Webster University’s dining provider, Sodexo, will be ending their partnership with the university at the end of the spring 2025 semester. Sodexo and Webster were planning to stop working together by the end of last school year.
For the university, this news is nothing short of a huge disturbance since the entirety of the dining staff is employed through Sodexo. Furthermore, the majority of dining options on campus are Sodexo-branded operations. Despite this being the plan, when everyone returned to campus this fall, Sodexo remained.
At the end of last year, Sodexo approached Webster and told the university that their intention was to stop working with the university by the coming academic year. This was less than ideal for Webster, as they weren’t planning to be on the lookout for another provider up until that point.
“We basically dropped back to Sodexo saying, ‘Hey, you’ve really got to take care of us for one more year because you really put us in a position where we can’t get anybody to put together a proposal unless we give them more time,” Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students John Buck said. “So, Sodexo agreed to stay with us for one more year.”
Ideally, Sodexo would have notified Webster of their separation around October of 2023, according to Buck. Then, the university would have time to contact new companies in advance, allowing them to complete the process of interviews and visits before the coming year starts. Instead, Webster was notified in March of last year. Buck said the university is currently editing and planning to send out documents to different companies in September of this year to secure another dining partner.
Despite the seemingly tight tensions between the two parties, Buck said the anger with Sodexo is only directed towards the corporate level. Buck explained that this turn of events, despite being the only option, worked out for the university in the end.
Through the anticipated loss of Sodexo, the restaurants in Marletto’s Marketplace have already been switched to different names, although they are still Sodexo-branded places. Another switch has been the change from Far East Fusion to Greenlight Salad in the University Center, switching from Asian-style food to a salad-bar-like cuisine. The Sodexo employees are still working at all of the dining options on campus as of now, but it is up to them to decide whether they will stay at Webster or leave with Sodexo when the time comes.
“We’ve got great staff here,” Buck said. “The staff in the University Center, some of those folks have been here for 20 years. The students get to know them, they get to know the students. Our issue was never with the current management team, the current staff, because they’re great people.”
According to Buck, the university will soon be starting the process of securing a new dining provider.
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