To the Editor:
In your April 2, 1997 article titled "DDS may enforce $800 minimum," Peter Napolitano is quoted as saying, "the $800 level is the bare minimum. That's where you start." I believe in my own humble opinion, that this view is entirely wrong. Where you start is provide good food at a reasonable price. The key is not to force the students spend more but to make them want to spend more. Give us better choices, give us burgers that aren't burnt. Give us a meal that doesn't take 40 minutes to prepare. Give us these things and students will probably spend more than $100 a term on on-campus food.
I spend most of my time at Lone Pine Tavern, not because I work there so much as because of the atmosphere and, more importantly, the food. Lone Pine provides great food at a good price. The only major complaint I ever hear from anyone going to Lone Pine is that the food takes forever to come out of the kitchen. This complaint is valid because the amount of oven space available to the cooks is not adequate enough to support the volume of customers that frequent Lone Pine on a daily basis.
I have worked for the Tavern since Winter of '96. Sales have decreased ever since the changes were incorporated into the Tavern. Our menu was changed and the dinner specials were removed from the menu. At the beginning of Fall term '96, our sales suffered because there wasn't any food that attracted anyone. When the dinner specials were once again added to the menu our sales increased but not to the level they used to be. But even with the dinner specials back on the menu our sales have never regained the level that it was once at given the amount of space we have to work with, the quality of the food suffers and the time the customers have to wait is longer. More and more people would rather go to Murphy's or Molly's were they can sit down, get the same service, but get their food faster. Our sales on a very good night are about two-thirds of what our average was last year.
Give us good food, good prices and give it to us fast and students will come back to eat. Give us what we want instead of forcing us to spend money we don't want to use.
