Eli Learn
Last night, I went to Mom’s and waited for an hour to get my food. The combined time it took me to wait in line, receive my food and correct the mistake made by the staff took one hour.
To those familiar with the Mom’s experience, this is not an uncommon story. Lunch and dinner at Mom’s is a chaotic time when smoothie delays are inevitable, and mistakes are all too common. One rarely leaves Mom’s saying they enjoyed the food, but commonly talks about how the fries were not crispy enough or their boneless wings were undercooked. I would like to make it clear that this is not a result of carelessness or incompetence, rather this is the natural result of an overwhelming amount of orders. When the employees are forced to multitask beyond their capabilities, mistakes are bound to happen.
By increasing the prices of common menu items, fewer people will go to Mom’s during peak hours. Mom’s is one of the most visited dining spaces on campus and thus is subject to hundreds of orders each day. Every weekday there is a lunch and dinner rush that lasts approximately two hours each, and in this time a few employees must deal with an overwhelming number of orders leading to long wait times and hastily prepared food. Currently, the overwhelming number of orders during peak hours leads to mistakes in the preparation of food, such as adding the wrong add-ins to a quesadilla or undercooking boneless wings. Increasing prices will alleviate the stressful circumstances the staff is forced into, resulting in more attention to detail by the cooks and higher quality meals.
Raising the prices at Mom’s will compensate the discrepancy between the workload of Mom’s employees compared to those of other dining options. Mom’s is a unique dining option because the food is prepared on the grill on an individual meal basis, meaning for each meal ordered you are not only paying for the food, but for the cook to make your meal. Other lunch options such as Pop’s, Old Main and Knowlton have their food prepared ahead of time, resulting in a lower workload of the employees during peak hours. Additionally, the price of each dining option is roughly equal, meaning that the value of the work done is equal for all dining options even though Mom’s employees put in more work per meal. The similar pricing of the dining options suggests the person serving meals that have already been prepared at Pop’s, Knowlton and Old Main have their time valued the same as the cooks who are frequently overwhelmed at Mom’s.
Raising the prices at Mom’s is not a matter of what food is being served, but it is a matter of respecting and appreciating the time the cooks use to give many hundreds of people a day a meal that is prepared just for them.