The future of campus food service: self-operation?

Food is one of the few issues at Evergreen that just about everyone agrees is political. Food touches every issue, from sustainable farming to indigenous sovereignty to worker solidarity to prison abolition. Even the volume of academic programs having to do with the science, politics, culture and gender of food have increased in the last few years. So its not surprising that food has been the site of the most struggles at the college.

The Flaming Eggplant Café

This year’s highlight has been the opening of the Flaming Eggplant, a student-run café located in a trailer on Red Square. The Eggplant, which opened at the beginning of fall quarter, grew out of a campaign launched by Students Organizing for Food Autonomy (SOFA) in the 2005-2006 school year. SOFA’s campaign initially advocated for a self-operated campus food service, citing the relationship between food sourcing and environmental sustainability, the major expense and rigidity of catering contracts with outside companies, and a specific critique of Aramark, the campus’s current caterer, for their investment in the prison-industrial complex and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the close of 2005-2006, SOFA members developed a business proposal for the college to open a student-run café in the CAB building as part of the CAB’s redesign. The café received student support in the form of a ballot initiative and was subsequently authorized by the college’s Board of Trustees. For the next two years, Eggplant organizers worked diligently on the logistics of the café, with plans to open a trailer to begin service before the CAB redesign, costing approximately $46,000. The Eggplant proposed and passed a student “tax” levy at the end of 2005-2006 to raise funds for the café to open in 2007-2008. Some students, however, were upset when the café did not open in the fall of 2007, especially after one Flaming Eggplant coordinator gave a provocative interview about the delays in the Cooper Point Journal.

A project of the Eggplant’s magnitude requires a considerable amount of work just to get things running. “Fall quarter we had people working between 40-60 hours a week,” said one former Eggplant volunteer. Julianne Panagacos, Eggplant Office and Kitchen Coordinator added, “It’s a job, it’s not school. That’s really important to recognize in the long-term planning of a student-run food service. Students are transient and need effective leadership to be able to organize all this temporary energy.”

She continued, “It has been a frequent problem where there are a lot of students who come to campus, recognize that Aramark’s here, wanna see that something’s different, especially before we were open, and say ‘What’s happening? Why aren’t you guys doing this?’ instead of ‘How can I help?” The Eggplant currently runs with volunteers and interns for credit, building off of the café’s dedicated base.

The Eggplant, like many first-year businesses, does not currently turn a profit. “We had money in our budget for start-up and what was left over is what’s subsidizing our operation right now,” says Panagacos. “When that runs out what will happen is that we will ask the S&A Board for money to close out our fiscal year. So it comes from S&A money, which is student money instead of Evergreen money.” The Eggplant functions as a Tier 1 organization out of Student Activities, along with KAOS Radio, the Childcare Center, the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and the Cooper Point Journal (until next year when they will become a Tier 2).

In regards to their fiscal plan, Panagacos said, “We have every intention to getting as close to [turning a profit] as possible. We are selling a lot of really high cost and high quality food.” Another Eggplant volunteer agreed, “Our bottom line is food and we haven’t compromised. The [food-price] system doesn’t recognize the cost of pesticides and shitty wages.”

In large part, the Eggplant has demonstrated what a team of dedicated organizers can accomplish with persistence. The Eggplant recently held its Big Annual Meeting (BAM) on May 6th with overwhelming approval. There, coordinators showcased the café’s many achievements and elected student representatives to the café’s Board of Advisors. Eggplant coordinators also presented their plan to hire a full-time support staff to ease the load on students for purchase orders and paperwork.

One student attendee objected to the staff position not on the basis of disagreement, but on transparency. “I just don’t understand why you guys couldn’t put this on the [end of the year] ballot like you’ve done before,” she asked. As they debated for a few minutes, Panagacos ended the discussion by stating, “If you don’t like it, you can join the S&A Board.” This raises the issue of how best to create an efficient structure that supports the work of its organizers while also respecting the concerns of the body of students who pay into S&A. As it stands, oversight for the Eggplant is arranged through a Board of Advisors comprised of five students, one faculty, one staff and two advisors appointed by the Vice Presidents.

Aramark and students

Though the issue is sometimes raised whether the Eggplant is taking away business from Aramark, Panagacos comments, “A lot of what we’ve heard about Aramark through Sharon [Goodman, Director of Residential and Dining Services] is that they have been experiencing record levels of business because there are more people on campus. It seems like more people are buying food instead of a lot of people who used to buy at Aramark are now buying at the Flaming Eggplant. That’s a good thing for us, because we’re doing the amount of business that we’re able to sustain.”

Some Evergreen students, in their criticism of Aramark, have grouped service workers in with the corporation’s legacy. (I personally witnessed one student yell at workers, calling them corporate whores, as they served him food.) Campus food workers, however, did not come to the school with Aramark, but unionized with one of the previous catering companies and have continued as the school has transitioned to other caterers.

Little known to most patrons, campus food service employs workers who commute from areas around the South Sound including Shelton, Lacey, and Centralia. Food service employees at the college range from old to young, some supporting families on a wage that starts a dollar above minimum and has greater security through representation with a progressive union. Other workers are students, supporting themselves as they continue through school.

Aramark also recently put in a bid to the college to revamp the kitchens in the Greenery as part of a contract deal that would extent their presence past the current contract.

Self-operation

While SOFA’s primary goal was for the campus to adopt a self-operated service, consensus on what that looks like, how to do it and even if it’s still a goal does not exist yet. “We haven’t had a conversation about whether our goal is still to completely take over food service,” said Panagacos. On the other hand one Eggplant staff member explained, “Self-operation is both possible and desirable. They thought we couldn’t do this, and here we are doing it.”

Panagacos commented on self-operation, “We’ve paved the way for self-op to happen, we’ve seen what is hard and what’s not. We’ve seen that its possible because we’re doing it, but there are definitely areas where more support in business services would really help the whole college get to that place.” The Eggplant currently runs all of its transactions through business services, which puts a significant load on the office as well as creating bureaucratic delays.

At this point, the dialog has shifted away from self-operation as run directly by students and into a plan where the college would run the various operations. “We can’t run an entire operation like the Eggplant,” said Giselle Garcia, former Eggplant coordinator. Panagacos added, “It would be in the same spaces and a lot of the same stuff, it just wouldn’t be Aramark that’s making the orders. It wouldn’t be them that’s making a profit at the end of the day or it wouldn’t be them with a loss.”

“We don’t just want to take over college food service and run huge deficits. We want to figure out, with what we’re doing now, how do we not order from Sysco and still make this work,” Panagacos added. (The college’s flat managerial contract with Bon Apetit catering corporation left Evergreen with a deficit of approximately $1.5 million.)

This new vision for self-operation takes a turn on campus food service that recognizes different needs and tastes. Nearly everyone interviewed were quick to admit that the Eggplant’s success is due in large part to the fact that they are satisfying a niche, with high quality food, coffee (except in December when it for some reason turned piss-poor), and inexpensive and filling options like rice and beans. Running the cafeteria, market and cafés through the school is in line with a DTF and independent analyst report issued in 2001. The report suggested self-operation for the college, and presents the possibility of a less-costly operation while maintaining the union labor force and providing sustainable food sources.

Self-operation at Evergreen has only come as far as it has because of the work of students and will only advance with more planning and organization.