By David Dyck
SFU will hire a food service manager to oversee quality of food on campus
Last week’s board of governor’s meeting saw the approval of a five-year contract renewal with Chartwells, the primary food vendor on campus. The renewal will come with several new changes that aim to improve the quality of food on campus. The biggest changes announced last week were the upcoming addition of a Starbucks, an overhaul of the dining hall meal card program, and the addition of an SFU food service manager. Food vendors will also be open on weekends, and later on weekdays.
The previous Chartwells contract lasted 10 years, and, according to ancillary services executive director Mark McLaughlin, “ten years of anger” came out in the negotiations for the new contract. “Food over the past few years has slipped on this campus: the quantity, the value, the venues; that all came out in the negotiations. We had to make sure we had their commitment.”
“The first thing that’s got to be clear is that it’s a new Chartwells,” said McLaughlin. The new contract also comes with a clause that would allow the university to pull the plug at any time, giving Chartwells 120 days to pack up and leave. “We’re going to keep the finger on the trigger,” he said.
There will be a complete overhaul in Chartwells management, including a new general manager and new marketing staff. As well, SFU will hire a food service manager to monitor the quality of food on campus.
Outgoing board of governors student Marc Fontaine, who sat on the food service advisory committee, told The Peak that this new position would go a long way in improving all food on campus, such as those at Cornerstone and the Maggie Benson Centre, not just at venues run by Chartwells.
“The Chartwells contract was coming up for renewal or termination, but my focus — and I brought this to the committee several times, and they listened — was that food in general needs to improve. The idea of a food service manager who is paid by the university and who works in the university’s best interest is going to happen,” said Fontaine. He was part of the committee established last year after the Envision consultations, which revealed how unhappy many in the SFU community were with food options. The first food related survey went out last fall and received approximately 6,000 results. Multiple follow-up surveys and focus groups were performed leading up to contract negotiations with Chartwells, in order to narrow down what specifically needed to change about food on the Burnaby campus. “Chartwells was approached with a list of requirements from food services that we wanted them to meet, and through negotiations they finally agreed to all of our demands,” explained Fontaine.
Although numerous new food venues are expected to appear on campus in the next several years, the two announced last week were a full service Starbucks and a food vendor near Fraser International College, though details about what that will look like have yet to be released.
Regarding the Starbucks, which is projected to open in Spring of 2013 in the West Mall Centre, McLaughlin stated that it was “a difficult decision. The number one item that students and faculty wanted on this campus, when we did our surveys, was Starbucks. It was a loud message.” Yet he stated that national brands and large companies are something the university is cautious of, preferring business models that are more local, such as Parminder Parhar’s Renaissance Cafés. The university has been negotiating with Starbucks to make the one coming into SFU a Fair Trade coffee vendor. “We don’t know of any other Fair Trade Starbucks outlets,” said McLaughlin. SFU received a Fair Trade campus designation last month, the second in Canada. Currently, the only coffee vendor on campus that does not serve Fair Trade coffee is Tim Hortons.
Some of these changes will take place well into the future, but an “immediate priority” for McLaughlin is an overhaul to the declining meal card, which will affect students living in residence. Currently, students living in the towers are required to purchase a meal card for the semester, as there aren’t any cooking facilities in the tower apartments. The cost is $1,350 for a five-day plan or $1,650 for a seven-day plan. This will be changing for the fall semester, where students will get “anytime dining” cards. The dining hall will be open 24 hours, and for the same price, “students can go into the dining hall as many times as they want and eat as much or as little as they want,” said McLaughlin. “It doesn’t mean that pizza is going to be sitting there all night under a hot lamp, the concept is made-to-order food, where students are going to be making their own food. . . . That’s purposely to avoid stale food.”
McLaughlin stated that other changes to food services on campus would be announced over the summer.
