Improve Food quality, pricing, and portions.

My fb status as of this morning:

I shouldn't have to pay $9 for a sandwich. Or for a small serving of sushi. In Korea I got quality sushi for $12. This $9 crap is exactly that, crap... should be like $5. And sandwiches in Korea are pricey for what they are, but $9? No. Never.

This reduction in meal points and jacked up prices are going to leave me starving well before the semester's ending.

AND the best part... the BRAND NEW electronic menus that they installed, have the wrong price? From last year's billboard menu? I think someone is lying or being lazy, but either way if something is labeled at a certain cost, I'm pretty sure they HAVE to sell it to you at that price.

The food prices, portions, and quality are all fine. I don't know where you lived before, but this is New York. Everything in New York costs more. Especially on Long Island and in New York City. Everything costs more. Food is no exception. I've lived on Long Island my whole life. You can't get a decent deli sandwich for under $7.50 these days. Add a drink or chips and it becomes $10.00. Also, Stony Brook has a huge variety of food. I'm the youngest of 4 boys. All three of my older brothers went to different colleges, and two of them complained constantly about the poor food selection. There were two or three cafeterias that served the same crappy food every day and a few coffee shops. Stony Brook probably spends a lot of money to get us such a great variety of food choices. So yes, it costs a bit more. But the food here isn't that expensive. I've had leftover food after almost $10 meal I've had here on campus. So I save it and eat it later in my room instead of throwing it out. The portions are a fair size. The prices are right where they should be. And considering they have to feed thousands of students every day, the quality of the food is respectable. To improve the quality or portion sizes would absolutely increase the price. So quit complaining. Toughen up. You're not going to starve living on a nice college campus with all the other students whose parents can afford to send them to college.

I would like to reply directly to what was said here.  It is true we live in an area where things are more expensive then say a different State or Country, however I disagree with the pricing that was thrown around.  A decent deli sandwich does fall in the $6-$8 dollar price range and with chips and a drink it could go to $10.  But please be mindful that it is a decently sized bag of chips and a bottled drink that bring the total to the $10 range.  On campus we get a sandwich with a handful of chips and adding a bottled drink brings us into the $10 range and over.  For the equivalent we would need to add more chips and that would definitely bring us over the $10 amount that was stated above.  The portion size has always varied for me in my four years here and not having consistency gives the dining on campus a rather unorganized and unpleasant feel. Mark you don't know the lives that any of these people have yet you tell them to toughen up.  If you truly believe the portions are fair then I say we form a group and buy food on campus and compare the portion sizes.  The only real evidence each side can have needs to be witnessed and recorded.  If you're interested please contact me.

"Everything in New York costs more." Fair enough.
"You can't get a decent deli sandwich for under $7.50 these days." Restaurants and some locations in the city prove otherwise, but I'd be happy to see pictures of these places you mention.
"Also, Stony Brook has a huge variety of food." Variety=/=quality. The amount of money spent here does not reflect the quality of the food nor the time spent in line.
"All three of my older brothers went to different colleges..." Which colleges and what were the prices?

"Stony Brook probably spends a lot of money..." The amount of money in which the school spends is not indicated in its food quality.
"So yes, it costs a bit more." It costs a whole lot more than some off-campus locations and groceries, with the latter two often being of better quality and/or cheaper.
"I've had leftover food after almost $10..." "Portions are a fair size." That doesn't really work for some folks of different body sizes.

"And considering they have to feed thousands of students..." By that logic, it's acceptable to have food quality decrease should the number of students increase as long as this unsaid ratio is maintained. This also does not factor in the increasing food prices.
"To improve the quality of portion sizes would absolutely increase the price." Neither of those have happened but the prices have already been increased.
"So quit complaining. Toughen up." Patronizing the other students here accomplishes nothing.

Mark, I'm an independent student who doesn't have mommy or daddy to save me when I run out of meal points. So what do I do? And the meal plans before were better than this. This year the whole thing took a dive, so we're complaining because it's not fair to jack up tuition, cut our aid, and now take our meal plans into the hole as well. If you don't like it, leave this forum and leave the FB page. There are so many more of us who are unhappy with what's going on here. Would you be mad if we succeeded and got you a cheaper plan? If you don't care about this why are you even arguing against it? Just leave it be. This is a place for people to voice their concerns and not the place where people get to tell us to shut up about it.

