After banning freshmen from having cars on campus, Claremont's Dean of Students Jeff Huang has informed us that CMC -- along with every other Claremont College -- is banning trays on campus. Apparently, it was Bon Appetit's plan. You might remember when Aditya and I wrote about the Trayliban back here and here and most recently here. You can join our year old Facebook group here. Sadly, it isn't a joke anymore.
Anyways, here's Huang's statement, provided by a parent,
“We're looking for ways to save money next year, with minimal intrusion to students and those who work at the College. The Treasurer determined that we had to save $200,000 in Collins/Bon Appetit next year to make the budget. For a sense of how much that is, and what we would have to do to achieve that savings, if we cut all 5 nights per week of late-night snack, we would still need to find another $65,000! Eliminating the carryout containers would have saved us another $30-40K. We'd still have to cut the daily program (breakfast-lunch-dinner) somehow, and we really didn't want to do that.
We are going to start charging $0.50 per to-go container to save the $30-40K (along with all the other Claremont Colleges). While considering our options, it was Bon Appetit who advised us that, in campuses where they have eliminated trays, savings of 5% have been achieved off the entire food bill for the year! (They believe that there is less waste because, when you have to carry food on plates, you are less likely to take several plates of food that end up being wasted.) Additional savings in water and, of course, the cost of replacing the trays themselves, were achieved. This, plus reducing one night per week of snack and some careful management of overtime, cookware, etc., will allow us to hit the Treasurer's target without having to scale back on the actual offering we have at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
We would still provide an "all you can eat" program; going trayless does not reduce the amount of food a student can take. The Claremont Colleges will be going trayless Claremont-wide this fall.”
