This is part two of three in the series, Assessing Aramark.
ASU’s director of strategic marketing and communication Diana Bejarano said in an email that ASU strives to meet student needs and expectations as well as create revenue through its dining programs to enhance the overall student experience.
A portion of the revenue generated from student meal plans and retail sales is returned to the University and is used to improve the overall student experience, she said.
Aramark has provided the University with more than $20 million in capital investment in retail and residential dining areas since 2007, Bejarano said.
Meanwhile, ASU received $2.2 million in revenue in last calendar year alone, which provided financial support to student programs, though it remains unclear which programs and how much was provided to each.
For every dollar spent on a meal plan, 7 percent is returned to ASU. For all voluntary retail sales, approximately 2 percent commission is returned to ASU, said Bejarano in an email, who got the information from associate vice president for student services Jennifer Hightower.
There were 8,722 students on a meal plan in the fall 2012 semester, and currently there are 7,958 enrolled in a mandatory meal plan, while 6,400 faculty, staff and non-residential students purchased meal plans this academic year, according to the information Hightower provided Bejarano.
Aramark was hired because of its willingness to be active in sustainability, which was a condition of its contract said University President Michael Crow at a March 5 town hall session with students.
"We are interested in all levels of continued development of the local and healthy-oriented options," Crow said. "My own hope ... is that we can go exclusively local to every extent that is conceivable."
Crow warned that in going local, ASU must be careful not to inundate the local market by consuming all of its food products.
The Grass is Always Greener
Many of the nation’s universities operate their dining halls themselves and find it easier to manage sustainable and community-aware dining programs.
Nick Brown said the decision to outsource the food service at ASU is “in order to focus more clearly on our core mission of educating students and carrying out research.”
However, educating students about food and nutrition is easier to do under a self-operated program said Lisa Wandel, the director of residential dining at Pennsylvania State University, the country’s 10th largest in enrollment.
The dining program at Penn State services about 14,000 students with meal plans on its main campus, and 14,000 more on satellite campuses, she said.
“You lose so much when you go contract,” Wandel said. “(Contractors) are here to make money and run a business, and that is great; that is what they are for, but we are much more entwined with the community.”
Wandel said Penn State has always been a self-operating school and, though she could not say whether it is easier to be more sustainable that way, she said she finds it very easy to make operational choices with the University, its students and the local community in mind, as opposed to considering profit margins.
The Penn State dining programs offer internships and paid positions for students across many disciplines, including hiring communications students to help run the program’s social media outlets as well as nutrition students to help quantify nutritional analysis on the program’s recipes.
“It’s great for the résumé,” she said, “but they can also approach students in a different way, and our students are more engaged when it’s a young person doing it versus somebody that is much older and in a suit.”
Scott Meyer, the director of dining services in the division of housing and food service at the University of Texas at Austin said the University takes a “fractured approach” to food service on campus.
UT Austin, the fifth largest university in enrollment in the U.S., has a self-operating program for its dining halls, but contracts other areas of the University’s food service to Aramark, Sodexo, Compass and a local Wendy’s, among others.
Meyer, who worked for Compass for 22 years, said there is one major difference between self-operating and contracting.
“Contractors are here for money. Self-op is here for students,” he said.
He said the food service program not only provides food but is an extension of the classroom in that it provides students with life lessons.
The dining program at UT Austin services around 7,500 students, Meyer said. He finds it very easy to be transparent about food sourcing, because he has “no reason not to show and tell.”
Bill McNeace, executive director of Dining Services at the University of North Texas, previously worked for Aramark for 20 years as food service manager, district manager and vice president. He has been on both sides of the issue and said there are many myths about food service contracting at public universities.
He said in an email, “Contractors provide a transactional service. Self-op food service maintains a symbiotic relationship with students and the university. Contract food service forms a parasitic relationship with students and the university.”
He said contractors exist to create profits “… and whatever they tell you about sustainability or anything else is more of a marketing tactic to either gain the contract or to retain the contract. That’s just the way it works.”
McNeace said UNT has an enrollment of about 36,000 students and serves about 10,000 meal plans. He said it is easy for the dining program to work very closely with the office of sustainability and align their missions, because both are part of the university.
Reach the reporter at npmendo@asu.edu or follow him @NPMendoza
Part I — Business as usual
Part III — Quantifying a sustainable future
