With classes as early as 9 a.m. during the summer, students need time to take get away from the classroom. After all, it is summer! Students in the Baruch College Now summer program rely on lunch to talk, eat, relax, and not worry about hectic schedules that are always in their face. Given three choices of restaurants and a different card every week to get any food they want, students can get about anything within the $7 dollars. The lunch plan may seem as if it is practically amazing. However, students’ opinions on the lunch vary.
There are over four classes within the College Now program and three lunch places to go: The Hidden Café, Gramercy Star Café and Gramercy Grill. The majority of students have at least one favorite out of the three. Jordan from the business class said, “I like the options given to us. It’s way better than last year.” By that he refers to students not given a card to get anything but discounts meaning they still had to pay for food. He talked about how he likes being able to use the card given to him to buy either breakfast or lunch. Jordan’s classmate Elijah said, “ Overall I like the food, but I feel that we should have more options….The food is kind of repeated a lot.”
A lot of students felt that the food overall was really good but that it was repeated.
However when Queena and her friend from journalism were interviewed they said that it wasn’t the food they didn’t like, it was the service they received. “The food is really good actually I like the Gramercy Star Cafe but I do not like how the people in The Hidden Cafe treated us, Queena said. Her classmate Evelyn agreed and said, “They rushed us to order and they seemed to be annoyed and the food wasn’t even all that great.”
Many other students at the Baruch Program have said that the amount of time for lunch is too short. Some students have to work on projects and others have said the lines at the restaurants are long due to the amount of students.
When asked whether they would change anything about the lunch, OFabiola from Journalism said, “I would add another restaraunt because the Gramercy Cafe and Gramercy Grill are just alike.” Louis from journalism said, “I wouldn’t change anything about it. The food is good, especially since it’s free. It’s pretty great.”