Is Yale Dining Services ignoring student needs?

By Zoë Konovalov

If I hired somebody to paint my house, and they asked me which color I preferred, and I said "blue," I wouldn't expect them to paint it red. If I hired somebody to teach me guitar and told them that I wanted to learn jazz, I wouldn't expect to learn rock songs. That's because when we hire someone to provide a service, we expect them to listen to us. Yale Dining Services (YDS), by distributing a survey last February (with much fanfare) and then failing to publicize the results or respond to student criticism, is blatantly ignoring this principle.

For the three years I've been at Yale, student disgust with dining hall food has been the one constant, and I've seen very few constructive reactions from YDS. Everyone has their favorite complaint about the dining halls. Based on an informal survey, these include the limited menu choices for vegetarians and vegans, the poor quality meat, the lack of healthy food options, the lack of variety, or the fact that recipes are simply cooked badly, with too much salt or not enough seasoning or strange combinations of not-so-fresh ingredients. These problems are the result of general disregard for students on the part of YDS management.

I have no idea which grudges are held most fervently by the greatest number of students. The problem is, apparently YDS doesn't either. Students were never informed about the full results of the survey they distributed last spring. All they saw were some table tents listing students' favorite foods, most of which the dining hall could take little or no credit for, such as cereal. They are available through the YDS website, but its homepage no longer contains a direct link to the survey results. If a student wants to look for them, he or she would have to go into the archives on the website. After digging through the archives—if he or she even thought to look there—the survey would eventually emerge from the clutter. Among other things, students were asked to rank the quality of food, service, and convenience of locations and hours on a scale of 1 to 5 and to indicate the types of food they wanted YDS to provide.

I'm genuinely curious if the rest of Yale feels the same way about the dining halls as I do. YDS could have begun the school year with a flyer detailing response to the survey and a letter from the manager listing their interpretation of student concerns, along with concrete steps that they intended to take to address them. At the very least, they could have featured the results of the survey prominently on their website, perhaps with a link to results from earlier surveys to highlight improving or declining performance.

Instead, the website features a "Comment of the Week" from an anonymous Davenport student: "I wanted to compliment the Davenport Dining Hall on the superior job done by its staff this semester. There has been a lot of fresh food and a large variety of dishes, including many vegetarian and vegan options; the new nutritional labels really help in meal planning; and most importantly, the staff has been eager to accommodate all needs. Also, there has been a frozen yogurt and sherbet option everyday! Keep up the good work." To which the dining hall manager replied: "Wow! It is really nice to know that our efforts are appreciated. This note of thanks gives us inspiration. Thank you."

Aren't you glad to know that everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds? Really, this blatant manipulation of student opinion smacks of some kind of Communist regime. In my opinion, YDS could use a stiff dose of capitalist competition. If they didn't hold a monopoly over student dining—if management's jobs depended on rigorously proving that they had gathered and responded to students' needs, if student opinion impacted their profits or jobs at all—maybe then they would be serious about following through on their surveys.

Full meal plans cost $3,470 a year. Checking the Yale College calendar shows that students will have access to the dining halls 203 days this school year. That comes to $17 a day, $119 a week—and YDS claims that this price is based on the assumption that students, on average, eat only14 meals a week. $119 is enough money to buy food to feed a family luxuriously for a week. For a single student, it's ex-orbitant.Yale Dining Services is cheating us, and they are not even paying us the respect of pretending to care what we think about it.

Zoë Konovalov is a senior in Jonathan Edwards.

By Mariann Petersen

This week Dining Services is surveying Yale students, as we do each semester, to gauge our performance and glean opinions and suggestions from our customers. Questions focus on menus, service and overall quality. Durfee's is also conducting a survey, which can be completed on the survey form at Durfee's or online at the YDS website. We will receive approximately 3,000 surveys, and the results will be posted in a few weeks.

I encourage you to complete a survey this week or a feedback form any time in the future. We take this information seriously, and consider and act on the suggestions and feedback that we can. Some changes can be made right away, others take longer to implement, and some are more difficult to make. We always want to be sure that what we provide is consistent with the notion of the residential college system. Also, as a department under Yale's umbrella of Student Financial and Administrative Services, we are charged with the task of providing dining services at a reasonable cost and keeping board rates from rising.

Over the past two years, our overall survey scores have fluctuated slightly, but in general we have seen improvement. Spring survey scores are typically slightly lower than fall scores. This is a trend seen nationwide at all schools who conduct this same survey, and can be attributed to students perceiving dining hall menus and attending meals as being less exciting than in the fall. Because we realize this, we increase theme-type events and "monotony breakers" in the spring. In general, more mini-themes and specials were added to all of our menus to minimize concerns with repetition.

Beyond surveys, we have many vehicles through which we solicit student feedback: namely comment cards, our feedback form on the web, "Let's Talk Dining" sessions held in dining rooms (open discussions between dining managers and students), meetings with the Food Advisory Board, Masters and Deans, and more formal focus groups held with students each fall. Students also talk regularly to resolve issues with residential dining hall managers. We are continually looking for ways in which we can react to and anticipate your dining needs, and we work to respond quickly to comments and requests.

Dining Services has made many changes in the past two years that are direct results of feedback given to us by students. We added the Unlimited Meal Plan (which now includes Eli Bucks and Guest Passes), five Pan Geos stations (two of which are new this fall), increased vegetarian and vegan options on our menus, posted nutrition information, expanded our web site, and extended hours at Commons and Durfee's. We have expanded the products sold at Durfee's (in addition to the face-lift and new tables and chairs), and now provide the option to change meal plans online at the beginning of each semester or purchase Eli Bucks throughout the year. We also have increased communication with customers through frequent table tents and updates on our web site.

Most feedback that we have received is that Yale has seen major improvements over the last two years in food quality and operational standards, and we will continue to work toward improving our food and services further. The increasing popularity of the Unlimited Meal Plan (from 69 students enrolled in fall 1999 to approximately 200 enrolled for fall 2000) has shown us that we are responding to student requests for more meal plan flexibility—this meal plan was created as a direct result of information gathered from student focus groups.

With regard to individual requirements, our registered dietician addresses medically necessary dietary concerns during one-on-one sessions by appointment. If necessary, accommodations are then made at the student's home dining hall to provide them with special foods. When we receive requests to have all dining halls open all the time and locations such as Durfee's open longer or later or to reduce prices, we often need to weigh the impact of our decisions before we make them. Durfee's prices cannot be those of a supermarket or chain convenience store since it is a small, independently-run snack shop. We do not get any of the volume product discounts that bigger stores do.

In an effort to be more responsive to students, Dining Services menu cycles are continually adjusted; more attention is being paid to the quality and presentation of the food we produce. At the end of the spring 2000 semester, we conducted a mini menu survey on line, asking for student input for this fall's menu. We made adjustments based on what students told us. We supply a unique service, and providing food service for such a large campus population is a task that takes close management on a daily basis.

Mariann Petersen is marketing director of Yale Dining Services.

Graphic by Sara Edward-Corbett.

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