By Chin Yi Oh | Echo
For weeks there have been rumors about the Dashi Noodle Bar, one of the four stations in the LaRita Boren Campus Center, leaving and a deli coming into play. Dining Services staff address those rumors with goals for the future.
"It was going to be a deli, so the rumors about that are true. But we decided to wait on changing it at all, for now," Marketing Coordinator Rebekah Stargel said. "We were planning on changing (Dashi) around J-term, but we discovered that what we were going to replace it with wasn't exactly popular or doable at the time."
When Dining Services staff first went through their sales, they noticed that Dashi wasn't performing very well. The staff then looked into changing it, and after some ideas were thrown around, the possibility of a deli came up.
However, the change from a noodle station to a deli did not end up happening, as many people were upset that Dashi was leaving. This led to the staff's decision to give Dashi another shot to see its performance and reevaluate at the end of the semester.
"Originally, we were going to change it because there wasn't a lot of demand, but we saw that there was some demand, and a lot of those were repeat customers," Retail Manager Andrew Fisher said. "Although we weren't seeing a lot of variation in customers, we saw a lot of people coming back for it time and time again. So we thought we'd try it again this semester and see what our numbers will look like after that."
According to Stargel, some students voiced their opinion that they would want a deli, but the staff's main goal is to cater to the majority of students who want something different. However, they must ensure that there is a variety of food.
Senior Sophia Hdija said she usually does not like Dashi because every time she tries something she is always deceived by how it tastes. However, the coconut curry soup is a staple that she does eat because it is the one she trusts, even though sometimes the rice is missing.
"As a whole, we are going to constantly try to improve on what is currently in place and what is coming, we are always keeping students in mind, we're trying to do our best to give you what you want, that tastes good and looks good," Stargel said when asked about what students can expect this semester. "We have a new executive chef at the Dining Commons, who is really passionate about consistency and improvements on the quality of food."
Stargel said students can expect more upgrades and changes, and the staff are always going to innovate on what can be better and what new products to implement so students have a variety of choices.
Even though there is no change to Dashi, Fisher said a new addition for all students is five meal swipes per week that can be used at the Campus Center. The addition, implemented since J-term, means that every student can eat five meals of Chick-fil-A, Fresh, Emma and Charlie's or Dashi from Monday through Friday as they choose to.
"The reason was to give students an option; students want to eat here, and we want to be able to provide them with that," Fisher said. "Another reason is to cut back on the behind-the-scenes work that it takes to do meal transfers, on the students and on our end, as it wasn't easy. We wanted to eliminate that, and this seemed like the best option."
