SAS Economists Podcast #1: Demand for Eurest cafeteria food at SAS
welkerswikinomics.com on October 15th, 2007
By Emily Yeh and David Xu:
Introduction: So today on SAS Economists podcast we come to examine the economic practices of our beloved catering service, Eurest. For the last several years Eurest has held our stomachs and their breaths, as they poured out food for the school community’s enjoyment. But how much does the community really enjoy the services provided by Eurest? Too often complaints about the variety of food or taste and appeal are expressed by students and teachers when the name “Eurest” is mentioned.
Today, we will examine the alleged gap between price and quality for Eurest’s food. We’ll try to find out whether the prices charged for cafeteria food truly reflect the costs to Eurest, or whether it is monopoly power that result in the prices many students consider to be unreasonable. Does a lack of competition result in x-inefficiency on behalf of Eurest? If students had the benefit of greater variety and the freedom to eat off campus, how would Eurest match up against greater competition? What can the company do to achiever a higher level of customer satisfaction? These questions and more in the first EVER SAS Economists podcast!
To play, click on the viewer below and wait a couple of minutes for the video to load. It will play automatically once it has buffered.
October 15th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
wow this really is an impressive video! kudos to the choice of music =)
Although it’s always been clear that Eurest is a monopoly at our school, I’d never really realised the extent to which the monopoly of this company affects the lives of so many students. While I was watching this video, I suddenly remembered how a large majority of the senior class no longer eats at school. If a senior is unable to go off campus during free or a lunch period, they will ask a friend to buy them lunch. The other, less fortunate high schoolers however, are forced to eat the food of Eurest, if not bring their own meal from home. It would be interesting to see another food company challenge the firm of Eurest in our school. Clearly, Eurest is afraid of other firms entering their market, which is why their contract with our school disallows us to order in food from other restaurants.
October 15th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
WOW thanks a lot david and emily… i’m a nub and that was embarassing… hahaha but good job on the video. :] I agree with what Nicole said about how most seniors don’t eat at Eurest because they have off-campus privileges. However, I also think that what Nick and Caleb said is grossly exaggerated because, despite popular opinion at our school, Eurest food is NOT THAT BAD- the fact that so many SAS kids think it’s so gross only reflects that we’re all just a bunch of spoiled and pampered little expat kids. We need to learn to APPRECIATE what we have and realize how much better Eurest is than the immensely inferior “food” that tons of other kids in the same city as us are forced to eat for lunch. Nevertheless, I do agree that Eurest should lower their prices in accordance to the quality of their food, and after some consideration I do think that when I get off-campus privileges next year, unless Eurest makes some drastic changes to either make their food better or lower its prices, I’ll also get most of my lunches elsewhere.
October 17th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Alice makes a great point, I’ve never found Eurest to be THAT bad, I mean, I’ve eaten worse cafeteria food without off-campus priviledges. But it’s also true that the worse food was also much cheaper. Eurest definitely has a pricing problem, but as the video says, it is a monopoly and as Nicole says, it’s contract prohibits ordering from other restaurants. Great video guys, it was enlightening how much Eurest affects students in SAS. I love the music especially in the transitions, so cute.
October 18th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
I really like how this podcast give a resolution to the problem. It is easy for people to identity faults, but to be able to offer suggestions to fix the problem is rather difficult. And the graphs are really helpful too because words stand out among strings of dialogue.
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