14 DAY TRIAL // Dining Services at Columbia University have incurred an increase in costs after students have started going through Nutella supplies.
According to the Columbia Spectator, Dining Services exec Vicki Dunn describes that they have registered a high demand for the chocolate product.
“Students have been filling cups of Nutella to-go in Ferris Booth Commons and taking the full jars out of John Jay, which means we’re going through product faster than anticipated,” Dunn describes.
The item was introduced to students paying a dining plan on February 11, in Ferris Booth Commons. Nutella expenses registered at $5,000 (€3,843) within the first week at Ferris.
Even if the product itself is not expensive, if it is kept on the menu, provided it would cost $250,000 (€ 192,000) per year.
“Given the quantities of food required to serve 35,000 meals a week, no item is considered inexpensive,” Dunn says.
She adds that some students are stealing the topping, which can be easily taken from the dining hall. More so, at up to $2,363 (€1,816) per semester, many paying the steep price of the dining plan are simply letting it go to waste.
“When you’re paying that much for a dining plan, some people feel a bit more entitled to taking things from the dining hall.
“But what they don’t realize is that dining uses any extra money to get awesome new items like Nutella, almond butter, and to make structural changes like the JJ’s renovation.
“From a purely economical perspective, if we decide we want to have more of this, the dining hall will have to raise the prices,” student Charles Sanky explains.
“If they’re spending so much money to afford one student taking a full jar of Nutella, I don’t think that’s reasonable or we should allow that to happen,” adds another student, Xiaoyu Guo.