Provisions on Demand

A peek at the Memorial Union POD

In September of 2010, the Memorial Union had a new convenient store installed just down the hall from Pitchforks Dining Hall. Found in an old article of ASUnews, the purpose behind this new Safeway type marketplace was to provide “’fresh prepared foods and everyday essentials in one convenient location on campus,’ said Diahann McCarty of Sun Dining. The main goal was to ‘develop a highly-customized solution that…met the specific needs of the campus community.’” And meet the specific needs of the community it does (Sun Devil Dining).

Along with the POD at the MU, there is also another one located adjacent to the Hassy entrance which also contains a Subway restaurant. Students take advantage of the sandwich bar if the dining hall is closed, though some admit that Subway is their first and only choice when compared to the dining hall. Some people are just tired of the same things the hall offers, and the POD and Subway offer food and snack choices the Hall lacks. In the POD there is an entire section dedicated to candy; sour patch kids, sour gummies, chocolate bars, rice crispies, caramel candies and much more. Drinks are also abundant, as there is the unique 100 in 1 Drink Coca-Cola machine and a whole wall of tasty choices. It is always good to indulge after a hard day studying and a quick trip to the marketplace will leave you satisfied, but maybe not entirely.

With Subway in the background, ready to go meals on the right and chips galore in
the foreground, students definitely have a wide variety of foods to choose from.

The POD offers the essentials such as toiletries, basic medicines and cleaning supplies as well as healthy food options and not-so-healthy counterparts. The usefulness of the POD to students is unrivaled because this is the only place, to my knowledge, where you can buy toilet paper on campus. In all seriousness, though, this is also the main reason there are a couple complaints about the store. Since there are so few of these stores on campus, during the busy hours there can be roughly twenty people waiting in checkout lines with their drinks and other items. A quick fix would to re-arrange the cashiers to have space for four instead of just two, lines would come and go much faster with more lanes are available for use.

During the day the POD does not have very much traffic. As the night goes on, though, these cashiers
will be busily scanning items in attempts to keep up with the growing number of students. 

What is interesting at the POD is a medium soda is nearly two dollars and a handful of uncrustables breaks the four dollar mark. A bundle of paper towels or toilet paper is around 25% more of what you could get anywhere else off campus. In a way, the argument for higher prices is that you pay for the convenience, as the POD market at Hassy is literally right by Hassy. Students would only have to change their path only slightly to find themselves exchanging their meal plan for a small platter of chicken ceaser salad or buying a Subway sandwich (POD Market Prices). It is simple application of supply and demand, students have high demand for the products found at the POD, so the POD can inflate the price just enough to where people would still buy. Though there is no real applicable solution to this issue, creating another convenient store would help lower prices but it is not really reasonable.