Student organizations at CSU Stanislaus are working toward improving the consistency, quality, price range and service of the campus’ primary catering business, Chartwells, while simultaneously advocating for the expansion of clubs’ freedom to order from third party vendors.
As we have become more accustomed to campus extracurricular life after COVID, clubs have had an array of mixed experiences with Chartwells’ catering service.
Gaming Club’s Treasurer, Justin Raymond (junior, Biology), stated that they had ordered pizza from the catering service back in October of 2022 for a Halloween party and had a satisfactory experience.
“They accommodated us pretty well for what we had requested and they got it to us in a decent amount of time,” he said.
Dr. Cueponcaxochitl Moreno Sandoval is an associate professor of Ethnic Studies and the advisor for the Eco Warriors Club and the Indigenous Students in Activism Club.
When speaking on her experience with Chartwells, she stated that the student organizations she oversees have ordered from Chartwells’ catering service about 10 times, each seeming to be hit or miss in quality and overall satisfaction.
She explained that at one point, Chartwells had donated food to an event for Indigenous People’s Day, to which, after reviewing guest evaluations, everyone seemed to enjoy. But on other occasions and club events, she went on, the service was not very satisfactory, not very delicious, and very, very expensive.
Moreno Sandoval continued to explain how food plays a very important role in a variety of cultures and how it plays a large role at social gatherings as a way of bringing people together during an event.
“It’s not very accessible to students who want to host an event and offer food to the university campus community unless you’re paired up with departments or organizations that are actually going to pay for the food, and that takes a lot of organizing and applying for different funds,” she said.
Moreno Sandoval also added that Chartwells’ services might be strengthened by offering food tastings, checking in with organizations in terms of what food they are looking for, and by providing more culturally based options.
“We want to bring back buffalo foods, pine nuts, we want to bring back, you know, with the original foods of California and the original foods of this continent,” she said. “So it’s difficult to explore that cuisine with Chartwells, because it’s more of an American diet, that is.”
The Computer Science Club is another student organization who has ordered from Chartwells several times before, to which they have experienced a variety of challenges. Out of seven orders, five of them had faulty service or quality, ranging from extremely greasy ‘practically inedible’ pizza, missing parts of orders, to orders being late.
Despite these adversities, students are still working hard towards improving the convenience of getting food on campus.
One member of the Computer Science Club, who chose to remain anonymous, stated: “From my view, it’s also about making Chartwells more competitive…because if student orgs start ordering from third parties, they’re not going to get as much business.”
Concurrently, student organizations are fighting for the freedom of choice in regards to where they get food for club events and to see if there is a way to make this process of doing so less convoluted.
Temporary Food Permits (TFPs) are available for clubs to submit if they would like to order from third parties, but they must send in the paperwork at least ten days prior to the event.
The aforementioned Computer Science Club member explained that for clubs that host bi-weekly meetings, the schedule for submitting a TPF can be tight. If there is a delay along the processing of the submitted forms, club events that have plans to have food from third parties could fall through.
They continued and stated that the main goal of speaking out about these experiences is: “…ultimately, giving student orgs the freedom to not fill out a TFP, not go through that paper trail, but still get competitively priced pizza.”
Currently, the amount of Temporary Food Permits that clubs can submit is unlimited for the 2023 spring semester, but the policies of TFPs in future semesters appears more uncertain.
Another anonymous participant of the Computer Science Club came forward and stated: “I think our goals are just to make it, first of all, easier for people to order food off campus if they want to, and we want them [TFPs] to keep it to being unlimited.”
One anonymous student participating in the Photography Club said, “Chartwells needs to allow clubs to order outside from Chartwells because their prices are already unrealistic for college students.”
By sharing their issues with Chartwells, they hope to strengthen their case as to why clubs should have more freedom of choice as to where they order food from.
At the time of publishing this article, Chartwells has yet to respond for a comment.
