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Ha, the University where I work signed an exclusive agreement to only sell Pepsi products on campus. I'm sure there was some kickback money given to people here

by vondur 10mo ago

Ha, the University where I work signed an exclusive agreement to only sell Pepsi products on campus. I'm sure there was some kickback money given to people here to push it through.

RajT88 10mo ago
My wife's university has a totally egregious contract which is exclusive to a food provider for cafeteria food and event catering. If you want to, say, have a student group sell cookies or whatever, the provider has to approve and you have to pay to host it. The contract is for 10 years. No freaking way somebody signed off on that without money under the table.
- diab0lic 10mo ago
  Sodexo or Aramark I assume? Unfortunately standard practice on University campuses across Canada and the USA.
  - phantasmish 10mo ago
    Yeah, exact same thing when I was reluctantly involved in a club’s leadership and organizing an on-campus event with food 20+ years ago. I think it was Sodexo in our case. Must be common.
  - nick__m 10mo ago
    At my institution there was a student revolt, chartwell was kicked out and it is a work co-op. The quality has increased, the employees are better treated and the cost stayed the same, and stupid rules like that are no more !
  - RajT88 10mo ago
    Sodexo
- conception 10mo ago
  It’s probably more there are only two or three companies, if that, that can service a customer that large and meet their requirements/SLAs by contract. And the three all happen to have the same sort of agreements required.
- bigstrat2003 10mo ago
  My wife's employer has a very similar thing going on. They have a cafeteria staffed by a catering company, and the contract requires that they (the employer) use the catering company for all things that take place in the building. A manager can't go out and buy donuts for a meeting, instead they would have to use the caterer who is both worse quality and more expensive. This caterer even tried to get the company to chase off food trucks that were coming to the area, though thankfully that went nowhere because the food trucks were on public streets and not private property. It is truly an awful contract, with no benefit at all to the employer that I can see. Like you, I conclude that some executive must have gotten kickbacks for signing this.
  - wahern 10mo ago
    > It is truly an awful contract, with no benefit at all to the employer that I can see. The benefit is having an operating cafeteria (i.e. an amenity) for a guaranteed period with little or zero out-of-pocket expense other than providing the space. Unless there's obviously high-demand (coffee?), no catering company is going to commit to a long-term contract without ensuring some minimum volume to maintain staffing. Anything food related typically has ridiculously slim margins on average, especially when you count all the failed projects. Catering is often an exception, but not this kind of daily staffed in-place catering. The most profitable kind of catering is where you can prepare food offset for discrete (though hopefully recurring) events across many (hopefully repeat) clients, and where you can quickly ramp up or ramp down staffing and facilities to minimize recurring costs.
gruez 10mo ago
>I'm sure there was some kickback money given to people here to push it through. Why? Is it that hard to imagine pepsi doing it in an above-board way, eg. giving a discount to the university directly?
- newsclues 10mo ago
  I worked as a buyer in edu, oh the grease is built in to the system from the vendors who will frequently shower you with coffee and donuts to much friendlier offers to get sales. Why is it so hard to imagine people who work in education would have flexible ethics for personal gain?
  - gruez 10mo ago
    >shower you with coffee and donuts to much friendlier offers to get sales. If I was working a cushy admin job, I'd need way more bribery than $5 worth of coffee and doughnuts to intentionally select a worse vendor, especially if the decision would negatively impact my colleagues and get me flak. >Why is it so hard to imagine people who work in education would have flexible ethics for personal gain? Because if you read the other comments, there are perfectly reasonable explanations that don't involve graft. Jumping to "bribe" every time there's bad behavior is just lazy thinking and means you don't actually figure out what the root of the problem is.
    - venturecruelty 10mo ago
      >Because if you read the other comments, there are perfectly reasonable explanations that don't involve graft. Jumping to "bribe" every time there's bad behavior is just lazy thinking and means you don't actually figure out what the root of the problem is. Right. I'm sure, in spite of this and the decades of overwhelming evidence, this was all just a silly coincidence, and they can lower food prices now. Edit: I'm shitlimited to five posts per X number of hours, so I'm going to respond here: the evidence is in TFA, thanks.
      - gruez 10mo ago
netsharc 10mo ago
Coca-Cola supplies Disney{land,world}s with free drinks, in exchange for their branding in the parks.
jimnotgym 10mo ago
Large student unions are also renowned for reselling their cheap volume deal beer on the grey market to keep their volumes high. I wonder if that is all through the books? Coke used to sell their high volume customers a different syrup, and give them different equipment to pour it, that was incompatible with the low volume customers equipment, to try and stop this

by vondur 10mo ago

Ha, the University where I work signed an exclusive agreement to only sell Pepsi products on campus. I'm sure there was some kickback money given to people here to push it through.