You say this isn't a place where people get to tell us to shut up. That's exactly what you're doing to me though. My "mommy and daddy" aren't going to save me if I run out of meal points. I have a set number of points, and if I run out, I have to find some other means of getting food. True, they won't let me literally starve, but they definitely won't help me if i don't even have 16-20 hours each week at some crappy, minimum-wage job. You say they're jacking up tuition, but Stony Brook was much cheaper than any other school I applied to. If you know of a cheaper school to go to with a better food situation, maybe you belong there. And this isn't just a place  for students to complain, this a place for students to voice their opinions to get important changes made. If you don't want any criticism to your idea, maybe you should keep it to the Facebook page, where they just delete any comments that don't claim that the portions, prices, and quality are terrible.

So instead of going off on them Mark why haven't you tried to contact me?  I'm down to hear your opinions and would like for us both to compare the portion sizes so that we can come to a mutual agreement as to whether or not it is fair.  I believe the reason you are getting strong reactions is because of your wording in your first comment.  I told you to be careful what you say because while we all have a right to speak our minds we also need to be mindful not to offend anyone to the extent of retaliation. So anyway let me know what you think and please at least try to respond back to me because I am a little hurt you didn't.

Although I understand that New York and Long Island is an expensive place to live, it does not mean that a school should further the difficulty in students not being able to purchase food because they ran out of meal points. I used to go to a private university in NYC before I transferred to Stony Brook University and they were actually much cheaper. The fresh, handmade sushi was max $7.00--maybe $10.00 if you got some fancy things going on in there and sashimi mixed in. A GOOD sandwich was probably $6.00. AND, their meal points rolled over the next semester. People are clearly upset that the prices have gone up, not just with the prices on food, but the tuition and just about everything else. So, please don't sit there and tell us condescendingly that the food is "not that expensive" and to "toughen up." I don't know where YOU lived before, but not everyone has lived the high life that you so seem to depict in your entry.

Oh yeah, my high life. Like i told Jazz in the previous comment, if you liked the tuition cost and the food quality and price at that private school in New York City, maybe you should transfer back. At private schools, there's a lot more freedom in the meal program. A chunk of your tuition likely went to keeping the prices down. This is a public school which has to follow certain New York State standards, which are often unnecessarily difficult or expensive to fulfill. Prices will always go up. That's life. If you can get cheaper prices somewhere else, go for it. But please don't sit there and condescendingly tell me about my high life. 

Mark, read my comment on Jazz's post.

One thing I noticed this year is the lack of the Kelly store. I understand that it was closed due to the opening of West Dining and construction at the old Kelly, but I really think there ought to be more than one store on campus that accepts meal points, not to mention the one at the Union has about half of what the one at Kelly did (I'm not counting the Deli - there's a Deli at West). Not only from a standpoint of just getting food to cook / keep in our rooms, but also thinking about the end of the year when the many people who haven't depleted their meal plans by a long shot need something to spend their meal points on. Where will they spend it now? I know personally I used that store to get rid of all of my excess meal points (it was it least 250), and I know others that did as well. I heard someone say that it will be open next year, but that doesn't solve the issue for this year. A solution may be to accept meal points for food only at the SAC store? Or to simply spread the items Kelly normally would've sold to the other dining halls (West would be a good option if they could somehow find the space)

And another point, during the hurricane and the blizzard last year, that's where basically everyone on this side of campus went to stock up on food. What if similar events happen this year?

I know this probably isn't exactly the goal of this group, but I thought it was related. I have to agree with all of the "increased prices for less food" though.

I'll take my post from the facebook group and post it here:

"I do not understand why when I order food on campus, the person who is serving me picks up a portion of food, drops it into my box/plate, and proceeds to pick out food out of my box/plate and return it into the food tray if they think the serving size is deemed "too much." I find this frustrating since I'm paying over 3-5 dollars more for 4 bite sized pieces of meat.

I am paying well over 8-9 dollars for a meal, I shouldn't have to see this kind of thing happen in any restaurant associated with campus dining. Over the past few years, I have seen the prices of food on campus increase while the portions given to customers continue to decrease. This behavior of "skimping out" while being served food has become prevalent around campus.

