Smaller Losses Allow Harkness To Offer Students Lower Prices

The Harkness Common dining room will try to woo back lost student-customers with lower prices and more flexible meal plans next terms.

The Common-which serves about equal numbers of GSAS and Law School students-has been a money-losing operation for the past several years. A group of Law and GSAS students boycotted it last February after several low-price meal plans were withdrawn.

The Law School and the GSAS hired the Mariott Corp., a professional catering firm, to run the Common in the Fall of 1969.

The new meal plans, announced yesterday, will allow students to contract for 19, 15, or 5 meals per week. This term students on the meal plan had to buy 19 meals at $24.65 per week. The new 19-meal plan will cost $18.25 per week. A la carte prices will be cut 20 per cent.

Chet Kenbok, manager of the dining hall, said yesterday, "We started out cautiously this year, trying to lower our budget. Our deficit now compared to past years is not appreciable. We're going to try to loosen up and give the students a better buy."

Kenbok said that the Common needs to serve about 750 persons per meal to break even. "We are now serving about 600, only one-third of our potential clientele," he said.

Under its contract with the Law School and GSAS, Marriott assumes half the deficit, Kenbok said. The rest of the deficit is made up out of Law School and GSAS students' tuition.

Marriot conducted a survey in November to find out what kind of meal services are important to students.

Donald W. Mitchell, a third-year Law student who has worked with Kenbok said yesterday, "We found that convenience, speed, and low prices are most important to students. We had not known just how much students budgeted for food, but the survey showed that the average student allows about $3.50 a day, lower than Harkness prices."