By Matthew Smith and Hannah Botjer—
On September 30 the Vodra Cafeteria opened to the public. The cafeteria has gone through many changes throughout the summer, primarily from a standard cafeteria to an all-you-can-eat buffet.
This new continuous dining plan offers more stations available to guests to be able to mix and match meals. With this new dining plan students will be allowed to come as they please, eliminating the lines, due largely to the fact that students can make their own meals. The process allows the cafeteria to operate runs more efficiently, this allows for better dining quality and a lighter dining atmosphere.
Along with the wonderful ideas this change brings it also brings many downsides. One such downfall to this new cafeteria is the hours of operation. The new hours are eight to eight on the weekdays and eight to six thirty on the weekend. These hour changes may cause an issue for night students.
“It’s just not unlimited to [commuters].” Explained Julie Aiello, Director of Gourmet Dining at NJCU.
Because of the issues this poses with the night students the way Gourmet Dining chose to accommodate the students was by providing a take away entrée. This plan is in effect between 5PM-8PM. Dorm Students will be provided with one swipe during those hours and one take away dish. However this limits the student to the amount of food they can actually eat during this time.
With this unlimited dining program students will now be able to have unlimited swipes. This is a blessing for residents who would run out of their meal plan in the GSUB cafeteria. Now residents won’t be concerned with how to find food if their card runs out.
Resident students could swipe for guests and pay for their food, in this new cafeteria format, resident students will only have five guest passes.
“We’ve come up with a plan we’ve done at our other schools which is a resident focused plan. We felt this is what the school was looking for, a resident focused plan that gave the resident population a chance to grow,” said Aiello.
The new Vodra cafeteria offers new options to resident students. Gourmet dining is looking forward to seeing all the residents and listening to any requests you might have about this new cafeteria.
