By KELLY KULTYS
NEWS EDITOR
Elizabeth Zanghi/The Ram All food services would be affected if there were a new food service provider.
The Rochelle Group Ltd. has finished conducting its evaluations of Fordham’s Hospitality Services. The analysis stated that Fordham’s Dining Services were “adequate without blatant issues, however there remains a strong disconnect between student expectations and perceptions.”
“I think that students need to realize that the Rochelle Group is a professional, accredited consulting agency team, so what students should take from this is what the facts are and not so engulfed in their own personal beliefs,” Sama Habib, GSB ’14, president of Student Culinary Council, said. “I know a lot of people have a prejudice against Sodexo so they’re waiting for the [Rochelle Group] to call them out, whereas the Rochelle Group is going to call them out where they needed, not just to blow things out of proportion.”
“The first thing [the Rochelle Group] did was a review of the Princeton Review’s ranking of Fordham [as the college with the worst food], which they said was methodically flawed in that the data that the Princeton Review was using was as much as three years out of date,” Stephen Erdman, FCRH ’13, USG president and a member of the Dining Services Student Engagement Committee, said. “It’s not like [a] scientific study.”
The Rochelle Group completed the analysis after a full investigation of all aspects of Hospitality Services. They began by completing their own walkthroughs of the facilities on all campuses. Then they interviewed certain members of the administration as well as some members of the student body.
Many of the members were a part of the Dining Services Student Engagement Committee, formed by Jeffrey Gray, senior vice president of student affairs. These students help assist Gray and members of the administration, such as Christopher Rodgers, dean of students, throughout the entire process with the Rochelle Group.
“I’m glad they put me from the Student Culinary Council on [the committee] because [SCC is] really involved with student feedback and our responses to that,” Habib said. “We bring back our feedback to management and watch management implement the changes. What they had me do on the committee is just offer another student’s perspective because I was much more familiar with the food and service part.”
Student interviews consisted of both organized interviews and random sit-downs with students dining in the Marketplace.
The last part of their data-gathering included making their own evaluations on what they saw happening at Fordham.
Through these steps, the Rochelle group gathered a consensus of what various people liked or disliked about the current services as well as collecting ideas of what they want to continue or remove.
The Rochelle Group analysis found that the Fordham dining facilities “are tired and overtaxed,” as Erdman said, “especially in light of the services offered.” This is in large part due to the space restrictions currently on campus.
The analysis also concluded that despite Sodexo’s undeserved rankings, Fordham should terminate Sodexo’s current contract and issue a R.F.P. (request for proposal) to food service providers. This step has already begun as Gray confirmed via email: “the R.F.P. is scheduled to be ready for release by or shortly after Feb. 1.”
The R.F.P. would include what Fordham is looking for in a food service provider to fit its campus needs. The next step would be to gather the bid proposals and review them as they are received.
“We expect that Sodexo will be among the vendors who will submit a bid in response to the R.F.P. that will be issued,” Gray said in the email.
“There’s very few food service providers that are able to provide the complex services needed for Fordham’s operation,” Erdman said. “So [right now], they’re only expected to have maybe four food service providers submit adequate proposals.”
“I really see that if there’s a complaint [Sodexo] really tries to act on it, so for me, I’m looking for what else is different than they [the other vendors] can bring,” Habib said. “I’ve been on SCC since freshman year, and through working with management I see things a lot differently. For me, it’s always been pretty positive. I do acknowledge [however] that people do have bad experiences.”
Possible names of bidders that are currently being tossed around include Bon Appetit and Chartwell’s, as well as Sodexo. This time around, however, it may be even more difficult for Sodexo to be reinstated as the food service provider for Fordham.
“Typically, when this happens at other universities, there’s a [decent] chance that the current food service provider will not come back,” Erdman said.
If Sodexo does not return, the management will be gone, as stated in their contract.
“Most likely, the majority of hourly workers will be retained, but that’s not set in stone yet,” Erdman said.
A few students, including student leaders, such as Erdman and Habib, have aided Gray’s team in working with the Rochelle Group.
“There’s three committees that students can sit on,” Erdman said. “[There’s] the student engagement committee, who met with the Rochelle Group to provide feedback, the working committee, which also has a variety of administrators from different areas that can provide feedback on what the food servicer provider should look like and, lastly, there’s the steering committee which ultimately will be making the decision.”
The roles of these committees will continue to expand as the semester, and this process specifically, continues.
“For example, we are going to be doing unannounced site visits to universities that [currently] have the food service providers that will issue bids,” Erdman said. “As the process unfolds, we’ll see what’s going on.”
For right now, though, the next steps in this process include releasing the R.F.P. and then finding out what bidders respond to it.
“The Rochelle Group is planning to stay with Fordham through the entire process to make the transition as smooth as possible,” Erdman said.
“The Sodexo management team is aware of the review process and timeline that the University is following, and they are therefore aware that the assessment phase of this process has been completed,” Gray confirmed in the email.
The new food vendor’s contract is scheduled to be in place on July 1, 2013.
“Right now, [the plan is] to advise the selected group of the tentative contract some time around mid-April,” Erdman said.
