Editor's note: This is the second installment in a series examining Dartmouth Dining Services' structure, quality and history.
A 40-load box of Tide costs $7.99 at P&C. The same box, a few blocks up Main Street, runs for $12.29 at Dartmouth's Topside. That is $4.30 more -- a big difference, and one of many inequalities in price that have students questioning the fairness of Dartmouth Dining Services' pricing.
Armed with pen and paper, The Dartmouth looked into how DDS prices compare with those at Hanover eateries and grocery stores. The findings: Topside's prices are significantly higher across the board, while the prices in the dining halls are about equal to or slightly less than the prices at local restaurants.
For example, a half-pound hamburger and fries costs close to $6.50 everywhere in town, and a plain bagel with cream cheese will cost about $1.50 no matter where it is bought.
On the other hand, the differences between prices at Topside and local supermarkets are striking. A box of 12 Nature Valley granola bars costs $2.79 at the Co-Op, but runs for $3.69 at Topside; a 15 oz. box of Frosted Flakes that costs $2.99 at P&C is $4.59 at Topside.
The price of meals on campus is a common source of complaints among students such as Crystal Vann '05.
"DDS can overcharge for meals that aren't that good and doesn't give you that large a quantity of food," Vann said.
Other students are satisfied with meals but feel that the prices at Topside could be lower.
"DDS is decent," Mustafa Abdur-Rahim '04 said. "But I think Topside's are ridiculous. Aren't all those prices double the prices at the [supermarket]?"
Not quite, but the prices of 10 randomly chosen items from Topside were found to be an average of 38 percent higher when compared with their counterparts at P&C and the Co-Op.
The reason for the higher prices at Topside is the lower volume of products that the store purchases compared to major supermarkets, according to DDS Director Tucker Rossiter.
"If [a grocery store] buys 2,000 cases of ketchup and we buy 20, obviously Heinz is going to give them a better deal," Rossiter said.
P&C manager Blair Rudio concurred. "Whereas [P&C] buys products literally by the trainload and the truckload, Topside buys them from a middleman a box at a time," he said.
"That's why a lot of small stores have more expensive items," he continued.
The price of certain items such as Lay's potato chips are the same for every vendor because they are direct store delivery items that the manufacturer delivers itself, setting its own prices the same everywhere, according to Rudio.
Topside's pricing structure is simple. For every 65 cents it pays for a product, its mark-up is 35 cents. In other words, for every DBA dollar spent at Topside, 65 cents covers the cost of the product while the other 35 cents covers the costs of operating the store, according to Rossiter.
Rossiter emphasized that DDS is not subsidized by the College and said that the store is only intended to break even, making no profit.
While DDS does occasionally send out student workers to local grocery stores to get some sense of whether or not Topside is getting a good deal from its suppliers, these price checks don't influence how Topside prices its goods, Rossiter said.
Rossiter said that the only reason he could think of for the high price of Tide at Topside was that the warehouse was selling it to them at a significantly higher price.
What brings students back to Topside in the end is convenience and a desire to spend their DBA dollars.
"The supermarkets are obviously less expensive," Kristin Steinhert '04 said, "But at the same time it's harder to get there, and it's not covered by the meal plan, so this works."
Unlike Topside, the prices at dining halls are fairly close to their restaurant equivalents.
The dining halls have the opposite pricing structure of Topside: for every dollar spent in the dining halls, 35 cents cover the cost of the ingredients, and the other 65 cents pays the cost of running the facilities, according to Rossiter.
Certain items, such as soda and coffee, are marked up more than the norm in order to offset special costs, such as stolen china and silverware, people surreptitiously refilling drinks and special dining events, Rossiter said.
Again, DDS occasionally sends student workers to local establishments to "see what's popular, what the market is saying about these products," Rossiter said.
But he emphasized again that these visits do not influence DDS' pricing structure.
Jimbo Dowd, general manager of the Everything But Anchovies pizza restaurant, said that he does look at DDS prices when determining his own prices and considers himself a competitor of DDS.
Rossiter admits that they are competing with local restaurants in a limited way, but stresses that "we're not out there trying to undercut them" and that "there's room enough for all of us."
Representatives of other local restaurants, including Lou's Restaurant, C&A Pizza and Molly's Restaurant and Bar, said they generally don't consider DDS' prices when setting their own.
"We've never even discussed the prices over [at DDS]," said Maggie Gray, manager at Lou's Restaurant.
Instead, most restaurants determine their prices by considering costs and then comparing their prices with those charged by other private restaurants in the area.
"I look at everybody and everything, you have to," said Thomas Curtis, manager of Molly's Restaurant and Bar. "What a hamburger is going to cost in Hanover, that's sometimes what it comes down to. To stay in business in Main Street in Hanover, you have to price correctly."
