Chancellor isn’t pleased with quality after going “undercover” to the Foodiverse

  At the end of March, Chancellor Mauli Agrawal and Provost Jennifer Lundgren put on ordinary clothes to try to experience the dining hall as a student would.

  Though their goal was to go unnoticed, according to the chancellor, that plan “didn’t work for a second.”

  After their experience Agrawal said that the prices were too high and that the quality of the food didn’t match the costs. 

“We stood in line like everybody else, got our food and sat down and we were not happy with some things such as the prices and the signs,” said Agrawal.

  The provost reached out to the people in charge of the meals and prices at Sodexo to try to make a change. With her and the chancellor’s feedback, the prices have gone down about 20% since then, with a meal now costing around $12 instead of $16.

  Students who eat at the Foodiverse have not been happy in the past with both the quality and the charge for a meal and two sides. The new dining hall meals and limited plates were costing more than the single swipe with access to unlimited food at the old hall in the ASSC.

“They overcharged for a lot of stuff here,” said Caleb Elliott, a sophomore studying business. “Some of the stuff was as much as $10-12 and it’s a ridiculous price. It was almost like they were robbing people who didn’t have a meal plan.”

  With the changes, meal plan holders may not notice a change in their price, but non meal plan holders are now able to save more money if they need to purchase a meal from The Foodiverse.

  The chancellor and provost are planning to continue checking in on The Foodiverse to make sure that students are happy with the condition of the meals. 

“We’ll keep working with that until we get to a point where everyone is satisfied,” said Agrawal. “We do make the rounds. We tried to do it unnoticed but that didn’t work.”

oowzg2@umsystem.edu