With both hands filled with grocery bags, Chelsea Weiss slowly got through campus on her way back to her dorm room.
Weiss, a sophomore at Queens College, gets her grocery shopping done for the weekend on Fridays because all dining facilities but one on campus are closed on the weekends.
“What’s the point of having a meal plan if I have to buy groceries for the weekend because the food places aren’t open,” Weiss said.
Students like Weiss who dorm at The Summit, have the inconvenience of a majority of food facilities on campus being closed on the weekends. But it is not the only issue The Summit residents face. Dining hours on campus do not extend past 8 p.m.
“It’s inconvenient because most of my classes are at 6:30 p.m. I wish they made the hours until 9 p.m.,” said Jandy Choe, a QC senior.
Students like Choe, who take night classes, do not have the much of an opportunity to buy food because the majority of food facilities on campus close at 8 p.m. Most places stop cooking even before closing, leaving students with fewer options.
The flow of students determines how much the facilities will be cooking toward closing, according to Director of Dining Services David Crump.
“What we do is we try to cook the items as close to fresh as possible; we try to extend it to the time we close, but if it’s slow we’ll scale back because we don’t want to cook product and waste it,” Crump said.
Business slows down around 7 p.m., where most of the people who come in mainly only want coffee or something small to eat, according to Crump.
Based on traffic and business patterns, the hours of operation for each of these areas work accordingly. As the hours are set now, the facilities do not see the need to extend its hours.
There are seven food facilities on campus: the Naked Pear Café in the Science Building, The Library Café, the SA Diner and SA Coffee Shop, both located in the Student Union, and the Q Café, Dairy Shop, Q-Venience and Blue Agave all located in the Dining Hall.
All of the hours are found on the school’s website and dineoncampus.com/queenscollege, with different hours fitting for certain holidays and school breaks.
“Many factors contribute to the hours and why they are what they are,” Crump said.
With the slow flow of business on the weekends, there is no indication of a need for the food places on campus to be opened. However, The Naked Pear Café is open on the weekends because many weekend classes take place in the Science Building.
Crump does not have any plans to open another place on the weekends but said if he did, it would be the Q-Café because of its proximity to the dorms.
“We are 98 percent commuters, it has a lot to do with the student body and the type of students on campus,” Crump said.
