New food courts to bring culinary diversity

By Lee Nagao

Students do not live on scrod alone. Many throw a late night Whopper and fries into the mix. Such culinary embellishments may soon be easier when the University, beginning with the renovation of Durfee Sweet Shoppe, integrates four franchise operations into campus dining services.

According to Peter Vallone, associate vice president for administration, these locations will include two existing dining sites, Durfee's and Lord's, both of which will be renovated to accommodate the franchises. Yale is also looking at two new sites, possibly in the Science Hill and Elm Street areas.

Each site will likely resemble mall food courts, with several franchises in each location. The restaurants will be cash operations, but students on Yale meal plans can pay with flex dollars, Vallone said. Perhaps most attractive to hungry Yalies will be the flexible hours of the food courts, with food served throughout the day and well into the night.

The food courts are possible because of Yale's new labor agreement. While lowering labor costs, the agreement also "addressed our concern that new workers not be stuck in low paying, dead-end jobs," union spokesperson Deborah Chernoff said.

The agreement symbolizes both parties' desire to strike a balance between Yale's need to increase efficiency and save money, the unions' desire for job security, and the wish to provide students with a greater variety of dining choices, Chernoff and Vallone said.

Students have reacted positively. "It's a great idea, particularly for the Science Hill area," Suena Huang, SM '98, said.

Indeed, such a dining alternative would also be a godsend to many graduate students on Science Hill who often work into the wee hours of the morning, when the area becomes a culinary wasteland.

"I think a place like that would do very well up here. A Big Mac beats a PB&J any day," said chemistry student Matt Weinschenk, GRD '98.

Jake Bliss, MC '98, who lives off campus, called the upcoming alternatives "an absolute necessity. I eat at the dining halls often because I don't have enough time to cook, and it would be great to have more variety on campus. If I ate out at places where I can't use flex dollars, I'd be broke by February."

The university believes that the food courts will provide a needed solution to the financial woes of Yale's à la carte dining facilities such as Durfee's and the SOM cafeteria. "By increasing revenue and reducing costs we hope to move [these facilities] from losing to winning operations," Vallone said.

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