By Brian Cortes
For many students at Lehman, grabbing a bite to eat between classes or catching up with friends over lunch is an essential part of the college experience. Whether it’s breakfast in the morning, lunch in the afternoon, or even a simple snack to get through the day, eating something while on campus has become essential to students. Considering this, it is no surprise that students have paid close attention to Lehman's dining services. In the process of keeping up with the dining services, many questions from students have arisen over time. As Lehman students returned in the fall of 2021 during the transition period of reopening post-pandemic, they left the cafeteria services behind as it remained closed until the fall of 2022. Once it did, students quickly noticed their dining experience differed from the one they remembered. With different food options and items, they remember having a different presentation. Following this, students began raising questions about the changes.
David Charcape, Assistant Director of Campus Life, reflected on the pre-pandemic dining scene, explaining, "Prior to the pandemic, the college used to have a vendor called Metropolitan. Not only did they run the main cafeteria in the basement of the Music Building, but they also offered catering services for campus events. Most of the clubs and offices used their services often, and the prices were very competitive.”
Metropolitan Food Service Inc. was the food service provider that supplied the campus with most of its food options, and the experience most students were familiar with before the pandemic. Many students reflect on their experience when Metropolitan was around with comments like “I could always count on a slice of pizza to get me through the day” and “the burger and fries combo always hit the spot and left me and my friends satisfied.” Also, similar sentiments were shared about how the cafeteria services back then created a comfortable environment for them to eat or simply hang out before, in between, and after classes.
Like many things in our time, Metropolitan Food Services Inc. was not able to stay open for business as Lehman and other colleges shut down campus activities. This served as a primary source of income for Metropolitan, and the absence made it hard for them to stay in business. This is true for most of the food providers of colleges in NYC. Despite this, Lehman needed to continue providing dining services as part of getting the services on campus back up and running. This led to a new supplier taking the reins of dining services at Lehman in the form of JG Restaurant Ventures LLC (DBA World Cup). JG has been in charge of the current food services at Lehman since the reopening of its cafeteria services. The change was apparent when students observed that their usual food items, like the pizza, looked and tasted different.
To gauge if the overall experience provided by JG is better, worse, or the same as Metropolitan is harder to evaluate since comparing taste, portions, health benefits, and overall experience are different areas that could vary depending on who you ask. However, a comparison between both services presents itself in the form of the annual budgets of the Lehman Auxiliary Enterprise Corporation, which demonstrates the revenues that the cafeterias bring to Lehman annually.
According to the files in the fiscal year of 2019-2020, when Metropolitan was still operating, the cafeteria generated around $126,837 compared to our current fiscal year 2024-2025, in which JG is running reports of around $60,000. At first glance, based on the numbers, it might appear that Metropolitan’s final year running provided more satisfaction by a long shot compared to JG, which hasn’t been able to gross half of Metropolitan's earnings. But it's important to remember that Lehman is still recuperating itself post-COVID and that JG is continuously reassessing and refining its services to better provide to students. Since Metropolitan had a longer time for trial and error, it had time to figure out what the best accommodations were when servicing Lehman.
Further inspection of the Auxiliary Enterprise Corporation files also reveals that in the fiscal year of 2022-2023, the cafeteria generated $20,000, and in the fiscal year of 2023-2024, the cafeteria generated $45,000. Considering that this year generated around $60,000, it is evident there's an upward trajectory in performance from JG since their income has increased yearly. This trend indicates that students are slowly trusting JG more and more for their dining services. Something important to note is that JG has to compete with other food services that students have adopted when all the cafeteria services at Lehman were closed. This includes other local dining locations like cafes, food carts, and restaurants. Something that Metropolitan didn’t have to deal with as much. Once Lehman began providing dining services, students weren’t so quick to change back from the new food options they had made part of a routine.
It’s natural for a business not to do so well at the start and to progress with further time to succeed continuously. Just because JG hasn’t immediately shown the same profit level as the Metropolitan once did, it doesn’t mean that it won’t ever equal or surpass it at some point.
