Sodexo, SFCC’s campus café, recently made some management changes in SFCC’s cafeteria due to performance and product quality problems.
The big question now is, will this change in authority result in a difference in the condition of the schools cafeteria?
The limited experience I’ve had with Sodexo has not been great. After forgetting my lunch at home once, I was forced to make my way to the cafeteria for what I thought would be a quick snack. I got my food and waited in line to pay for about twenty minutes, not because there was a huge group of people rushing to buy Sodexo food, but because the computers were down and the staff didn’t know how to fix them or ring up orders without them.
While computers crashing isn’t something one can blame on the staff, the way staff handled the situation demonstrates that they work for a company that hasn’t put the effort into giving them the capability through training to handle a situation like point of sale computers going down.
Not only should the caféteria be a fast and easy way to get food before running to class, it should be providing a high quality of food as well.
“I tend to avoid eating the food provided by Sodexo for two reasons,” Jordan Lemm an SFCC student said. “When I buy lunch at school, the food I get on a five or six dollar budget is never quality. The pizza is usually undercooked, and the sandwiches taste as if they were prepared the previous week.”
One thing I continue to hear from students about their food is that it can often be commendable, but students have to pay more to get it.
“Sometimes their food is really good, but I can’t afford to pay $10 for lunch,” Lemm said.
Options aren’t just limited due to money but also for people making alternative nutritional choices.
“As a vegetarian it’s difficult to find a whole meal that I can eat,” Meghin Howard an SFCC student said. “The only option I have is salad and most of the time they run out of it before I get there at 1 p.m.”
Being the only fast access of food for about two miles, the students are going to need Sodexo to step up their game.
“The options that Sodexo has for us here don’t make us want to stay here,” Robbie Dean another SFCC student said. “We would rather pay for gas to get our food.”
This is not to say students don’t think it’s possible for Sodexo to make some changes, the changes just need to go beyond new management. It needs to come from the company’s willingness to improve their overall quality of service.