Serving the Students

If you have ever had a meal on a college campus, that you paid for straight out of pocket then you know it can be a little pricey at times, especially for a college student. Well, at the University of South Carolina the prices seem pretty drastic to some students, and can be seen pretty clearly to those that don’t have a meal plan. For students who spend a lot of time on campus without a meal plan, it can be quite costly and depending on the meal plan that others have, it can still be costly.

The hard part about it all is the fact that Sodexo, the food service provider on campus, is still a business and therefore still has to generate a profit. They create their prices based upon the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures changes through time in the price level of consumer goods and services purchased by households. The biggest problem with this right now is that the contract they are working off of expires in 2017, and is a 15 year contract. Almost ten years old at this point, think how differently things have been since 2002. Although the prices get to change along with the CPI; it’s hard to believe that a contract written in 2002, would be very fair for both businesses and consumers during such rough time.

To look at some of the business aspects of a meal plan, it is similar to locking in a price for a period of time, the two most common similar practices of this are: those who lock in oil prices for winter months ahead of time, by signing that they will purchase at least a certain amount of gallons at a set price, and the other example is renting a living residence, by signing a lease a person locks in their rent for the time of the lease. This has one main advantage and disadvantage right from the start for each the consumer and business entity; if prices or rent goes up the consumer has already locked in their lower price [advantage for the consumer; disadvantage for the business] but if prices decrease the consumer has already locked in for a higher rate [disadvantage to the consumer; advantage to the business].

“The idea of a meal plan on a college campus was originated from the idea of all you can eat cafeterias, you would use a meal however they were originally used [now days students swipe their student ID’s and it is done electronically] and enter the lunch area and eat as much as you wanted” explains Michael Gwiazdowski, Operations Director for Sodxo on the USC campus. However, now days there are mainly one-stop meals, like Burger King or Chick-fil-A, so there had to be individual prices assigned to meals, and meal values. These prices that get assigned are what cause a lot of the problems and frustrations among the student body.

A lunch, being paid by using a meal credit, can get rung up as say $5.00, but another student paying with cash, debit, or their Carolina Cash (a form of debit system only usable on the USC campus) has to have those items rung up separately and pays about $9.80. Now, as you can see the advantage goes to the student who has a meal plan and paid for the whole semester upfront. But is a meal plan really worth it?

According to Jason Carroll, a senior at South Carolina (who has a meal plan), “Not this semester, you don’t get as much food [as previous semesters] and there isn’t really that much of a verity.” Also, for other students who don’t use all of their meals in a given week they feel as if they are losing money, Hannah Baker, a freshman at USC, says “I only use my meals during the week, on weekends I eat off-campus, eating out or at my boyfriend’s [he lives at an off campus apartment]”. At USC like other colleges and universities, freshmen (those that live on campus) are required to have meal plans. Baker shares similar thoughts with Carroll as well that there isn’t enough variations, saying “There is not that much variation in food choices in the cafeterias.” For these students they have their meal plans paid for up front, and use them at their discretion (within the uses that meal plan policies allow) and it’s common for students with larger number of meals to lose some from not using them all.

Other students who don’t have a meal plan feel like they are at a disadvantage, as Cameron Widerman, a junior at SC [does not have a meal plan], puts it “ The prices are not at all fair, they charge almost twice as much for a meal [being paid for without a meal credit]; it’s better to go off campus for cheaper, better quality food”. However, the point to a meal plan is to give those with it an advantage, and therefore with a blunt and rational conclusion, put those without one at a disadvantage. To make prices “fair” in the minds of those without meal plans would “Make it unfair to those with meal plan, and diminish the advantage and idea of a plan that is paid for in advance; the only two logical business decisions that would help those without a meal plan would be to make meal plans more expensive and to make meal portions smaller” Gwiazdowski says.

Though to many students the prices of food on a college campus seems unfair and expensive, it really isn’t that much more expensive than places off campus; with all the factors that build the differing prices we can see that prices are about as fair as possible to all the affected parties. The prices at an off campus Burger King are similar if not the same as the prices at the BK on South Carolina’s campus. As a student myself, I think we will always feel at a disadvantage to a system that seems to favors others in one way or another. In a final note from Gwiazdowski, “Outside of being a business and running a service, Sodexo does have a goal of taking care of people”. Altogether it seems as if they run a pretty good service and business on campus, and take care of the students nutritional needs; students just need to take the proper steps in taking advantage of the services provided.