Effective on November 26, 2012, all prices in the Café Express were going to increase by 25 cents due to theft. However with the overwhelming support from the student body, they are postponing any price raises while they work through some alternative solutions to the theft problem.
With the increasing amounts of theft happening in the Café Express, Westside’s Nutrition Services department was going to resort to raising the prices on all of their food items. Students were encouraged to share a better alternative to address the problem. Some of the ideas proposed include:
- Not allowing coats and other pieces of outerwear to be worn inside the Café
- Limiting the number of people inside the Café at one time
- Installing surveillance cameras to monitor theft
- Eliminating the high theft items
Due to the amount of ideas that were suggested by students, they have postponed the price increases and are exploring a couple of different options to prevent theft.
“The biggest problem is large crowds of people at the Café Express. One of the ways to eliminate that is to ask students to only come in when they are actually shopping. We could have one person coming in for a snickers bar and there are six friends with them,” said Nutrition Services Department member Sharon Schaefer.
Students who frequent the Café were not too happy to hear about the impending price increases. Some students talked about boycotting the Café and were going to refuse to purchase items once the raised prices were put into effect, however not everyone agreed with this.
“I wish they didn’t have to raise prices in the Café Express but I understand why they are doing it and that’s where my money is for lunch so I’m going to keep buying food from there,” said senior Leemah Nasrati.
According to Sharon Schaefer, boycotting the Café would actually solve the problem of theft.
“If kids boycotted the Café it would eliminate theft entirely. It certainly wouldn’t help sales at all, but I think anything that generates awareness that theft is a problem and it truly affects everybody is good,” said Schaefer.
As the Nutrition Services Department explores other options, no prices increases will take place.