It is very disappointing that these meal plans require me to average 11-13 meals that cost roughly 8 dollars in a week. This factor, combined with the smaller serving sizes, has made budgeting my meal plan impossible without going hungry or skipping meals in a day.

I feel like I'm not the only one who feels this way, and it hurts to know that I'm forced to buy a meal plan regardless whether I feel like the value of the food served on campus is worth it."

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In addition to my previous Facebook post, I would like to add that arguments about each person's financial background are irrelevant on this board. The matter at hand is that we, as students, have made the observation that the prices of food are higher and the portions given are smaller every year. We also feel it will to continue to progress this way unless we voice our argument. I strongly agree that there should be consistency when it comes down to serving sizes and pricing around campus. A higher price should be justified with a higher value of food, whether it be qualitative or quantitative.

Jasmine is now owned by FSA, and I was really looking forward to it too. So when I went yesterday.. First off, the Chinese food variation lessened a lot, there was only like, 2 or 3 choices. I remembered there was this fish dish and General Tso. Anyways, so I saw the fish and I was like, oh that actually looks good. Let me get that, so I ordered the fish with white rice (b/c they didn't have fried rice) SMALL. The girl behind the counter gave me white rice with the smallest amount of fish, just enough to cover like a quarter of the small box. This was going to be  $7, for 3 small pieces of fish and white rice. I was paying basically $5 for rice. So I stared at her and I was like, Ok.. Can I get General Tso with that too then? And she looked at me confused, and eventually I decided to get another small white rice with General Tso because that fish&white rice is NOT going to fill me. Total was $14 something. 

Okay, for those that are going to say, why didn't you just leave the fish & white rice then? Well, I don't like to waste food so I decided to see if the cashier would charge me less or at least, bring it to a manager. I went to the cashier and told her but she ignored me and just took my card. There was no where else to put in a complaint and I didn't see a manager on the floor. It was ridiculous. 

I pay 15 dollars today for a small plate of food at the West Side Dining,,, why American food so expensive and not taste too good?

First of all, I want to thank USG for hearing our concerns. 

So we have two major issues here: 

1. Quantity does not match the price

2. Quality is not good enough

Before school have time to fix this issue, I highly suggest students try the following.
1. Drop the mealplan and only put $300-400 in per semester (in case we do not  have time to eat off campus)

2. Try out new restaurant off campus (soup's on, 1089, east-coast burritos and so on. Google them. ) 

3. Try cook ourselves. (There is a stop and shop if we take s60 on Saturday for free, you will be surprised how much cheaper it is in there than on campus.)

4. Simply avoid, the high cost food. (If we all do this together, food court will lose money because their food will become waste, they will get the message.)

I am a commuter, I really hope this helps. Thanks guys!

If you're living on campus and you don't have a suite with a kitchen, you must be on a meal plan.

What Daniel said^.  As a resident on campus, if you do not live in an apartment or a cooking building you must have a meal plan.  The options make perfect sense but if we cannot do the first one we will be spending even more money out of pocket.

FROM AN ANONYMOUS SOURCE/FRIEND OF MINE: 

"The prices are outrageous, but what I find even more frustrating is the fact that Campus Dining requires residents to buy their meal plans. It is difficult to convince the business to charge less prices (and make less money), but I think it is reasonable to terminate the policy that student residents must buy a meal plan. Whatever the initial reason was, I don't know. But all I can say is that students have no problem finding food on their own when they are hungry. The meal plan binds them to stay on campus and eat the cafeteria food because of the very fact that they have the meal plan. 

And like the article mentioned before, the food is not that great, prices are high, and also lines are long. Students loose money, appetite, time, and sacrifice health so some managers can make alot of money. I'm pretty sure they make enough money just from how much they charge AND that ridiculous $600 "service fee." Students who are struggling to pay tuition and other costs doesn't need the headaches of these issues. Food should be something people enjoy. 

