdays and Thursdays being the least busy, the total average is about 300 or more students a day through Ranger Market. Harrison said they are always open for suggestions on what students want to see at the market. She also said she can more than likely get what students want depending on what the vendors offer. “Anything but fried food,” Harrison said.
One such suggestion comes from Mass Communication Major Nicholas Perkins who said that in his opinion the Ranger Mart should make more food like they used to before the remodel, “So people can get it to go if they don’t have time to sit and eat. For example, chicken strips as a meal would allow students to get a meal as a to-go order.”
Perkins said to-go orders would be good because, “personally, I don’t really have the time to sit down and eat in the student center.” He also said it would be nice to use meal plans on lunch items instead of having to use flex dollars. “I don’t even use one-fourth of the meals I have because I don’t have time to eat in the cafeteria,” Perkins said. “Most of the money I pay toward my meal plan is just wasted.”
Raven agreed, saying that he’d rather have eight meals and $150 in flex to spend at the Ranger Mart, so he plans on changing his 17-meal plan for the cafeteria to eight. When it comes to the cafeteria, Perkins said he usually only eats breakfast and that it is pretty good usually. “Sometimes the eggs are a little dry, but that’s about it,” Perkins said.
With a slightly different view on the matter, Raven said breakfast consists of mostly the same foods, but “I’m a breakfast person, so I can tolerate that being the same.” Raven also said he thinks breakfast is the best then lunch and at dinner they get lazy. A student who did the survey but did not want to give their name, seemed to agree with Raven about dinner saying that, “The lunch overall is ok, but the dinner is just awful.”
Craddock said that with the grill at night he has to try to slack off with less expensive things. “On the other side, there are some things we put out there more often than not because we discovered that the students will chow down,” he said. “But a lot of it is making decisions as we go along, just figuring out, well this is not going to make it.”
So, they then swap it out with something else. “Not everything works,” Craddock said.
The way that they go about making it work, however, is with Chartwells 80-20 mandate system. Chartwells is fairly new, as it is only their second year in operation. The mandate calls for 80 percent of the menu being dictated by the corporation. The recipes are stored on a program called Webtriton. Craddock is allowed to adjust the other 20 percent to suit local desires of students and faculty at Northwestern.
“At lunch you’ve got chicken strips three times a week and the subway station, both of which were asked for by the university,” Craddock said. “What is served as the hot entre, that is where I’ve kind of used up all of my 20 percent, so a lot of times what’s over there [in the cafeteria] is what is dictated to me.”
Craddock also said students with suggestion or complaints can attend food committee meetings that are held once a month. Raven had a suggestion about the hours the cafeteria is open, saying that he thinks it would be good to leave it open longer.
“A lot of athletes have practice and other things to do so when it closes at six on Friday it makes it harder for us to eat,” he said. “I would also suggest a better variety of foods. We often end up eating the same things. If they mix it up or add more to our selection, it’ll help a lot.” The anonymous student agreed, saying “There needs to be more variety.”
Is there an alternative to chicken strips three times a week? “I’ve been told I need to serve them five times a week,” Craddock said. “Will I need a price increase to do that? Yes. I’m at the mercy of what I can find.” This makes it a tough business.
“I hear people say there is nothing to eat in here but if you look around to the other stations, you’ll see that that’s not a true statement,” he said.
The source not wanting to be named said, “I haven’t seen a single change all semester besides the new equipment that really doesn’t serve much of a purpose in my opinion.” This source also mentioned that they, along with a lot of other students, feel the new equipment was a waste of funds.
Craddock pointed out the hardware improvements and said, “The investment was about $23,000, and I’ve still got another three lamps coming to make sure the food stays hot.” According to Craddock, the problem that is resolved with these new lamps is that what was being used to keep the food warm was the older steam table that’s about 20 to 30 years old.
“If you go to some of the places that have had recent remodeling, you’ll notice they’ve got convection ovens,” he said. [new paragraph]The main difference between Northwestern and other universities is that thanks to 12,000-15,000 students on campus other universities can afford to offer multiple chain food establishments on campus and students are able to use a meal plan there. “But of course, those students are paying about $1,000 more than you are here at Northwestern, and a lot of students don’t understand that,” Craddock said. Another source fires back with, “It’s not hard to see no one is on the same page.”
Craddock responded by saying, “The food industry is a high turnover business. You lose good ones [workers] you lose bad ones. A lot of our cooks are homegrown, they came in and they just started looking at recipes and are getting better as time goes by.”
Finally, Craddock said all he can say is that “if you pay attention, we are trying new things all the time, and when we’re not trying new things it’s because the students want the same thing.” In the future, the Chartwells company has mandated that they will have special event nights and continue to do so.
“I take every food committee suggestion into account,” Craddock said. “Not every complaint is unjustified, there are quite a few that are justified.”
Craddock admitted that mistakes are made from time to time. “They are mistakes, but they aren’t intentional,” he said. “So, all we can do is take a deep breathe, get up, dust ourselves off and get back into it.”