The Campus Dining Center at Butte College is in the Campus Center building on the second floor. The cafeteria is operated by Butte College Dining Services. It has a open seating area, a video game arcade, and the capability to be used for special events. You can buy food with cash or credit and all of it is exempted from California sales tax as it is a campus operation. WiFi is available.

Food

The Campus Dining Center offers a variety of options for those wishing to eat on campus or just to get a bite to eat for brain food. The serving area is U-Shaped, where the central area is self-serve with soda, various juice and coffee drinks, bagels, cookies, muffins, and pretzels. Surrounding the self-serve island are hot-food options which have varying hours and are staffed by students.

On the west side:

• That's a Wrap (10-3pm) offer several kinds of wraps.
• Road Runner Deli (10-4pm) has subs of various kinds and a soup of the day.
• International Express (11-2pm) offers a daily lunch special (for example, the first week of Spring 2009 they had a new International culinary experience each day).

At the north end of the horseshoe:

• Ba Da Bing's Pizza (10-4pm) has homemade pizza including the day's special, veggie, pepperoni, and cheese (always the least expensive option).
• Salad City (10-3pm) salads are also available and have a plethora of vegetables to choose from (but not similar in number to Grilla Bites). They have certified organic lettuce when available from the college farm.

Finally, on the east end:

• Coyote Grill (7:15-3pm). It is a made-to-order line where students can find typical fast food options. The grill has a breakfast menu available from 7:15 to 10am. Lunch starts at 10 and students can order hamburgers, veggie burgers, grilled chicken sandwiches, Philly cheese steaks, chicken strips, grilled cheese sandwiches, grill deal (special), and fries. Fries typically comes with all lunch meals. Those who went to Butte College long ago may remember the Dining Center served curly fries — this is no longer the case. They have been replaced with your typical fast-food linear fry.

Just outside the serving area is the Hot Dog and Smoothie Station.

Complaints

Students have, on occasion, mounted campaigns to make their voices heard on dining center prices. This happened in 2007 and 2008 and likely often in the past. Flyers could occasionally be seen instructing students to boycott the facility due to unfair pricing practices. They have an argument (and it should be written here to counter this one) but the other side of the coin (that the present editor is on) is this: you pay no sales tax and the location of Butte College is such that transportation costs cannot be very competitive with food sources in urban centers.

In fact, by-the-slice Pizza in 2008 cost $2.50 a basic slice (pepperoni, for example), while Celestino's Live From New York upped their prices to $2.75 (for the record, campus dining in 2009 came to parity with Celestino's). Quality of food aside, the pizza at Butte College was quite a good deal. Furthermore, subs and wraps cost $4.99 which is more or less on par with sub shops offering 1 footers in Chico (like Kona's, which last had 1 footers at around $4.60).

Even a burger, fry, and drink are comparable. The basic burger in Spring 2009 cost $4.39, with additional offered toppings at a charge. This makes a meal with a burger, fries (included), and soda cost near $7 (if you avoid adding avocado and mushrooms!), which, if my memory serves me correctly, is about what it costs these days to get a similar combo-meal at a national franchise, tax included. In fact, they serve probably more fries than your regular sized combo so it is best to compare to larger servings available at such franchises.

It should be noted, however, that this editor does not have any hard prices from national fast food franchises as he refuses to dine at such places. But he does think the dining center has comparable prices and does not deserve the wrath of the student body.

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Comments

2009-02-12 09:38:34   Interestingly, the dining center would be a great place to do a geographical study of the distribution of students and how they identify. I imagine it's similar to how it is in high school cafeterias but it's been so long that I really can't definitively say. —RyanMikulovsky