By Savannah Higgins
Staff Writer
Located on the first floor of the Sak, The Den is a convenient place for students to pick up a quick bite to eat. The on-campus dining service offers options ranging from sandwiches and wraps to salads, sushi, and snacks.
Recently, Merrimack has made some changes to food options available at The Den. Students were not very happy to see the replacement of quesaritos with Italian subs.
To help students ease into change, Multi Services General Manager of Sodexo Karen Hyder seeks to inform students that employees of Sparky’s are working on building the Italian sub station menu to better suit more students’ needs.
In addition to the lack of quesaritos, students are also concerned about the lack of gluten-free items available at The Den. Campus Dietician Kerry Cameron is hoping for more gluten-free options in the future.
“I have the same concerns about cross-contact and it being a smaller area. For example, the veggie burgers contain gluten, so we couldn’t cook a regular hamburger for a gluten-free student on that same surface because of the cross-contact risk,” said Cameron. “We are planning on doing a walk through of how to prepare gluten-free options in the space to define the best (if any) procedure for providing safe, gluten-free options. This is something I would love to see happen, but I want to ensure it can be done safely and correctly.”
Other minor changes have brought pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream to The Den, which students can easily purchase with their Mack Cards when they are in the mood for a sweet treat.
