Non-Profit Money Making

When is a non profit-making milkshake more expensive than a profit-making milkshake? Answer, when you buy it from the University cafeteria. For 18 cents you get a blob of ice-cream, milk and flavouring, downtown you get this and better for 15 cents or 16 cents. And student catering is supposedly organised to show neither profit nor loss.

One segment of cheese costs you 7 cents, the packet of six costs 38 cents from your local grocer. So that on top of the normal mark-up. Nationwide makes another 4 cents by selling the segments individually. Admittedly, a fraction is involved, of six and one third cents per segment, but surely with a captive patronage of 6,000 there is enough turnover to absorb this one third cent loss. Large rolls filled with meat at 15 cents, are hardly a bargain when the meat is predominately luncheon sausage. You can buy better hamrolls downtown for the same price.

By selling milk at three cents a glass or cup, Nationwide are perhaps working on the psychological principle, that people will buy a nine cent cup of coffee, as it seems, relatively a better buy. After all, the coffee is supposedly the cheapest around. The post office cafeteria, however, which manages to show a small profit, sells coffee for four cents, and tea for two cents a cup. It also sells large sandwiches for seven cents com pared to Nationwide's eight cents a sandwich.

Moreover, a two cent ladle of Nationwide gravy for your pie, and a three cent slice of bread and butter smacks of outright profiteering. Stocking does not appear to be a Nationwide strongpoint either, as roll-your-own tobacco no longer appears to be sold, and at one o'clock last Friday the cafeteria was entirely out of matches. Something stinks in the cafeteria and its not just the food.