The scent of freshly cooked food wafts as one walks through 1901 Marketplace. Tables line the wall, students are seen studying or hanging out with friends. They enjoy meals they bought from the different dining options available at this particular venue.
A similar atmosphere permeates Vista Grande, where many on-campus students explore what Cal Poly’s dining offers. Outside the two buildings, students line up around food trucks to find even more options.
Behind the scenes are student employees at the various campus dining venues. According to the campus dining website, around 1,100 students work at the venues year-round. These student-employees experience both the hardships and benefits of campus dining.
The flexible scheduling available to students makes this a popular employment option.
For animal science sophomore, Lainee Underhill, this flexibility first drew her to the job. She has worked at the food trucks and concession stands during sports games since her first year.
While most campus dining jobs offer flexible hours and work around student schedules, some are more limited. Underhill mentioned experiencing challenges with her work schedule, specifically working around limited hours.
“My job is very specific to certain times because if there’s no game, I don’t have any hours, and I wish I had more,” Underhill said.
Working at campus dining hasn’t affected her opinion of the food served. Even if quality improves, Underhill would likely still prefer cooking her meals, as she lives further away from the main on-campus dining venues.
“I like certain meals that I don’t think anyone would make on campus. I know what I’m putting into the meal, and I don’t know what other places are cooking with,” Underhill said. “A lot of the options they have on the freshman side are not really healthy for you, and there’s not very many options. I would just say that they need to have more breakfast options and more healthy dinner options that aren’t just a salad or a bowl from Balance.”
Aside from these concerns, Underhill explained that the cost of dining plans also affected her relationship with campus dining. However, she found a way to combat this expense. Students who work at campus dining receive free meal passes, which they can use to save money on meals.
Because of these meal passes, Underhill doesn’t eat the food from her job as much. This is a significant change from her freshman year when she would take free food offered to her while on the clock.
“Freshman year, I ate a lot of food at my job because I was trying to save my dining dollars, because I got the limited plan last year,” Underhill said.
Underhill isn’t the only student employee who mentioned meal plan prices as a concern.
Biochemical junior Jesus Andrade, working at Panda Express, explained a situation similar to Underhill’s. Prior to working at Panda Express, he cooked the majority of his food at home.
“Since I started working at Panda Express, that has saved me money because I get a free meal every shift,” Andrade said.
Even with diverse dining options, Andrade has expressed concern about the nutrition levels of campus food.
“Even though it has good and diverse options of food, I think, realistically, it’s not always feasible to always eat there. One, without a dining plan, it gets expensive. Two, it’s not the healthiest for you calorie-wise. Yeah, they have healthy options, but you don’t want to eat the same thing every single day,” Andrade said.
With 1901 Marketplace opening in his second year, Andrade thinks there is more diversity in the dining options, but does not equate to more nutritious options.
Beyond nutrition, the consistency of quality can also be a concern. Architecture sophomore Rosy Htet, who used to work at Brunch, explained that having so many students working at campus dining can result in different standards of food quality.
According to Htet, the training that student employees receive only sometimes translates to consistency in cooking and packaging.
“At least for first-year dining at Vista Grande, a lot of it is student-run. Students make and pack the food. The quality isn’t always going to be consistent,” Htet said.
Despite this concern, Htet agreed that working at campus dining was still a good deal. Although she no longer works there, she enjoyed the work culture and felt the meal passes were beneficial. Underhill concluded her remarks with a similar statement.
“I really like my job, and I think it’s fun. It’s like a cheat code to save money because I get so much free food, I get meal passes, I get paid. Also, I get to hang out with chill people the whole time,” Underhill said.
