The Duke University Student Dining Advisory Committee discussed long lines at Trinity Café and the food truck rodeo at Monday's meeting.
A student had complained about long lines on the Fix My Campus Facebook page prior to the meeting. Barbara Stokes, director of residential dining services, addressed the wait time issue and also added that Trinity Café will be adding a new line of products within the next week.
“We are actually going to be rolling out a breakfast sandwich program,” she said. “We are doing some testing. We’ve actually done some sampling, so probably in the next week you’ll see them there.”
On Fix My Campus Sunday night, first-year Annika Sharma wrote that she spent 40 minutes waiting to get food and that she was charged $3.79 for her Naked Juice instead of the $3.49 as the price was listed—a 30 cent jump.
“I totally understand that it was Super Bowl Sunday, but [the long wait] has happened before—not such a long wait, but at least 20 minutes—so I think there needs to be some fundamental change by the management,” she wrote to The Chronicle on Monday night.
Junior Quinn Steven, a liaison to Duke Dining from Fix My Campus, noted Sharma’s concerns at the DUSDAC meeting. Stokes acknowledged that there had been an abnormally long wait that night, and said that the manager had pulled two employees from Marketplace to help with the large line. As for the price discrepancy, she said that she would look into it further.
“I’ll check on that. That definitely should not be the case,” she said. “The price that is advertised should be the price at the register.”
DUSDAC also discussed their plans for the annual food truck rodeo, which will be held on the day of the Old Duke concert. Will Hardee, a sophomore and vice president for services at Duke Student Government, said the concert will be held April 6. He added that he is working to get the Card Lot reserved for the rodeo.
Brian Taylor, Trinity ’16 and DUSDAC chair, explained that the rodeo would ideally lead up to Old Duke and that students would be able to provide feedback on the food trucks through surveys.
The committee also discussed a potential new DSG project that would designate part of West Union as a conversation area where students eating alone could talk with someone they had never met before. Aris Marton, assistant director of retail operations for Duke Dining, said that the “alcove” area near JB’s Roasts and Chops was being floated as a possible location.
In other business:
DUSDAC continued to discuss West Union's fork shortage that was brought up at its last meeting, after students had complained on Fix My Campus about the lack of forks at certain vendors.
Marton explained that Duke Dining’s sustainability manager is working on getting compostable, disposable utensils and that they already ask vendors to provide those. But she said some West Union vendors have been unable to find compostable utensils through their supplier, and that Duke Dining is working to resolve the issue.
As for the fork shortage, Marton joked that she is considering a “fork amnesty day” to entice students to return any forks that they may have accidentally taken with them.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.
Bre is a senior political science major from South Carolina, and she is the current video editor, special projects editor and recruitment chair for The Chronicle. She is also an associate photography editor and an investigations editor. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief and local and national news department head.
Twitter: @brebradham
Email: breanna.bradham@duke.edu