On July 24, 2023, it was announced the Spellmann Center was going to bring in Pizza Hut for the start of the spring semester.
Fast forward to early Jan. 2024, while still remaining in the promise of adding Pizza Hut into Spellmann, it was announced Pizza Hut in Spellman was going to be pushed back to start during the end of February.
“I’ve been talking to food service, I’ve talked to President Porter about this, Nancy Tinker with the university, and the problems unfortunately are coming from the Sodexo side, not from Lindenwood’s side,” student president Clayton Herbst said. “[We’ve been doing] a little bit more digging finding out exactly why we didn’t launch on time, and Sodexo is saying that Pizza Hut has some integral things on back order.”
For some students, including Herbst and senior Marnus Prinsloo, they have been at Lindenwood a long time and have been slightly tired of the same Spellman options over the years; and alongside Pizza Hut, would like to be able to try new things.
“I don’t know if I would be eating [from Pizza Hut] a whole lot, because I try to eat healthier on campus, and I think honestly it would’ve been nicer to have some more healthier options, [though I still] think [Pizza Hut is] a good idea,” Prinsloo said. “But I think it is a bit frustrating that stuff gets delayed because also with the Mr. Beast burger not working out, I think they set people’s expectations kind of high, and then it [doesn’t] deliver very well.”
According to Herbst, since Lindenwood is using third party brands including Qdoba and Chick-Fil-A, many of the food ingredients the school’s allowed to use are highly regulated. And therefore, those brands provide Lindenwood several of the ingredients that the school uses, and some of those ingredients are in back order, so it’s much like a start-up for Spellmann in Lindenwood.
“To be perfectly frank, I’ve expressed my extreme frustration on behalf of the students with Sodexo, and I’m joined by the administration who has been very blunt with Sodexo saying that we expected that Sodexo would be able to better manage with Pizza Hut and treating us more as like it’s Sodexo’s fault for not having better prepared,” Herbst said. “I’ve been working with Sodexo to see if we can move it up, borrow ingredients from other stores, try to open it earlier, simply because students were promised that this would be available or at least strongly told that it would an option early this semester.”
