If you’ve been to the Campus Center lately, you may have heard the rumors of change.
Students have been walking around asking others to take a one-question survey centering on the preference of cuisine in the food court. Essentially, the question asks what we as students would like to see in place of the current Pizza Hut: another Pizza Hut, a sushi place or a street taco station.
That’s great. Bring on the student preference questionnaires.
Because we the students are paying for the food that comes out of the Campus Center, we want it to be good. So yes, thank you for turning your attention to us.
However, this does seem like déjà vu. Haven’t we as students answered these questions time and time again?
“What food would you like? What improvements would you like to see?”
It’s not that the questioning is bad, it’s just that the results never seem to chalk-up to their potential.
Which leads us to question why the current Pizza Hut is failing to bring in the big Bean Bucks.
Any college kid can grab a piece of pizza and call it a day, right? Well, yes, but what makes a restaurant sustain its business is the variety it offers.
Einsteins? It has regular bagels, toasted bagels, bagel sandwiches, coffee, smoothies and more.
Quiznos? It has different sandwiches, soups and salads.
Pizza Hut? It has limited variations of pizza and pasta.
With that being said, there are a lot of students the marketing management team can target. Yes, half of the student population, give or take, lives off campus, but many still choose to dine in the social atmosphere of the Campus Center.
If Dining Services were to replace Pizza Hut with something more diverse in taste and variety, a place that can sustain large amounts of demand in short amounts of time and still produce delicious food, a large profit could be made. And, more importantly, the students would be satisfied with the on-campus food.
Of course, Chipotle would be everyone’s first choice, but we’ll just leave that one out there for you to chew on, Dining Services.