The University is only halfway into its five-year contract with ARAMARK, the Philadelphia-based food service provider responsible for the Great Hall, the Marketplace and other major dining operations, but the contractor's days at Duke may be numbered.
The Duke Student Government will vote tonight on a resolution from the Duke University Student Dining Advisory Committee that will recommend a probationary trial period for ARAMARK until February 2004. At that point, DSG will make a vote of confidence or no confidence in ARAMARK's services, DUSDAC co-chair Sean Biederman said.
"We felt that there would be more time to search for other options, if necessary, as well as get more evidence of what ARAMARK can do on our campus," said Biederman, a junior, noting that the company had recently assigned a new regional vice president. "We're able to give them until then and still be able to make a seamless transition if we need someone else, or we'll be able to give them our confidence based on what they've done in the time we've given them."
Concerns about ARAMARK's performance have elevated since the completion of DUSDAC's fall evaluations, which placed three of the eateries the company manages in the bottom five places of eateries across campus.
"I don't feel good about a lot of that stuff," said Jim Wulforst, director of dining services. "I just spent $1 million on the Great Hall--you think I want to see it on the bottom of the list?" Part of the reasoning behind the proposed probation is that neither DUSDAC nor Dining Services wants to make the formal decision to oppose the renewal of ARAMARK's contract, because that could potentially have a negative impact on the contractor's service over the next semester.
"If you vote no confidence, and DSG says no confidence, we're going to be telling ARAMARK something that could have a dramatic impact on the service they provide," Wulforst said.
Some of DUSDAC's concerns include issues with employee training and treatment, food service and general quality, Biederman said. With the arrival of Regional Vice President Mark Nelson, ARAMARK officials hope some of those issues will be addressed.
"We continue to learn about how we can better service the Duke community," Nelson said. "There's always plenty of work to be done." David Randolph, ARAMARK's resident district manager at Duke, noted that the recent Great Hall renovations have increased both sales and employee morale, and that extensive employee training programs have been implemented.
"We're working on location-specific task outlines," Randolph said.
"We're behind on West Campus, but on East we're right on target. We've been getting great feedback [from employees]--they all said they finally got the training they needed and wanted."
Tonight's DSG resolution will not change ARAMARK's current operations beyond putting the company on probation. If DUSDAC and DSG find that the services remain sub-par, the process of making new arrangements will begin.
"Other companies like ARAMARK certainly do exist," said Biederman, who also writes for The Chronicle.
He added that a replacement contractor could be local, regional or national and might manage only a portion of ARAMARK's current operations--and that a replacement contractor might not even be necessary. "There's also self-operation, where it would be under Dining Services and they would hire some personnel that would run it," he said.
Andrew Collins contributed to this story.
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