Operations
Emerging Trends: October 2013
This month, schools improve nutritional policies, tracking food poisoning through Twitter, cheese pizza most popular for college students and more.
Operations
Facebook’s strong presence on college campuses
Facebook is the most widely used social media tool for universities, which is appropriate considering the application was created first as a device only for college students. Universities are the only segment in which the majority of operators report using social media to market their foodservice operation.
College operators are significantly more likely than other market segments to use social media to connect with their customers, according to The Big Picture data. Seventy-five percent use Facebook, and 38% say they employ Twitter. FSD spoke to marketing managers for dining services at two universities to find out about their social media strategies.
There once was a time when, if you were a resident student at a college or university, you had to purchase a meal plan. More often than not, it was a standard, 19-meal-per-week program, and it led to a fair amount of complaining about missed meals, and women subsidizing the men due to the relative amounts of food consumed by each gender.