[throwaway4891a]

When I was there way-back-when, the dining account dept hooked us up with unlimited all-you-care-to-eat (non-packaged) dining, likely because it was cheaper in terms of productivity (a-la Google) to keep staff on-campus.

Back at uni (somewhere else), on-campus we had a block-purchased meal system which was managed and outsourced to Sodexho Marriott (it was greasy, boring shit).

Stanford Dining dining halls were usually better-than-average because they had/have respectably awesome executive chefs (mostly from high-volume commercial culinary backgrounds) usually hemmed in by over-zealous cheapskates in management) but with more freedom to meal plan outside of generic/corporate standards, source ingredients from managed vendors and generally more competition (esp. when the Dining Clubs were operational but still with other on-campus options like Treehouse and other non-RDE Tresidder; ie peanut-free Ricker). IIRC there was prime rib and king crab sometimes, and there were french fries which were knock-offs of McDonald's. Btw, Subway and Peet's (Clark Center) are/were RDE-managed franchises.