Organisation

Huge amounts of cutlery disappears from canteens

Thousands of forks, spoons and, to a lesser extent, knives disappear from canteens on the campus site. Cutlery theft is a huge problem according to the caterers.

Cormet, one of the caterers on the campus, decided to replace all cutlery with plastic versions in their establishments such as the canteen in the Forum building. This change was met with a lot of criticism in the Canteen test done by Resource recently. In response the caterer decided to switch back and restocked its metal tableware with 750 units of forks, knives and spoons.The canteen in Forum is not the only place where cutlery disappears in large quantities. The caterers in Orion (OSP) and the Leeuwenborch (Good Food Catering) deal with the same problem. The Leeuwenborch has the biggest problem with theft. Around 1250 sets of tableware get stolen every year in its canteen according to Jeroen van Rosevelt, press agent of Good Food Catering.

People see them as things you can just bring home with you. If you need a fork or a knife, just get one from the canteen.

Jose van Rosevelt, press agent Good Foods Catering

The press agent also says that the students and employees think they’re not committing theft. ‘They see them as things you can bring to your home. They go around in residence halls: if you need a fork or a knife, you just get one from the canteen.’ The caterers do state that not all the cutlery is missing because of theft. A portion of it is just lying about in the buildings on the campus because people bring their plates with food to their workplace and forget to return them.

Leave a Reply


You must be logged in to write a comment.