The bottom line is that store bought and/or restaurant food will always be significantly more expensive than a home cooked meal. The reason being is because the price takes into account generals costs that food businesses must pay in order to remain productive and profitable.

Food retailers at Cerritos College are no exception to these costs; therefore, these must also adjust their prices in continuity with increasing taxes and other businesses expenses that rise along with the growth of economic inflation.

Now there has been a growing concern from friends and colleagues alike regarding the price of food available on campus being marked too high to accommodate the modest budget of most students here in Cerritos College.

As a fellow student and customer at this school in fact, a real issue applying to an extension of the food retailers available on campus.

One particular store located north of the campus retails their individually wrapped food and drinks at a 30 percent mark up above the general price of most retailers outside of Cerritos College.

On the other hand, with the exception of Taco Bell, most of the fast food retailers in the student center price their entrees reasonably.

Granted, in a free market, we as consumers have the option to pick and choose what businesses we decide to invest our money into, but when we are given the choice to take a 15 minute walk across campus to buy a drink that is considerably sold for less than the store next to class, this becomes both a financial, as well as a time constraining issue that affects the lives of the student body.

As mentioned earlier, food retailers set the price of their inventory in relation to their expenditures and profitability. Therefore, the responsibility to set an affordable price range that meets the needs of the store and it’s consumers does not fall entirely on the retailer.

The legal bodies that are in charge of administering taxes that influence the pricing of food are also responsible for this.

The consumers are responsible for maintaining an open channel of dialogue between these two to understand the pricing of the goods that we consume everyday.

The issue at hand isn’t the pricing of food on campus, but why it’s priced as it is, and what are consumers doing about it.

If a store is going to set up shop at a community college campus, it should make efforts to provide it’s customers an affordable price range that will accommodate their budgets.

Given the fact that as a retail store, it’s success is directly related to the flow of consumers that visit and how well their needs are being meet.

Talking about this amongst our friends isn’t going to advance this opinion any further. As a collective student body of over 26 thousand students, I believe that we can all work to reach a functional solution that keep both retailers and consumers happy.