Sodexo, St. Ambrose’s food service provider conducted a survey to receive feedback from SAU students, staff, and faculty about what areas can be improved by Sodexo. The questions were aimed to evaluate Sodexo’s food, atmosphere, customer service, Everyday App, themed days, to-go options, nutritional information and more.
CJ Busch, Catering Director of St. Ambrose’s Sodexo service explains the purpose of the survey is to understand the expectations that the St. Ambrose community has for Sodexo, as well as evaluating any specific area of service.
The majority of the feedback consisted of having more of a variety in the newly renovated Cosgrove cafeteria, The Grove.
“Adding variety to the grill and other stations is going to be a topic of conversation moving forward. We want to give people what they want and hopefully create excitement for the spring semester and others moving forward,” Busch expressed.
The Sodexo team is going to take the results and form a plan that is up to standard for the St. Ambrose community.
“We will have strategic planning meetings within our staff to create a plan that will improve and maintain satisfaction of customers that we have at St. Ambrose. We will also run some test trials, and see what other universities are doing to possibly bring fresh ideas to our campus community. We will also look and see the areas where we need to maintain our success and develop ways to keep trending in the right direction,” said Busch.
Busch highlights the value of feedback, “I think anytime you get to have feedback from the campus it is important to listen to because that is who we are trying to please on a daily basis. We are here to serve people that go to school here and work here, and without them we would not be able to function.”
With the feedback gathered from the survey, Sodexo adapts to everyone’s needs and attempts to satisfy everyone.
“The challenging part is trying to make sure everyone is satisfied. We take great focus on trying to make sure the majority of people are satisfied and let their voice be heard. One other challenging part is to articulate why things are structured the way they are to people,” Busch described.
In addition to the survey, Sodexo already has many ideas for the upcoming spring semester.
“We plan to have more theme days in the cafeteria this upcoming semester as well as some pop-ups with our chefs that will add flair and excitement to students’ everyday ventures on campus. We will also take a look at strategizing menus that will create a wider variety of food to serve in the cafeteria, while also maintaining the staples that people love, like wing day,” Busch said.
Sodexo’s satisfaction survey was successful, and they are in the process of designing a plan to modify and/or enhance the variety of different services that they provide for SAU.
