Student council’s snack bar officially opened on Nov. 13 to all students during morning office hours, selling a large variety of treats and refreshments including Belgian waffles, Cup Noodles, Pop-Tarts and other popular snacks.

This marks the first year that a snack bar has been staffed by student council members themselves, whereas in previous iterations, it was manned by the lunch staff during office hours and after school. Due to this, there were many slight issues that student council had to resolve. After one month of planning and talking with administration and student council, the snack bar officially came to fruition; so far, it has been raising revenues of over $60 per office hour.

At the beginning of the school year, student council divides itself into committees of four to five people to form the Happiness committee, Renovation committee and Food committee, among many others. This year, seniors Justin Xie and David Wen as well as junior Alycia Cary were chosen as leaders of the Food committee. Their first action item as heads of the committee was to come up with some idea that could improve the food situation for students and faculty.

“One concern was using cash or charge sheets versus punch cards, but we ultimately decided to use the punch cards although we had to come up with solutions if a student lost a punch card,” Justin said. “Another was where to order food from. At that point in time, we had no idea where we could order food in good condition, but we ultimately found a great place called Boxed.com. Keeping inventory every day is also pretty difficult, so we are working on trying to advance this by using formulas on Google Sheets and other ways as the year goes on.”

David remarks on how the administration assisted the Food committee to make this possible for the school.

“There were three main people in administration that we worked with: Ms. Joslyn, who is our liaison from the kitchen staff to the Food committee; Ms. Hauk, who helped us order the food and handle the finances and of course Mr. Williamson, who we talked to in order to make sure that there are no liabilities issues or safety concerns,” he said. “Additionally, just all of student council for supporting the idea in the beginning and working shifts during office hours.”

However, a week after the snack bar opened, there arose many situations in which students were forging signatures for other students in order to buy a punch card. After talking with Williamson and Upper School Division Head Butch Keller, student council aimed to find a way to maintain protection of the student’s and their parents’ money and to keep everyone’s finances safe.

“Honestly, the part where other students are forging signatures—that thought didn’t even cross our minds when we were generating the logistics for the snack bar, but after a little bit, things became a little more apparent,” Justin said. “What we decided to do is that if a student wanted to buy a punch card, they would need to provide their name on the sign-up sheet as well as their student ID.”

The Food committee hopes that this way, the policy will prevent further students from signing for others, since one’s student ID number is private information.

Additionally, more and more students seem to be buying punch cards as publicity for the snack bar gains more traction.

“Before, I would be starving and I would walk into Manzanita, and all I would see is fruit like an apple or orange. Then I would try going to the vending machines, but they often didn’t accept my money or didn’t work,” Ramanand Vegesna (10) said. “This way, I can get food that’s easily accessible and buy something so I can be energized going into class.”

The snack bar is open every morning office hours on B and D days.