Just this past Tuesday on August 28, I went to Kelly Dining (oh please forget trying to cal it West Side to make it sound fancy, everyone knows it as kelly). Here is my story. Walk up to Bob's BBQ to get myself a fish meal since there is no line for the register. This is a group of people waiting at the BBQ for the food, but I thought, hey it shouldn't take that long. I don't know what I was thinking, maybe summer break has been too long and I am just used to how food service everywhere else is fast. Anyways, got my receipt, timestamped 12:26pm, grumbling about he $10.06 price tag, but I really wanted some fish so I put up with it. Wait and watch the two chefs turn out burger after burger. Finally when my number was 20 numbers behind, they put the fish on the grill at 12:46pm. It was still there at 12:51pm. I told the register lady I wanted to cancel the order, they were taking too long. The register lady called some fat chef form the back to talk with me. Instead of saying anything like "I'm sorry it took so long, let me gt your money back" he started yelling at me! He was saying stuff like "wait, it's done see?" and "you know this isn't a sit down restaurant" as he doused the fish in more oil and frantically stir fried it. Are you kidding me? Why am I getting yelled for waiting so long for fish? I'm said "trust me, you don't need to tell me that this isn't a sit down restaurant, everyone knows that already based on the quality of the food and service." The cashier woman gave me my money back. He "finished" coking the fish and offered it to me. As I was reaching for it, but he pulled back and said, "oh wait, you have to pay for it." I was pissed, all CAMPUS DINING cares about is MONEY, they still wanted to charge me for this horrible service. I must have really wanted that fish because I agreed and let them charge me. The fish was still raw inside. At this point, there was a scene, the BBQ was backed up, and I demanded for the manager. The fat chef didn't have the balls to face me, so he just hid in the back kitchen and had the cashier lady call the manager. Some other fat guy in a suit came and gave me my money back. He didn't yell at me, but he didn't say a word to me and also didn't apologize. I left West Side at 1:02pm, late for my 1pm class. Total time wasted and frustrated: 36 minutes. 

I'll let you learn from this experience, let me just quote Raj from Big Bang "Bring [campus dining] down to their bony knees!""

FROM ANOTHER ANONYMOUS SOURCE:

"lol, you're lucky you have a car. eat off campus. most people have to deal with stony brook's bullshittedness. white castle and kfc are great places. yeah, stony brook sucks. you are basically paying a huge amount of money to get food poisoning, and why would you want to do that? theres a subway down the street, eat fresh man. oh yeah, also eat at the HSC. their food is really good. they have no remorse food poisioning their students but they can't food poison their patients. The food at the hospital is really good. you should eat there if you're on campus"

One of my friends got food poisoning TWICE from New Kelly in the 2 weeks we've been here. The first instance was from a ham sandwich he got from the deli counter, which pretty much says that they do not bring out fresh coldcuts throughout the day (and that they aren't kept at a proper temperature to keep them fresh). The second instance was from a danish ordered from the cafe coffee shop thing. The fact that he got food poisoning so early in the semester is unacceptable. The fact that myself and other students find food poisoning so commonplace here is also unacceptable. We should not be paying so much for sub-par food during the semesters. This needs to get fixed right away.

Here is my proposal to this problem.

First, don't link Campus Dining with Campus Residences. Students shouldn't be forced to buy a meal plan just because they live on campus. I'm not sure what the reason they did this in the first place, but I'm sure students have no problem finding food if that is what they are concerned about. 

Second, on that note, residents should have the option to buy a commuter plan. This gives the option to students to put as much money they want into the account. I don't need the full bronze plan, but I can't go any lower because that is already the cheapest plan. If I want to only buy 600 meal points, then the commuter plan will allow me to. Also, students can always put more money into their account, but can't take away once they are on the lowest plan (bronze).

Third, Campus Dining should model themselves after their own slogan "Fresh, Local, Guest Focused" and the restaurants of the rest of the world. Ok, so their price is high, but can we at least get the service and quality of food that we paid for? And yes, if they aren't going to change their service and quality of food, then they should at least lower the prices.

Fourth, speaking of price, what is this ridiculous $600 "service" fee? Don't they make enough money off of profits from their over priced food already? FSA and Campus Dining should be able to justify how that money is being used and make it publicly accessible to anyone. 

FSA/ USG are having an Open Forum to discuss our concerns about campus dining. Come check it out, and let your voice be heard

https://www.facebook.com/events/687500371278979/