Private food service provider Chartwells has added another campus eatery to its ever-expanding ranks. On September 1, the company assumed operation of the McGill Bookstore's second-floor café from the university's Department of Food Services.
"Chartwells is a nationwide food service provider that is better equipped to manage the café," said Manager Jackie Mersereau.
This handover defies promises the university made to the student leaders of the Coalition for Action on Food Services last March. The shift in ownership is part of a recent trend in which formerly independent or student-run cafeterias have fallen under the management of Chartwells.
Last year, members of the McGill community formed CAFS in response to the trend, organizing boycotts and awareness campaigns on campus.
In March, CAFS led a movement that persuaded the McGill administration to delay the planned tendering of management contracts for 16 campus cafeterias. At the time, Vice-Principal Administration and Finance Morty Yalovsky also announced plans to establish a Dining at McGill Advisory Committee to look into food-related issues on campus.
Students opposed to the corporatization of campus cafeterias are upset by the change in management at the McGill Bookstore café. CAFS member Celia Kutz said the café changed hands "covertly."
"Nothing the administration claimed has been upheld," she said. "We understood that there weren't supposed to be any changes of ownership for one year. There is still no committee, and we haven't received any information about the committee that was supposed to established."
Bill Pageau, director of Food Services at McGill, said management of the café was handed to Chartwells for practical reasons.
"The main focus of the bookstore is selling books, not food," he said. "This is why the café was transferred to Food Services-because we are more experienced in taking care of food."
Mersereau agreed.
"Lots of people are talking about the 'Chartwells takeover,'" she said, "but it wasn't a takeover. McGill realized it wasn't well equipped to oversee food services, so a joint decision-a partnership-was reached with Chartwells."
