Some on-campus restaurants downtown are closing their doors for finals week, leaving some students with even fewer options as the stress of exams and final assignments loom overhead.
This year, the Downtown Phoenix campus restaurant Devils’ Greens will close during finals week, which concerns students who have depended upon its late-night food services in previous years.
Criminal justice junior Kiley Sanders said she and her friends had gone to the Aramark dining facility during her freshman year, and was disappointed to see that the restaurant will close during finals this semester.
Sanders said she’ll have to plan to eat before the dining hall closes at 9 p.m.
“I definitely think it’s a bummer (that) it’ll be closed because everyone’s up late, and you can’t go to the dining hall,” she said.
Despite this change in schedule as well as recent rumors from staff members, Aramark's Senior District Marketing Manager Krystal Nelson said Devils' Greens isn’t closing for good.
“Devils’ Greens is not permanently closing," Nelson wrote in an email. "We will be reopening in August for the Fall 2016 semester."
Nelson said Devils' Greens will close for finals week because of the “decline of daily student traffic.”
However, despite this shift, Nelson said Devils' Greens has been “consistent from year to year” in terms of sales.
In the meantime, some downtown students may shift their attention to Chick-fil-A, which will remain open during finals week.
The newest addition to the ASU downtown community is open from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. during exam week, but will be closed on Saturday and Sunday following finals.
Nursing freshman Ashley Koch said this is good news, because she planned to study inside the restaurant next week to prepare for exams. She said it’s one of the few options she has for places to snack during study breaks.
“I think they need more convenient places,” Koch said. “You either have the dining hall or three other options, and one of them is Starbucks — and you can’t even eat there.”
Undeclared freshman Stephen Perez said one of those options, the dining hall, already isn’t very convenient.
“The dining hall closes really early on the weekends, so you gotta find other places on the weekends, and that’s difficult,” he said.
It requires some walking for Sanders, who said she and her friends often went down to Chipotle at CityScape during finals after the dining hall and other on-campus restaurants had closed.
That being said, Sanders said she also thinks the addition of Chick-fil-A and other steps toward expansion downtown are “going in the right direction.”
“I like the emphasis on healthy stuff like Bowl of Greens,” she said. “A Jamba Juice would be cool. Chick-fil-A is on the better end of the spectrum of fast food, so I’m happy that that’s there instead of Jack-in-the-Box.”
Related links:
Chick-fil-A finally graces the downtown campus
A traveler's guide to 'Meet Me Downtown Phoenix'
Reach the reporter at brieanna.frank@asu.edu or follow @brieannafrank on Twitter.
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