Dining Hall Price Hikes: What’s behind them?

Sanford School’s dining hall vendor, the CulinArt group, has been increasing their prices recently.

The CulinArt group has been battling inflation since August of last year, and it has had an effect on the prices of food.

“At the start of the year we were up ten to twelve percent across the board on all food items, which is why there was a slight increase in prices going into the school year this year,” said CulinArt’s Food Service Director Michael Catania.

Despite this increase in prices, Anderson claims Catania is trying to keep the prices as low as possible.

“It’s difficult for places like CulinArt to sell food through a time of inflation. Every time they buy something like bread, meat, or cheese, all of the prices have gone up over the last year and a half. So they have to pass that price onto their customers which makes things more expensive.” says Sanford’s Head of School Mark Anderson.

Catania claims he hasn’t heard of many complaints about the rise in prices.

“Here and there I’ll hear some complaints and that’s a normal thing considering the atmosphere we are in. [Students] don’t want to pay twenty to twenty-five dollars for a meal, which is totally understandable.”

Anderson also says that CulinArt is an independent contractor, and Sanford has little influence on the pricing of their products.

“They really are an independent contractor. We will give them feedback and they will listen to us,” said Anderson.

Catania also claims that he and his co-workers struggle with a few other things besides inflation.

“Keeping up with the flow of how many people come in on certain days and just trying to make sure we stay on top of giving everyone here the freshest product that we can give. We don’t make our food straight to order and it can get pretty hectic,” said Catania.

Anderson also claims that the dining hall prices might be misunderstood by some students at Sanford.

“I think there are some people who might equate this with since I’m buying this [drink] from the dining hall that Sanford is charging me for this. Sanford’s not charging you for anything in that space. It’s your decision to buy that or not with CulinArt,” said Anderson.