Forlorn food pricing

By Editorial

It's no secret that campus food prices are higher than what you'd spend elsewhere.

In fact, The Santa Clara reported last week that items sold in Benson's Cellar Market, which is owned by Bon Appetit, cost as much as 25 percent more than at the nearby Safeway.

Our immediate reaction is that this is price gouging. We either pay more for certain products in Benson or have to go out of our way to leave campus to find lower prices.

Jamie Barrow, manager of Cellar Market, was quoted as saying last week that a lack of buying power prohibits Bon Appetit from competing with the likes of Costco or 7-Eleven.

As unfortunate as this is for students, we can't entirely disagree with their logic. Fortunately, it is easy for students to pay for food items using their dining points because the money has already been spent by their parents up front. In addition, the average college student is very busy, which makes it more of a hassle to go to Safeway when they need to get something fast. Thus, students will pay more for food items in the Cellar Market because it's convenient.

But this makes for a difficult circumstance because students living on campus -- most of whom don't have a kitchen access -- are required to purchase the dining plan and are therefore forced to spend that pre-purchased money at Bon Appetit-managed establishments like Cellar Market. This begs the question of whether on-campus residents are coerced into this "agreement."

From a business perspective, we can't blame Bon Appetit for charging more than a Safeway or 7-Eleven. If consumers are willing to pay more, they should charge more. And no one is putting a gun to an undergraduate's head, forcing them to live on campus.

But that misses the point. People chose to come to Santa Clara for various reasons. Sky-high prices for food shouldn't be one of them.