Valerie Clark

Workers in Essie Mae’s readily prepare meals as the growing popularity of Tarble food forces busier times for what was once only considered a snack bar.

BY HANNAH PURKEY

In print | Published April 9, 2009

This week, Essie Mae’s Snack Bar announced that it is raising the prices of four of its products. The price changes raised the price of soymilk to $1.50, Gatorade to $1.75, chicken fingers and fries to $3.50 and V8 juice to $2.50. According to Gusti Ruhri, the cash operations manager for Dining Services, the prices were raised simply because it has become more expensive for the school to purchase these items. “In the end, we are a retail place, and we have to work with what we have,” Ruhri said. “If we get charged more, we have to raise the prices.”

Despite the change, Ruhri said she would be looking for alternative brands or smaller size products to allow her to lower the price again. However, the prices of almost all food products are increasing, and Dining Services is simply trying to keep up. “I should have raised the price on yogurt too; it’s an important dairy product to have, but it is more expensive,” Ruhri said. While yogurt and other foods, like bread, that have increased in price will remain at their current prices for the remainder of this school year, they will have to be reevaluated for next year’s budget.

So far, Dining Services workers have not heard too many complaints about the price increases. “Students just mention it in passing,” Joyce Watson, an Essie Mae’s worker, said. “I think most realize that it’s just being passed on from the producer to the distributor and then onto us, and there is really nothing we can do about it.”

Some students are more concerned with the products that Essie Mae’s offers and not the increased prices. “The lack of variety bothers me more,” Brendan McVeigh ’11 said. “They don’t have things I want to spend my meals on. If there was something I wanted to buy, I would get it even if the prices were higher.”

This lack of variety and the supply shortages, especially on the weekends, are partially due to the lack of storage space at the snack bar.

“We do the best we can with the small space we have,” Ruhri said. “We have deliveries on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, so there is that two day gap, but we try to refill with things from Sharples when we run out.”

Ruhri also attributes these shortages to the increasing student use of Essie Mae’s. “In the end, this is just a snack bar,” Ruhri said. “It was never that busy, except for the last couple of years it has gotten really busy, but we’re not getting more storage space.”

Ruhri hopes that if there are concerns over the products offered or food prices, students will come to see her. “Sometimes students say things in the paper or to each other, and it’s important to speak out, but I hope they come to me so that I can see what I can do.”

« RETURN TO NEWS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »