Author: Tyler Kearn
In the chip corner in the Cooler, two prices were facing me for the green bag of Salsa Verde Doritos I desired. One was on the counter next to the bags, where a label read “Chips 1.35.” The other was on the top left-hand corner of the bag itself, where in big bold white letters with a bright red outline it said “99¢.” I took the bag to the register and watched it ring up $1.35. When I showed the price on the bag to the cashier, she shrugged-“all chips are $1.35,” she said.
For anyone who has routinely eaten on campus, the revelation that items cost more in the Marketplace or the Cooler than they do in a supermarket should not come as much of a surprise. But I wanted to see how much more food really is on campus than the local grocery stores.
I decided that I was only going to compare identical items, so that the only factor between them is price. The homemade chocolate chip cookies at the Marketplace are different from the fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies at Ralphs, and the preferences that an individual might have for one cookie or another might override price concerns-the cookies might give different consumers differing marginal benefits. A bag of Salsa Verde Doritos, or a frozen Amy’s dinner, is exactly the same, regardless of where it is bought, making price the only difference from one to the other. This predominately led me to compare packaged or pre-done items, such as drinks, snacks, and frozen items.
Items were always more expensive at the Marketplace or Cooler than at a supermarket. The price difference between items varied however, depending on the specific food or beverage. At the low end were items like Snapple, which costs 51¢ more at Oxy than Ralph’s (2.00 vs 1.49), and bags of chips which cost 36¢ more at Oxy. At the high end are products like Amy’s frozen dinners, which cost 5.39 at Ralph’s and 7.50 at Oxy, and Cliff or Luna Bars, which cost 1.29 per individual bar at Ralph’s (the price is less if you buy boxes of bars) and 3.00 at Oxy, over twice the supermarket price. These price differences add up fast-assuming you drink one Snapple a day, you spend an extra $3.50 an week because you buy your drinks at the Cooler.
Of course, Dining Services does not think about the price of food elsewhere when they set their prices-they have their own formula. “For every dollar that the dining department brings in, we have a budget to spend 38 cents of it on food, that’s called our food costs,” Associate Vice President for Hospitality Services, Amy Munoz said. She explained that this food cost, or more accurately cost of goods sold, also includes all the costs associated with the food, such as the paper cups in the Cooler. With their system, she said, “If something costs you 38¢, you charge a dollar for it. Obviously, I can’t do that with every single item, but that’s the pure example.”
Items like the ones I used for comparison usually line up pretty well with their set food cost-“For most of the packaged items we come very close to charging a straight 38%,” Munoz said. “You could be pretty accurate by looking at these items and taking 38% of the price to know how much we pay for them.”
While Campus Dining does not compare their prices with those of the supermarket down the street, they do feel that food prices at Oxy compare very well with those at other colleges. “There are lots of different segments of the food industry, and each segment has its own pricing structure. We compare ourselves to the institutional industry . . . Our costs are similar, if not downright the same, as other dining facilities at other colleges,” said Munoz.
The difference between Occidental and supermarkets is that while Ralph’s or Super-A simply have to stock the shelves, Campus Dining actually cooks and prepares their own food in their own kitchen facilities, and makes a lot of food to order. This means that Occidental has to pay much more for labor than a supermarket would. “Oxy spends 38¢ on the dollar for food, and we spend 42¢ for labor,” Munoz said. “That’s the main difference and that’s why the prices are different from grocery stores.”
Nevertheless, it can be embarrassing when, as in the case of the Doritos bag, the price listed on an item is lower than what Oxy is selling it for. In those cases, Munoz said, “Usually, we go back to the vendor and tell them that if you want us to sell your product, you can’t put the price on it.”
On the flip slide, Campus Dining will break the 38% food cost rule on some items to avoid charging embarrassingly high prices for some things. Munoz said, “Sometimes, we’ll look at a thing and go ‘we can’t charge that much’ and we will lower it. That happens a lot more than the students would probably think.” Despite the fact that the price for the Naked Juice drinks continually increases, they have been working to make sure that the price for them in the Marketplace does not rise, especially during the year. Additionally, Munoz explained that they run a 60-70% food cost on the sushi in the Cooler-if they kept the 38% food cost, “you’d be spending over $10 for it.”
However, none of this takes away from the fact that one could go down Eagle Rock Boulevard to Super-A Foods, Ralph’s, or even the farmer’s market and spend a lot less on food. So, why do people bother eating at the Marketplace or the Cooler at all?
One of the main reasons is the convenience of eating on campus. To buy food at the grocery store, you need an easy way to get there. “I eat on campus because without a car, it’s really difficult to get off. It’s convenient,” Joellen Anderson (first-year) said. Additionally, with food a few paces away from dorms and classes, it’s much easier and faster to eat on campus than to take the time to go elsewhere.
The other predominant reason people eat meals on campus is because of their meal plans. With the meal plan requiring students to spend a considerable amount on food in advance, the price of food when eating on campus essentially becomes “free” until the meal plan is spent out. “I don’t want to spend money out of my pocket. If I pay for a meal plan, I might as well use it,” Amanda Leong (first-year) said. Regardless of how much more Hagen Daas ice cream bars are in the Cooler than at Super-A, if someone still has a balance on their meal plan, buying them at Super-A is always going to be more expensive.
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