Dining services caters to student savings
Zohaib Ahmad
Issue date: 3/6/09 Section: News
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"Students who purchase Dragon Dollars or meal plans with Dining Dollars experience a seven percent savings over those who purchase food with cash or credit card because retail food purchases with Dragon Dollars or Meal Plans are not a taxable event," Andrew Manfredo, marketing manager of Drexel Campus Dining, said.
Savings also include avoidance of costly credit card fees, a "limited time offer" strategy in both residential and retail dining, a dollar menu and discounted daily specials at Creese Café, according to Manfredo.
Moreover, he stated that the Take 3 at Ross Commons and the new Blue Meal Plan exemplified Drexel's initiative on more valuable and flexible meal plans.
"We want students to be proud of the cutting edge culinary concepts that are offered as part of the Drexel experience. We do this by creating new food experiences that are relevant in the lives of our customers," Manfredo said.
The University's Dining Terrace represents one of these new ideas, according to Manfredo.
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, people are avoiding places like Starbucks that are raising prices due to economic pressure.
However, Manfredo described a more encouraging situation at Drexel University.
"While national trends suggest that the discretionary spending by the average college and university student is trending downward, that is not our experience so far," Manfredo said. "Participation is actually up as students look to maximize the value of their meal plans with their attached dining dollars and the same is true with Dragon Dollars."
According to Rita LaRue Gollotti, senior associate vice president of Drexel Business Services, the Starbucks at Pearlstein is currently showing an 11 percent increase over last year's sales.
Nevertheless, according to Manfredo, Drexel looks to avoid possible decreases in student spending by being at the cutting edge of dining.
"Our strategy allows us to be nimble and we will continue to watch trends closely and offer meaningful value to our students at all of our on-campus dining locations, especially in these uncertain times," Manfredo said. "We believe that in this competitive and challenging economic environment we need to continually add value and flexibility to our meal plans while adding greater flexibility and convenience to our programs and services. We need to continually reinvent and expand our offerings so that our customers always know what's new."
However, some students said the dining plan is the only incentive for paying for Drexel retail food.
"I only buy coffee because I have dining dollars. If I didn't have dining dollars, I wouldn't spend four dollars on coffee," freshman business major Dimple Kothari said.
Still, according to Manfredo, Drexel's dining services are cheaper than the average meal.
According to LaRue, the Dining Terrace will include a Chick-fil-A and is expected to include a Currito, a fusion burrito, salad, rice bowl and smoothies concept which originated in Boston, and a Subway, which will be integrated into the market area along with the current sushi kiosk.
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