Why Eating on Campus Bites

All of the food officially sold on campus, from Arredondo Café to Starbucks, is controlled by Aramark, a private corporation with a shady history at UF.

These are the people who decide what food businesses are allowed to operate on campus and what meal plans are offered.

The only place that non-Aramark food can be bought is through the daily Krishna Lunch program, and this is only achieved by not charging for their food but through the use of “mandatory donations.”

The administration fell under heavy criticism in 2007 and 2008 for the rewarding of a non-competitive 10-year contract to Aramark without student input. The placement of a registered lobbyist for Aramark sitting on the Board of Trustees, the highest governing body of UF and the conveyor of the contract, has brought its partiality under suspicion.

Aramark mainly generates their revenue from food sales through the use of captive audiences–people who cannot choose another food option.Their target market includes prisoners, oil rig workers, concert-goers and the meal plans sold to freshmen at the University of Florida.

From 2007-2008 students did not eat 38.6 percent of meals on their plan but were still charged for them. With the cheapest meal plan costing $1,600, many students found themselves out of much-needed cash. According to the UF administration, this has improved recently because now 85 percent of meals plans bought are unlimited. Nonetheless, these contracts are expensive and are notoriously difficult to cancel.

The system designed by Aramark makes it next to impossible to get out of a meal plan. The three ways to change a meal plan are:

1. Join a fraternity or sorority with a mandatory meal plan. Students are still required to pay the difference in costs between the two.
2. Transfer to a declining balance account during the grace period (until Aug. 27 and Jan. 3 -Jan. 7). These credits roll over to each consecutive semester and can be refunded when you leave UF.
3. Graduate, withdraw or transfer from UF.

The majority of students, faculty and staff surveyed in spring 2009 believed that eating on campus was more expensive than eating off campus.

Aramark decided to advertise specials more heavily instead of reducing their prices in an attempt to obscure the problem. A similar survey conducted in Fall of 2009 found an over all satisfaction rate of 5.38 out of 7, mostly due to the high costs, lack of food variety and limited hours of operation.

Aramark has recently started taking students’ opinions into consideration more. When Pollo Tropical and Cheeburger Cheeburger opened with more expensive menus, the students noticed and brought it to their attention. The menus where quickly changed to reflect their contemporaries on other universities inside the state.

Aramark has recently agreed to extend their hours of operations at residential dining facilities, introduce healthier options, expand vegetarian/vegan food, and open gluten-free stations at the behest of the students. Aramark also agreed to increase the pay 1.5 cents per pound for tomatoes purchased from Immokolee that goes directly to the farm workers in part due to the urging by the student body.

A better dining experience is possible but only through continued student involvement in decision making.

The unfair meal plans, marginal input from students, and their questionable contractual dealings leave few redeeming qualities of on-campus dining.

If students are inclined to question why UF continues to do business with Aramark they need to look no further than the bottom line. In 2007 UF made $2.5 million off the contract with an expected increase each year. With these high stakes, there is little hope that on-campus dining will have any meaningful change without strong student pressure.