SAGE Dining Servies; Good or Bad?

The company “Sage Dining Services” was first founded in 1990. The meaning behind the name SAGE was—setting a good example. Their goal was to spread to campuses and high schools throughout the region and that is exactly what they did.

Over the summer of 2021, Moeller got rid of their cafeteria and set off to build a new student common. With that they hired new lunch providers, Sage. At first a lot of teachers and students were very suspect of this new dining experience. Most of them claimed that the old cafeteria was far better, offering better food for better costs. Yet, Sage started off at a very unfair disadvantage because they were without a cafeteria to start, so they were strictly putting out cold foods. The students quickly got tired of this, to a point where tensions were rising quite a bit. Parents were upset because they were paying around seven hundred dollars for some very mediocre food.

Matters eventually started calming down after the commons opened. Finally, the students had a warm meal to eat. The options were endless—sandwich bar, pasta, salad, protein. “What more could we ask for?!” This was also short-lived because, after a while, the student body found itself shying away from certain foods and only eating pasta. The main reason people started criticizing Sage again was because they made the food too fancy. After conducting a class meeting with the school’s dean of students—Michael Shaffer—we concluded that the majority of students at the school liked simple foods, rather than the extravagant dishes that Sage was providing for us.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and I personally believe Sage isn’t as bad as most people say it is. It’s had its ups and downs. One thing I think Sage could work on is listening to our feedback because there was a lot of good food that they recently stopped serving. I understand that Sage’s goal was to provide diverse and nutritious meals to around a thousand people a day, yet I think there are definitely things they could improve on to achieve their motto of, “setting a good example.”