Some love it, some hate it. But it has always been there, every week, without fail. But not any longer. For 10 years, Saga has served tacos at lunch every Tuesday. Now, every other Tuesday will come and go without a single taco to be found in Saga.
Saga Inc. General Manager Kevin Kirwan said a new rotation for Tuesday lunches began this semester. The first week, it was tacos as usual. The second week of the semester, students encountered an “All-American Burger Bar.”
The following week, it was a nacho bar with taco fixings available. After that, it was a sausage bar. Kirwan said the rotation will continue this way so that students will be served tacos every other week.
“It’ll be cycling through. So every other week, there’ll be something that doesn’t look a thing like tacos,” he said.
Kirwan said the change is a response to different opinions he hears about the meal from students he talks to.
“There is still a great number of people, believe it or not, that love Taco Tuesday. But there’s also a lot of people that say they like tacos, but not every week,” he said. “It was done in an effort to give variety and to provide those kinds of things that we’ve gotten feedback on that students enjoy.”
Saga has recently instituted several changes in response to online student surveys about how to make healthier meals. For example, spinach is now available in the salad bar three times a week. More chicken is served, as well as more vegetables, and the latter are more often steamed and served without oil or butter. All of these have been in response to student requests in online surveys, Kirwan said.
The most notable change has been the yogurt bar that was added last semester. Kirwan said he decided to add the bar in response to another student request.
“Kevin had the idea for the yogurt bar, and we just kind of put our heads together,” said Production Manager Doug Rogotzke. He said he has come up with a lot of ideas for toppings based on what he saw at a yogurt bar in Atlantic City, N.J. He also looks at the kinds of yogurts for sale when he goes to Kroger.
Rogotzke said he thinks the yogurt bar has been one of the most successful innovations.
“We’re going through 30 to 35 pounds of yogurt a day,” he said. “It think it’s been well-received.”
Senior Evan Gage described the yogurt bar as “transcendent” and said it has changed his life. Of the hamburgers that are replacing tacos roughly once a month, he said, “They’re the best thing that has ever happened to me. I love it. It’s so good.”
Kirwan said that almost all of the students he talked to were glad to have the burger bar instead of tacos. He said he talked to students in the dining room during the meal and they were in favor of the change by a margin of 50 to one. The sausage bar has not been quite as popular, but was still widely appreciated. Kirwan said the ratio was more like 25 to one for the sausage bar.
Gage described the sausages as, “Not as good as the burger bar, but still great.”
Sophomore Katie Keane said she likes tacos, but is happy for the variety.
“You get into a routine with tacos every single Tuesday,” she said. “So it’s nice to have a change. It adds some excitement to lunches.”
Sophomore Luke Frerking has a different opinion.
“They need to stop skipping it every other week, because tacos are the best,” he said. “I’ve been devastated whenever I go in there because there’s not tacos.”
Frerking said he has not heard many people complain about Taco Tuesday, but if they do, it’s probably because they are from the South, where people differentiate between different kinds of tacos and consider some better than others.
“I’m from Iowa. I don’t care. They’re tacos!” he said.
Sophomore Colin Wilson said he has only eaten tacos in Saga twice.
“For a long time, I thought they were grinding up freshmen who got bad grades into the meat,” he said.
Kirwan said the change came because he had begun to wonder if students actually liked having tacos every week, so he asked a few students about it, and decided to try doing something different for a week.
“I thought, ‘We’ll try it. It’s only a Tuesday. If they don’t like it, we can go back to Taco Tuesday,’” he said. “But they liked it.”
