Cafeteria Economics

I try to avoid the campus cafeteria like the plague—not because the food is bad per se, but, rather, because I’d prefer to be eating lunch with one hand and working with the other.  This afternoon, though, I grabbed lunch at the cafeteria.  Much to my surprise, our cafeteria has gone tray-less (or, at least they were tray-less for a day).  My lunch partner and I began to speculate about why our university is tray-less, and here’s what we came up with for reasons: 

1.       Maybe this is just a fluke, and we normally have trays;

2.       Maybe Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s Nudge and policy conclusions from the behavioral economics literature are influencing our university;

3.       Maybe this is part of a “Green” initiative;

4.       Maybe this is a cost saving measure. 

In any event, I will unleash my local economic detectives (ahem, Corey!) and get back to our readers soon with an explanation.

Comments

[Rachel]

It's supposed to reduce water usage. They had a big to-do about it and surveys to determine if they should do it.

[Ryan]

The last time I ate there (circa May 2007), they had trays so it could just be a fluke.

Then again, they may have chosen to do away with trays in the past year and a half. The entry on Nudge specifically talks about Aramark and that is who does all of Mercer's food service. My guess is 2, 3, and 4.

[Ryan]

The last time I ate there (circa May 2007), they had trays so it could just be a fluke.

Then again, they may have chosen to do away with trays in the past year and a half. The entry on Nudge specifically talks about Aramark and that is who does all of Mercer's food service. My guess is 2, 3, and 4.

[Corey Carpenter]

Yep, it's supposed to save water and food waste...and is presented as a health and environmentally conscious policy on the food service company's part, but reduces their overhead for food and the extra time to clean the trays...interesting fact is that a semester before the trayless policy was implemented, there were several washer breakdowns requiring the use of paper plates and cups at time, so it is also reasonable to assume that the washers were either changed or reduced in number to change fixed costs also