Lessons Learned
Throughout this assignment we learned many things. Perhaps the most obvious was that students dislike being approached or bothered when on campus especially for the purpose of conducting a survey. When on campus students like minding their own business much like each of the three members in Team Albertson's. Another thing we learned which reflects how we feel also is that students like convenience but at the same time, they prefer a casual dining experience that offers them value. This was shown in the results where fast-casual is the student’s favorite type of establishment but also the most frequently visited type of restaurant. The third idea that was new to us is that students like being in high traffic areas especially on campus. This was shown to us with the popularity of the Hub and the Reitz Union. Students here went because they knew other students would be there. These two locations are meeting points for friends and even strangers.
As a result of this project Team Albertson’s came up with some very good recommendations for Gator Dining Services. The first is to lower the prices, or improve the food quality if not both at the two dining hall locations on campus. Many students were frustrated by having the same food everyday at these two locations and were not satisfied with the value they were receiving. Another is to increase the availability of nutritious offerings for health conscious consumers. Or in this case make it more public which foods are nutritious. This may be the case because the University of Florida has just been named to the top 10 list of Best Vegetarian Friendly Colleges in the United States. So the availability is there but perhaps the notification is not. We feel our best recommendation for an addition is to add a fast-casual dining restaurant on-campus (and no the Orange and Brew does not count). With fast-casual being students favorite and most visited type of restaurant, why not have one on campus? This restaurant not only would be flooded with students at lunch time, dorm living students looking for a good place to eat will be swarming the restaurant for dinner. Improving the quality of customer service is another much needed improvement. Whether it be the serving staff at the Chik-Fil-A or the friendliness of the staff at Gator Corner. The last and perhaps biggest change needed is the acceptance of credit cards and debit cards on campus. This not only is convenient for students in terms of a new medium of exchange, but may also speed up the long wait lines at some of the retail locations.
Recommendations
When looking in hindsight at what we as a team would do differently not many things came up. We feel that the way we planned to survey and the way we conducted our surveys worked both efficiently and effectively. One thing that factored into our statistics that we could have done is surveyed students at the two all-you-care-to-eat dining locations on campus. This idea came up because we were only getting information on students from The Hub and Little Hall Express. But these are the two places Gator Dining referred so it had to have been for a reason. It just that part of the survey asked questions on the dining halls and many students did not know how to answer. Also many of the students were third and fourth year students. This may have also been because of the locations set up to conduct our surveys at. The main thing that we would have changed was the number of questions on the survey. Many students became jittery or irritated around question #27. The length was a little too long as students started running late for class and some had their lunch time cut shorter than they would have liked. In dealing with the questions many were not very specific. This was seen primarily in the ranking type questions. When speaking of hospitality, greeting, friendliness, and helpfulness they should all be cut down. Many questions reiterated what a previous question was asking.
Team - Results - Analysis - All You Can Eat - Vending - Powerpoint
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