With a new $31 million expansion in the Chamberlain Student Center, a brand new veterinarian school poised to open next fall, and enrollment numbers that are burgeoning year after year, Rowan is expanding quickly, and all facets of student life have had to accommodate these rapid changes.

Despite positive growth in one direction, the students have expressed frustration about campus dining, which has indicated an issue simmering in its dining locations. Some of these problems include long lines when ordering food and little variety in the dining options available to students.

Erin Doyle, a sophomore management major, is one student who has had to face these problems.

“I’m a commuter so I don’t order food much, but when I do, there is little variety and the lines are super long,” said Doyle. “I have no time to order before class.”

Doyle’s experience highlights the sentiments felt by many students on campus. At retail locations like Saxbys, Brkfst & Co, Grill Nation and Jersey Mike’s, students and staff can wait up to an hour for their meals depending on the time of day, making it impossible to grab a quick meal in between classes unless they consistently track the lines and strategically order ahead of time.

Higher management at Gourmet Dining and Saxbys were contacted with inquires of what is the cause of these problems faced by students.

Albert Irons, the director of operations with Gourmet Dining, gave some perspective from the dining provider’s side, explaining the cause for long lines.

“The easy answer to this is that guests are happy with their choices…there are many other locations that get very busy…Some just have the ability to be able to move faster than the others. Some items take longer to prepare. One thing we won’t do is give up quality for convenience,” said Irons.

Irons was referring to places like Jersey Mike’s, Brkfst & Co, and Freshens, where most meals are made-to-order, which is why the lines are longer. Meanwhile, at other retail locations such as Smoked and Chef Jet, most of the food is already prepared and only needs to be packaged. Though the wait times listed on Grubhub, the platform students use to order their meals, for some places are long, and other places never seem to have a line, it doesn’t necessarily indicate that students are not ordering from these locations.

In light of this information, there appears to be a preference for ordering from made-to-order restaurants based on input from students on the dining locations where they most frequently order.

Sophomore political science major Yina Mendoza gave insight on her dining preferences, building on Doyle’s concern about a lack of variety in food options and also supporting the finding that students have a preference for made-to-order food.

“Because there are a lot of unhealthy options like Grill Nation and the Sweet Shop, I go mostly to Chet Jet or Freshens. I wish there were more appetizing healthy options,” said Mendoza.

Students ordering food from Saxbys in the Business Hall building are also sometimes faced with long wait times until their food is ready, especially around the late morning or early afternoon hours. Melody Wozunk, the inaugural student CEO of Rowan’s Saxbys and the current head of area operations for the Saxbys cafes in the New York and New Jersey regional area, was able to provide information on how Saxbys has adapted to these patterns.

“We’ve always seen a consistent rush during the late morning and early afternoon times when a large number of students place online orders simultaneously as they usually plan to order ahead in consideration of their class schedules,” said Wozunk. “Our student team is incredible at maneuvering through these rushes and averages at under one minute per each order, despite space limitations.”

Students ordering from Saxbys have also been confronted with less of a variety in food options because of product unavailability. Sometimes, unavailable options are still displayed on Grubhub, but when students are able to customize their order, all the options are listed as “sold out,” and they are unable to order what they were intending.

“Product availability and overall guest experience are extremely high priorities for us at Saxbys, so if there is a time when a menu item or specific ingredient is unavailable, we work to the best of our ability to make it available again as soon as possible,” said Wozunk. “While there can be a variety of factors that contribute to out-of-stocks, some of the most common reasons we see are manufacturer shortage or delivery errors, changes in demand, or equipment maintenance.”

Representatives at Gourmet Dining were asked about creating more variety in the dining options they provide by bringing in different restaurants or expanding the current restaurants that seem more popular to accommodate more orders.

“Not each person is the same. My preference is not yours. Smoked is a location that a ton of people do every day. But we absolutely do adjust our offerings and locations based on our guests… Homestyle meatloaf or mac and cheese, our number one seller. But that’s not all guests, that’s why there’s offerings for all types of diners at all our locations across all of campus,” said Irons.

Regardless of whether the long lines are stemming from a student preference for a select few dining locations or from the fact that some locations only serve made-to-order food, an undeniable observation is that there is an increased demand for food on campus, driven by increasing enrollment. This begs the question of how Rowan is planning to sufficiently cater to all the dining needs of all students present and future. Last fall, Rowan welcomed over 3,000 freshman students and over 5,000 students total, and the university will continue to grow further.

Recognizing the unprecedented growth that the university is experiencing, Saxbys and Gourmet Dining have implemented plans to satisfy Rowan’s growing need for more food. Wozunk shed some light on how Saxbys is planning to accommodate this growth.

“With the growth of Rowan University and the new expansion of the Chamberlain Student Center, Saxbys is growing as well. We are opening a new cafe on the lower level of the new expansion of the Chamberlain Student Center and are set to open in the fall of 2025…Having a second cafe on campus will allow us to have more space, equipment, and team members to serve even more guests, even quicker,” Wozunk said.

Gourmet Dining is well aware of increasing enrollment and has no concerns. Irons also provided insight on how the company’s operations are accommodating this growth.

“We are very familiar, just like the university is, about handling a large influx of guests each and every year,” said Irons. “We are always looking at options and solutions, but our current operations can easily handle many more guests. Goals and plans are in discussion with the university in regard to short- and longer-term plans as well.”

While Irons expresses confidence and optimism in Gourmet Dining’s current and future operations, some students are not convinced that the current campus dining situation will continue to operate well in the midst of university expansion. Senior molecular and cellular biology major Grace Huang counters this confidence.

“Since Rowan has opened the previously closed freshman dorms such as Evergreen and Mullica, the increased enrollment does not seem like it will be helping to resolve the long wait lines for food,” said Huang.

Some students have a much more bleak perspective on how campus dining will continue to accommodate students in the future as enrollment continues to increase. These conflicting viewpoints draw into scrutiny how campus dining providers are engaging students.

“I believe that their system, like using the GrubHub app, is efficient, but if the school were to expand, campus dining would need a redesign because the student population is starting to outgrow the campus,” said freshman engineering entrepreneurship major Richard Roscio.

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