Amy Johnson 27’ used to order the cheese quesadilla all the time at The Blink … but not anymore.
The quesadilla’s price rose from $2.75 to $5 over the summer, and many students don’t get it.
“I’m a lot less likely to go to the Blink now,” said Johnson, a junior from the student apartments. She said she’d prefer to make quesadillas herself.
While inflation has picked up over the summer according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, this hasn’t noticeably affected other items served in the Blink. Yet the cheese quesadilla's price increased by 80%.
It’s now more consistently priced with other quesadillas. The Blink quesadilla prices range from $4.75 to $5.50.
“It's based on our prices that we have on Gordon (Food Service), which is the store we order from,” Zach Green, the Creative Dining Services employee who oversees The Blink, explained.
“The cheese is the most pricey ingredient there. We have these big bags of cheese,” Elias Huffine, a sophomore on Blackwatch and a Blink employee, said. “We probably go through two and a half of them a night just from the quesadillas and wraps.”
Volatile ingredient prices have affected Creative Dining Services on campus.
“All the prices for everything have gone up,” Green said. “We take what we make and what we spend, right? And then calculate that, and we do a 40% mark up, just labor, paper, all the other stuff.”
Huffine confirmed that the type of tortilla has changed for all quesadillas this semester, but The Blink still uses the same cheese and cooking process to provide essentially the same food.
“A cheese quesadilla is literally just: slap a tortilla down, put some cheese on, put them on the grill. That’s it,” Huffine said.
Despite all the change surrounding this cheesy meal, students’ general spending habits remain unchanged.
“The cheese quesadilla was a pretty good seller last year,” Green said. “It's selling about the same.”
However, Covenant students’ view of the quesadilla has shifted.
“I have to work over half an hour to get one cheese quesadilla,” Naomi Todd, a junior on Halcyon, said. “It's an outrage.”
Editor’s Note: In the time since this article has been written, the Blink has lowered its price to $4.75.