Hot Dog Man Back At Marquette

From Ryan Alexander at Campus Tavern Blog:

The old hot dog guy (John Rockefeller) returned to Marquette today to long lines and happy students. In addition to his already wide assortment of offerings he now offers huge 1/3 lb hot dogs for the same price as the smaller ones that he offered in the fall at $2.50 (he also sells, brats, cajun brats, italian sausages, polish sausages, and chili dogs). The combo for a drink, chips, and a hot dog or sausage of your choice is still $3.

. . . it seems clear that Marquette has no idea what it means to offer services to students at prices and quality that are comparable to what they would find in the competitive market off campus.

Marquette had a Hot Dog Monopoly on campus for weeks and all they managed to do was alienate students by offering bland hot dogs at high prices. Proof of this can be seen in the huge lines of students that waited for over 15 minutes to have get whatever hot dogs or sausages John had left, which caused him to sell out of everything by 1pm today vs. almost zero students buying a hot dog from AMU dining.

In a later post, Alexander explains that Marquette has lowered the prices of its hot dogs to match Rockefeller, although he views the quality as inferior to the independent vendor.

Bureaucrats, even private sector bureaucrats and those who vote Republican, tend to act like socialists, thinking about how to extend their power and control rather than merely how to provide a good product cheap.

We’ll bet that John Rockefeller doesn’t have a mission statement, nor a strategic plan. He’s just a guy in the business of selling hot dogs, so naturally he does it better than the bureaucrats.