RajT88 10mo ago

My wife's university has a totally egregious contract which is exclusive to a food provider for cafeteria food and event catering. If you want to, say, have a student group sell cookies or whatever, the provider has to approve and you have to pay to host it. The contract is for 10 years. No freaking way somebody signed off on that without money under the table.

diab0lic 10mo ago
Sodexo or Aramark I assume? Unfortunately standard practice on University campuses across Canada and the USA.
- phantasmish 10mo ago
  Yeah, exact same thing when I was reluctantly involved in a club’s leadership and organizing an on-campus event with food 20+ years ago. I think it was Sodexo in our case. Must be common.
- nick__m 10mo ago
  At my institution there was a student revolt, chartwell was kicked out and it is a work co-op. The quality has increased, the employees are better treated and the cost stayed the same, and stupid rules like that are no more !
- RajT88 10mo ago
  Sodexo
conception 10mo ago
It’s probably more there are only two or three companies, if that, that can service a customer that large and meet their requirements/SLAs by contract. And the three all happen to have the same sort of agreements required.
bigstrat2003 10mo ago
My wife's employer has a very similar thing going on. They have a cafeteria staffed by a catering company, and the contract requires that they (the employer) use the catering company for all things that take place in the building. A manager can't go out and buy donuts for a meeting, instead they would have to use the caterer who is both worse quality and more expensive. This caterer even tried to get the company to chase off food trucks that were coming to the area, though thankfully that went nowhere because the food trucks were on public streets and not private property. It is truly an awful contract, with no benefit at all to the employer that I can see. Like you, I conclude that some executive must have gotten kickbacks for signing this.
- wahern 10mo ago
  > It is truly an awful contract, with no benefit at all to the employer that I can see. The benefit is having an operating cafeteria (i.e. an amenity) for a guaranteed period with little or zero out-of-pocket expense other than providing the space. Unless there's obviously high-demand (coffee?), no catering company is going to commit to a long-term contract without ensuring some minimum volume to maintain staffing. Anything food related typically has ridiculously slim margins on average, especially when you count all the failed projects. Catering is often an exception, but not this kind of daily staffed in-place catering. The most profitable kind of catering is where you can prepare food offset for discrete (though hopefully recurring) events across many (hopefully repeat) clients, and where you can quickly ramp up or ramp down staffing and facilities to minimize recurring costs.

gruez 10mo ago

>I'm sure there was some kickback money given to people here to push it through. Why? Is it that hard to imagine pepsi doing it in an above-board way, eg. giving a discount to the university directly?

newsclues 10mo ago
I worked as a buyer in edu, oh the grease is built in to the system from the vendors who will frequently shower you with coffee and donuts to much friendlier offers to get sales. Why is it so hard to imagine people who work in education would have flexible ethics for personal gain?
- gruez 10mo ago
  >shower you with coffee and donuts to much friendlier offers to get sales. If I was working a cushy admin job, I'd need way more bribery than $5 worth of coffee and doughnuts to intentionally select a worse vendor, especially if the decision would negatively impact my colleagues and get me flak. >Why is it so hard to imagine people who work in education would have flexible ethics for personal gain? Because if you read the other comments, there are perfectly reasonable explanations that don't involve graft. Jumping to "bribe" every time there's bad behavior is just lazy thinking and means you don't actually figure out what the root of the problem is.
  - venturecruelty 10mo ago
    >Because if you read the other comments, there are perfectly reasonable explanations that don't involve graft. Jumping to "bribe" every time there's bad behavior is just lazy thinking and means you don't actually figure out what the root of the problem is. Right. I'm sure, in spite of this and the decades of overwhelming evidence, this was all just a silly coincidence, and they can lower food prices now. Edit: I'm shitlimited to five posts per X number of hours, so I'm going to respond here: the evidence is in TFA, thanks.
    - gruez 10mo ago

netsharc 10mo ago

Coca-Cola supplies Disney{land,world}s with free drinks, in exchange for their branding in the parks.

jimnotgym 10mo ago

Large student unions are also renowned for reselling their cheap volume deal beer on the grey market to keep their volumes high. I wonder if that is all through the books? Coke used to sell their high volume customers a different syrup, and give them different equipment to pour it, that was incompatible with the low volume customers equipment, to try and stop this