The Dining Room Again (Vol. 1, Issue 7)
News of the advent of a new dining room management this year was enthusiastically received by practically every student in all departments of the institution. While not very gullible for the usual run of optimistic predictions, the Yeshiva student has evidenced time after time a surprising faith in the silvery promises of every new management. Despite disappointments and disillusionments experienced in one unbroken line of unfulfilled pledges, the student body has still maintained its air of naive credulity towards the solution of food difficulties which manifests itself periodically in a mass patronage of the restaurant at the commencement of each successful regime.
This fall the …[illegible]... no exception in any way. …[illegible]... the beginning of last term into the expectation of an ideal college season as far as food was concerned, we lived to see the dining room descend to depths only the most cynical among us had dared to predict. Still, when the restaurant was opened for business again this term under a new concession, the student response, as ever, was spontaneous and complete. Surely no greater or more whole-hearted co-operation in patronage could be asked by any establishment. The students have actually turned out en masse to give the new dining room management their united support.
Whether the number of students patronizing the restaurant will remain as great as during the first few weeks is a problem whose solution rests squarely on the. shoulders of the incoming restaurant ‘regime. By dealing fairly with the. students with regard to prices and quality of food there is every reason to believe that the year will not only be a singularly pleasant one in the history of the institution but a decided financial success for the managing firm.
On the other hand, only by the complete satisfaction of the student body will the management ever be assured of a profitable enterprise. If the standards of good quality and low prices—a fundamental prerequisite of all college caterers are to be maintained in Yeshiva, it may readily be seen that the success of the venture from a financial viewpoint depends solely on the large volume of trade. To antagonize the student body by refusing to grant various requests of a minor financial nature — minor, especially, when viewed through the perspective of a yearly turnover — will have only one result, namely, that of killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Surely no one is better qualified to recognize this elementary principle of business economics than the present dining room regime whose very existence depends upon it. To overlook or stubbornly refuse to understand this basic tule is only to doom a business venture to financial failure.
The Commentator, as well as the student body, extends to the new dining room management every wish for a successful season. We fervently hope the precedent established by other regimes in the past — of rapidly descending from the standards set at the beginning of the team — will not be followed by the present management.
