Budget limits food services

With Labor Day weekend came an extended break not only for students and faculty, but also for campus dining staff.

For three days, each of the University’s food vendors — including the Met, C-Store, Chick-Fil-A and Subway — were closed.

“There was no food whatsoever on campus,” said David Herb, sophomore marketing major and Ornelas Hall resident assistant. “Some people didn’t have cars, so they couldn’t really get any thing else.”

On-campus residents, who are required to purchase meal plans redeemable at campus eateries, were forced to seek other options.

“We would go to peoples’ apartments and try to bum food off of them,” he said. “We went out to eat a few times, but obviously we’re poor college students (who) can’t exactly afford to do it every night.”

Food services director Shannon Mariani said dining staff has traditionally served food in the Met on the Saturday and Sunday of Labor Day weekend.

However, he said the administration allows the Met to operate for only 112 days each semester.

When President Rodney Mabry approved a Student Government Association provision, which required two study days held near the end of each semester, administrators decided to start classes two days earlier, he said.

The study days provision prevents professors from holding mandatory classes on the Friday and Monday preceding finals week.

Because The University of Texas System mandates the number of hours students spend in class, Mariani said administrators were forced to add two class days to the beginning of the semester.

“They moved up move-in day … and that affected our 112 days of service,” he said. “That would have had us serving 114 days instead of 112, so we had to make those days up somewhere.

“… I really try to pick the days that we’re closed to coincide with days that typically people are not going to be on campus. So if we are impacting a student, we’re impacting 10 or 12 and we’re not impacting 243 students sitting over at (Ornelas) Hall.”

Mariani said he arranged for fliers to be posted at on-campus housing facilities to ensure students would be prepared.

He said he would have worked on an as-needed basis with anyone stuck on campus without food, but no students or organizations inquired.

“In the past, Residence Life has said, ‘hey we need food,’” he said. “They’ve called out, they’ve ordered pizzas from us before. I’ve had one person come in and just do pizzas for them for a certain time frame. … But they didn’t reach out to me for that, so I just assumed they made arrangements to help those students that were there.”

Director of Residence Life and Judicial Affairs David Hill said providing meals through extended holidays was once common at Ornelas Hall.

“When we first opened Ornelas Hall, we realized we were going to have this problem, so we used to provide meals through housing at the facility,” he said. “We tried a bunch of different things and ... we had different problems each year.”

Initially, officials arranged for extra meals to be prepared on the business day preceding an extended break, he said. However, Hill said students showed little interest in the food and much of it was wasted.

He observed the same issue when the University began outsourcing catering to accommodate on-campus residents. “The problem we ran into with those was we had such a tiny number of people that actually came to take advantage of it,” he said.

Mariani said judging the extent of students’ need for dining services is never easy task.

Students often complain that dining services close too early, he said. But when hours are extended on a trial basis, he said, there is little to no increase in customers.

About two years ago, Mariani partnered with Mabry to extend the Met hours in response to a student request.

“We didn’t see any growth in the number of students that came in,” he said. “We just saw that the students that were eating were changing their habits and eating later.”

Mariani tried extending the C-Store hours in the spring — another SGA initiative.

Mariani said the resulting number of customers revealed more of the same.

Even though a single staff member operates the C-Store, sales were too low to justify the additional overhead costs.

Regarding Chick-Fil-A and Subway, Mariani said contractual obligations prevent one restaurant from serving customers while the other is closed. Therefore, administrators would have to extend both stores’ hours concurrently to further accommodate students.

Given the poor results of efforts to make the C-Store and the Met more accessible, such a decision would not make financial sense, Mariani said.

“We still have that commuter campus type feel if you go in the (University Center) after five o’clock,” he said. “It’s kind of slow, there’s no one in there.

“If you go in there at 12, it is the place to be on campus. If you go in there at five, you’re going to see 95 percent of my employees and three students.”

Vice President for Business Affairs Randall Powell, who joined the University on Sept. 1, said one of his primary goals is to increase University Center traffic.

“We’d like to see more people in the student center at all hours it’s open and on weekends,” he said. “We want to do something to encourage students to make that the center of student life on campus.

“We are going to be looking a trying to keep open some of the retail things to the extent we can afford it on weekends and holiday periods.”

Powell said he believes the most immediate solution is to allow students to serve themselves.

“Aramark has a really beautiful pod system ... and a lot of this is self-service,” he said. “At a minimum, we can begin introducing that.”

Still, the students will decide the future of dining services, he said. Any plan devised by University officials can only be facilitated by student participation.

“If the students support it and make it worthwhile, we’re happy to do it. More than happy to do it,” he said. “We do have financial realities we have to face. Aramark is a corporation and they can’t lose money. If they lose money, we lose money.”

Still. Mariani said he is willing to try extending hours again if students continue to express the need.

And as the University exhibits growth each year, he said dining services will inevitably need to be reevaluated.

“Liberty Station, over in the Business Building — that used to be a closet. That was a custodial closet that we turned into a coffee shop,” he said. “As we continue to grow, I think you will see more out-of-the-box thinking on what we need to serve our students and the campus community.”