By Jueun Choi and Xiran Liu
With the official opening of Elevation Burger last week, three new restaurants have been added to the food outlets in HBKU Student Center, others being the Great American Bagel Bakery and Yogen Früz.
The frozen yogurt franchise opened on March 8 and was followed by the Great American Bagel Bakery, which began operations on April 1 2015.
According to Hussein Aboud, the kitchen manager for Zaatar w Zeit, another local eatery to open in Student Center, the restaurant was planned to open on April 7 but the opening has been delayed. Originally, Yogen Früz was also scheduled to open in December 2014 but was delayed, according to Paul E. Babida, the branch supervisor.
“We had a lot of requirements to comply with and because of some ministry guidelines we weren’t able to open immediately,” he said, “for example, we had to have our fire alarm system tested repeatedly first by the Ministry of Interior’s civil defense department and then the HSSE in Qatar Foundation. The guidelines for the branch were stricter than usual because the restaurants are serving students.”
According to Reem Al-Abduljabbar, the operations supervisor for HBKU student life, the delay occurred because the restaurants needed to complete certain documents.
“They needed documentation from different entities and organizations like civil defense, the ministry of municipality, ministry of commerce and ministry of health,” she said.
Not everyone has greeted the new restaurants with enthusiasm, however.
“I feel sad because our sales will go down. We’re going on a competition sale,” said Aziz ul Shaikh, supervisor for Papa Johns Pizza in the student center.
Students are excited about the variety of food options available now, but some feel that they should have been consulted about the vendor choices.
“They probably could have asked the students before to find out what types of restaurants we prefer having here,” said Mahmoud Mahgoub, a sophomore at Texas A&M University at Qatar.
There was a student and staff survey conducted in 2011 however, according to Abduljabbar, and the most favored choices were frozen yogurt, bagels, burgers and pastries. The Student Center managers then decided to bring in these vendors.
“We have to bear in mind that the price should be affordable to the students and also we need to consider providing healthier food for everyone; students and staff,” said Al-Abduljabbar.
The Student Center’s new policy requires all its restaurants to provide a student-discount, according to Al-Abduljabbar. She said that all the restaurants should either highlight the rate of the discount they offer or their menu should show the reduced prices.
However, many students still have concern over the price. “If you go and try to have it everyday, then it’ll probably be really expensive for you. That’s why they should have opened up stuff like McDonald’s and KFC,” said Saad Sameer, first year pre-med student at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar.
The health aspect of the food choices seems to bother some students. “The Student Center in general is nice but the healthy choice is zero,” said Abdulaziz Al Hothi, sophomore at TAMUQ. The restaurants at the Student Center are proving a significant amount of fast food or the ones with high calorie food like burgers and pastas, he said.
But students are happy with the increased variety provided by the Student Center. “The new choices are promising. For sure, the Yogen Früz is a good decision,” said Tarek Alhariri, senior at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.
