New Food Options Among Changes to Dining: Students on Weekly Seven Meal Plan to Face Challenge With Rising Food Costs

With the start of the new semester, Dining Services has heralded a slate of changes for students.

The made to order sauté station is something Director of Dining Services, Marijo Haggett has wanted to add to Dana for a few years. “With Dana being an older facility, it limits our ability to be innovative in how we offer food,” said Marijo Haggett. “It provides more options and flexibility for the students,” continued Haggett. This is especially beneficial for students who have food allergies, “we were unable to control if students contaminated food,” according to Haggett.

Since the sauté station is new and offers students more options the lines have been long. This is something that Haggett acknowledges saying, “We knew it would be popular, we specifically made the recipes at lunch quicker to assemble because we know there is more of a time crunch.” Once people settle into the change Haggett believes the lines will go down. Overall Haggett hopes it brings more value to Dana both in food and general experience. “It provides more interaction with our staff which I know our staff really enjoys,” Haggett expressed.

Dana wasn’t the only part of St. Lawrence University dining with new features; NorthStar café has a new smoothie machine. “Myself and a few colleagues attended a conference in Kentucky about college dining and we saw the smoothie machine,” said Haggett. This will allow the NorthStar staff to focus on other stations. “We are trying to open up orders so more can come in, since I know that is still a challenge,” sympathized Haggett. The smoothie machine is not yet operational because the company that operates it needs to log in and set up the machine.

While the sauté and smoothie are very visible changes to dining services the changes in vendors aren’t as obvious. Haggett said they switched to Hershey ice cream “since they could add more variety,” than the previous vendors. Additionally, SLU signed a university wide contract with Pepsi to be their exclusive provider. “We looked at contracts between Pepsi and Coke,” said Haggett regarding how they made the decision. “When you go exclusive you get better pricing,” stated Haggett on the decision. “We can only offer their products unless we want to offer something that they do not have a comparable option for.”

Things are not all good for students as many prices have been raised at NorthStar along with the prices of Dana meals for those using Dining dollars. “We don’t want to increase the cost of the items we serve,” said Haggett. However, with the rising food costs and reevaluations of other costs such as labor the price increases are a necessary evil. “Especially if you’re a third or fourth year student you are used to using your meal plan a certain way,” acknowledged Haggett when asked about how this would affect students. Poppy Hanson ’25 agreed with this sentiment, “With prices getting higher I have to be more mindful, sophomore year I didn’t really think about it.”

With all of the changes to dining Haggett emphasized the importance of student feedback on their dining experience. “We want feedback, the good, bad and the ugly,” said Haggett. “We might think that it is a great idea but until we get feedback we don’t know.” This not only allows dining services to change but explains why changes were made to students. Ultimately “our services are there for the students,” expressed Haggett.