Pub Policy: Problematic?

Students returned to campus Sunday, March 22, and were met with a change to the Pub Ordering Policy. This policy was spearheaded by Thelmo “due to an excessive amount of wasted Pub orders every day.” Thelmo and Dining Services implemented the new policy, where all students, staff and faculty must write their I.D. numbers on the bottom of the order slips. If you intend to pay with another payment form, you must write that as well. If the order does not have the I.D. number, they will be placed in a return bucket for this week, but next week onward these orders will be thrown away and the order will not be made. If the order is never picked up, the order card will be collected and charged to the I.D. account number written on the slip.
Dining services worker Randy Trombley said that “previously, we had a lot of wasted food. The food was not picked up from the hot plate due to the time it took to make or double orders.” He said the entire staff is seeing improvement with the policy. “Orders are being picked up more, there is a lot less food sitting on the hot plate waiting to be picked up, and overall, a lot less waste,” Trombley said.
Sarah Evarts ’17, Vice President of University Relations for Thelmo, said that the policy came from a request from the Dining Services committee. They were concerned about how much food, time, and money was being wasted. “They approached me about how to reach out to the students and solve this problem of food being thrown away,” she said. The timing coincided with the arrival of the Board of Trustees to campus. Evarts had dinner with them one Saturday night and when the topic of food on campus came up, they wanted to figure out the best way to make students aware of the problem on campus of food being wasted, without perpetuating the problem. “The new policy was the solution proposed by the Dining Services committee, and was discussed with the Board, and then we decided to try it out,” said Evarts.
Evarts explained that really, there was a need for some sort of change, and the new pub policy was the most feasible option. “We have heard positive and negative feedback from the students and are taking all comments and concerns seriously,” she said. “We understand it is a change, and there are flaws, but we believe that the pros outweigh the cons.”
Once Thelmo sent out a New Pub Policy FAQ email, many students better understood how this policy is going to work and what it means. “The new pub policy makes complete sense to me,” said Morgan Darby ’17. “I think it should have been implemented a long time ago and I don’t understand any negative feelings towards the change.”
Despite the good responses, many students have expressed a lot of concern regarding the new policy. “I think it is a little unnecessary and kind of confusing, said Tory Cabot ’17. “The new policy could be really inconvenient if it takes too long for the food to be ready.” Thelmo responded to this concern in the FAQ, saying that “we believe that the new policy will decrease the volume of orders being placed, allowing for a quick turnaround time in order for students to get food before class.” To many, this did not seem to answer the main concern of this issue. “I really don’t understand how this policy is going to decrease the amount of orders being placed,” Cabot said.
Overall, the new pub policy with help to decrease the amount of food waste that comes from the pub every day, helping to uphold the idea that “Green is SLU’s unofficial color.”