Dining Services has set a tentative mid-October date for the addition of a fourth restaurant to its Merchants on Points (MOPs) program. The new restaurant will replace Urban Gourmet, which decided not to renew its three-year contract last spring.
The MOPs program allows students to order food from off-campus vendors using their points or dining dollars. The program currently features three restaurants - Espresso Pizza, Near East Caf?©, and Wing Works. Student input will help determine a new restaurant, possibly through "an online survey late this week or early next week," said Patti Lee Klos, director of Dining Services.
Urban Gourmet notified Klos at the end of July that it was leaving MOPs.
Jenn Warner, co-owner of Urban Gourmet, said that the decision was "strictly business." Urban was paying a 15 percent commission to Dining Services on every points sale and spending $500 per month on a separate phone line, among other Tufts-related expenses. These factors combined put too much of a financial burden on the self-proclaimed "mom and pop" business.
MOPs vendors must also submit receipts of Points purchases to Dining Services, which then processes the receipts and reimburses the vendor. Warner found the paperwork overwhelming.
"I put in 65 to 70-hour weeks here, and I had to spend another several hours putting the weekly receipts in numerical order for the program," Warner said.
The lag time between services rendered and payment also led to Urban Gourmet's departure. According to Klos, it can take anywhere from 15 days to two months to pay MOPs restaurants, depending on when receipts are submitted and processed. In Urban Gourmet's case, payment often came two months later.
"We could only submit the receipts monthly, and it took the University another month to process the receipts," Warner said. "So, we are putting out money to buy ingredients in September, but we wouldn't get our money back from the University until November."
Though it just recently withdrew from the program, Warner said the restaurant would rejoin the program if returns were higher. "Leaving the program was a very difficult decision for us to make," she said. "We struggled with this decision for a year."
But Klos said that the University "has operating costs solely because of this program," and the 15 percent commission goes towards administrative and other costs associated with MOPs.
Despite Urban Gourmet's departure, Dining Services is not reconsidering its payment policies and fee structures, though Klos said she is "looking to speed up the reconciliation process."
Managers at the other MOPs vendors said they were generally happy with the program. The three restaurants previously on MOPs had to leave because they went out of business.
Since Urban Gourmet's decision to leave the MOPs program, several area restaurants have expressed interest in joining, Klos said. Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate services chair Ed Schwehm will work with Klos to gauge student opinion in selecting a new restaurant. He speculated that he will use Tufts polls, the Senate's online polling program, to gauge student opinion on the issue.
In the past, students have expressed interest in adding a Chinese restaurant to the MOPs program. Accordingly, Chinese restaurants are among the current options under consideration, Klos said.
The number of vendors, however, will not change. Klos said that the delay in paying MOPs restaurants limits how many restaurants the program can accommodate.
"Last year, the number of transactions doubled and the dollar volume tripled," she said, adding that Dining Services does not have the personnel needed to coordinate a larger program.
