Students are overwhelmingly unhappy with the recent changes made to the Courtyard Cafe implemented at the beginning of spring term — which include new touchscreen kiosks and the construction of a wall between students and workers.
In a survey conducted by Dartmouth Student Government, 83.68% of students respondents said they felt “extremely dissatisfied” with recent changes to the ordering system at Courtyard Cafe in the Hopkins Center for the Arts. Further, in the survey of 239 students, 8.37% reported being “mostly dissatisfied.” 7.85% of students reported being “neither satisfied nor dissatisfied” and 0% of students stated that they were “mostly satisfied” or “extremely satisfied.”
“It feels like kind of the ultimate removal of this campus from the community that surrounds it … here we are so cut off, not only from the people making the food but the food itself,” Natalie Halsey ’25 said. “It’s all behind walls, behind robots. What are we even doing here? If I wanted this kind of experience, I would go to McDonald’s.”
Members of DSG say that they are opposing the changes. Tamia Kelly ’27, the Allen House Senator for DSG, said she was “really upset [about the changes] as a member of the Dartmouth Dining Committee on DSG.”
“A lot of these changes were not consulted with us before, and any changes that were brought up with us before were not approved of — we explicitly told [director of Dartmouth Dining Jon Plodzik] not to do them,” she said. “And then he went behind our backs and did them anyway. We had no idea about the kiosks.”
The changes also restrict the kind of food students can order. The kiosk system only allows students to use meal swipes with “combos” — which include a salad or quesadilla, among other entrees, with a drink and a side of fries or fruit. However, students must use dining dollars to purchase prepared foods or food combinations not included in the combo menu.
In an interview with The Dartmouth, Plodzik said he has heard that some students think the new system is “really cool,” while others think the wait times are too long. He attributed the long wait times to order and pick up food at the start of the term to the process of students learning how to use the kiosks.
“The process will go faster,” Plodzik said. “My goal is to get the kitchen to have your item out here in five, ten minutes tops.”
Reporters for The Dartmouth visited the Courtyard Cafe this week to monitor the lines in the evening. At 6:30 p.m. on March 31, 25 students were waiting in line to order and 13 were waiting to pick up their food. At 6:30 p.m. on April 1, 17 students were waiting in line and 20 were waiting to pick up their order. Soon after, the line for ordering swelled to 28 students. At 6:30 p.m. on April 2, five students were waiting in line to order, while 22 students were waiting to pick up their order.
Eliza Erdrich ’25 said the new kiosk system, which only offers food orders in to-go packaging, “feels very wasteful: these paper bags that everyone is going to immediately throw away, the [cup] for the fries and the extra wrapping for the burger.”
“It feels like so much extra material and so much extra waste,” they said.
Erdrich added that the new kiosk interface was “weird” and limited options while ordering.
“For instance, if you wanted a vegetarian version of the patty melt,” they said. “I used to be able to get that by just asking them to replace the patty with a veggie burger patty. That’s not possible through [the new kiosks] now.”
Plodzik said Dartmouth Dining is listening to feedback from students about popular items and will continue to add new combos to the menu based on popular demand. According to Plodzik, the only new single item on the Courtyard Cafe menu is a junior double cheeseburger because he wanted to have an option that “competed with McDonald’s double cheeseburger.”
“We have already added 20-something new combinations since we started on Monday at noon,” Plodzik said.
Kelly also spoke against the lack of student interactions with DDS workers in the new system.
“I think this is really disrupting a lot of the things that students enjoy the most about Dartmouth Dining in regards to human capital,” Kelly said. “A lot of students talk about how chatting with these workers and having conversations with them is sometimes the best part of their day. This really intervenes with that on a significant level.”
Plodzik said that no DDS employees have been fired from Courtyard Cafe, but two have been relocated to other DDS locations. However, he acknowledged that the loss of interactions with dining workers is a “flip side” to the changes.
“My hope is that you won’t lose too much contact with them because you’re still going to see some of the folks come out,” Plodzik said.
According to DSG’s survey, 55.9% of students reported feeling “extremely satisfied” and 29.6% reported feeling “mostly satisfied” with Courtyard Cafe before these changes were made.
The modifications at Courtyard Cafe come alongside other changes to DDS’s service. Snacks and grill items, including quesadillas and bobs, were removed from Late Night dining at the Class of 1953 Commons before spring term began, prompting a March 30 email from DSG that stated its members were “not aware of the recent changes to late-night dining.”
Late Night now offers a new burrito to increase “value” and efficiency, Plodzik said. A burrito takes 35 to 55 seconds to make and can be purchased as part of a meal swipe combo, he added.
“Last night, 40% of the sales were burritos off the line, so there [were] over 300 and some burritos [sold] last night,” Plodzik said. “... I think people will see the value of these meal swipe combos.”
According to Plodzik, snacks were initially removed due to the “logistical challenges” of moving Late Night equipment into the space each night between the end of dinner and start of Late Night. However, Dartmouth Dining brought back quesadillas and “some” of the snacks after hearing feedback from students.
Plodzik met with the DSG Dining Advisory Committee on March 31 to discuss the changes and has scheduled two more meetings with DSG on April 3.
“I value student input,” Plodzik said. “... It is about building a better program together. It’s not Jon’s program. It’s your program. I’ve just been asked to try to steward this to get you as happy as possible globally on campus, which means some people are going to say, ‘I don’t like it.’ Some people may say, ‘I love the changes.’ I’m hoping we’re going to have more people say ‘I love the changes.’”
Kelsey Wang is a reporter and editor for The Dartmouth from the greater Seattle area, majoring in history and government. Outside of The D, she likes to crochet, do jigsaw puzzles and paint.
Jackson Hyde '28 is an intended philosophy major from Los Angeles, California. His interests include photography, meditation, and board game design.
