On weekend nights, Frist pizza transforms

Last Thursday night, hundreds of students returned from a night at the eating clubs and trekked to the Food Gallery of Frist Campus Center to celebrate a peculiar part of the University’s weekend and drinking culture: late-night pizza.

While a majority of students chose traditional slices, one student — somewhere — spotted, purchased and consumed a slice reminiscent of a Hoagie Haven sub: a slice of pizza layered with a half-inch of onion rings, hamburger meat, barbecue sauce and other unclassifiable and indecipherable ingredients.

Meet “The Rodeo,” the name given to Frist’s latest late-night creation by a dining worker on Thursday night.

Over the past couple of years, slices with toppings that resemble the oddity of The Rodeo — onions and cheese, sausage and spinach, white cheese, chicken and broccoli — have become mainstays in the Frist Gallery on weekend nights.

One student, Elizabeth Metts ’13, said that she’s seen a number of questionable combinations in the late-night pizza offerings in the past year. One standout creation featured lettuce, chocolate syrup, mandarin oranges and candies that appeared to be Reese’s Pieces, she said.

Metts is also the executive editor for copy for The Daily Princetonian.

“No one was going to say anything because at that point [in the night], you really don’t give a shit,” Metts explained. “You just want pizza.”

Metts said she also recalled seeing one pizza last spring that featured spaghetti and French fries as toppings, and another that included French fries, cheese sauce and bacon.

“It was toward the end of the year when they were like cleaning out their pantry, I’m guessing,” she said.

These types of slices are seldom offered on weekday nights.

The Frist Food Gallery, which stays open till 3 a.m. on Thursday and Saturday nights to serve ravenous — and often drunk — students, has long been a congregation place for students of different eating clubs, friend groups and years. Some joke that late nights at Frist is the University’s largest post-game.

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Frist’s premier offering, pizza, Director of Dining Services Stu Orefice said in an email, accounts for more than half of Frist’s sales on Thursday and Saturday nights. Parts of the salad and deli stations, Orefice explained, remain open on weekend nights as well.

Joining slices at the pizza station as part of last Thursday night’s self-billed “Late Night Menu” were grilled cheeseburgers, bacon hamburgers, chicken fingers and French fries, moved from their usual perch on the Washington Road side of the Frist gallery. Orefice noted that student demand prompted these additions.

He explained that Frist uses models of student demand broadly to inform pizza choices — presumably including toppings.

“The culinary team at Frist uses historical information in order to prepare the variety of pizzas and other menu items that appeal to students,” he said.

In a later email, Orefice clarified that the historical information determined the number, not the type, of pizzas served at Frist on both Thursday and Saturday nights. The forecast, he said, helped Dining Services predict “the appropriate number of menu items for each station.”

Though the pizza toppings, such as those on The Rodeo last Thursday night — and on most weekend nights — are clearly incomparable to the traditional toppings offered on weekday nights, Orefice denied any changes in pizza offerings throughout the week. He equivocated that pizza toppings were consistent but that Frist staff also changed pizza toppings to provide greater choice.

“The pizza toppings remain the same throughout the week and the culinary team will at times offer a variety of pizza toppings to provide students with more choices,” he said.

Orefice also repeatedly refused to explicitly answer whether surplus ingredients from the kitchens were placed onto the pizzas of unsuspecting students on Thursday and Saturday nights.

It remains unclear whether this change in pizza toppings is a top-down policy instituted by Dining Services or the work of individual Dining Services workers.According to Orefice, Frist workers can recommend changes in Frist offerings to their superiors.

“All dining employees are free to provide input to the chefs and managers on a variety of menu items,” he said in response to a question about individual employees’ discretion in choosing pizza toppings on Thursday and Saturday nights.

It is obvious, though, that Frist gallery employees do shape the decisions of intoxicated consumers.Through the power of recommendation or of choice architecture — evidenced by the widespread consumption of strange late-night pizzas — the Frist employees who create and distribute the pizzas hold tremendous sway.

“If you tell someone to buy a cheeseburger, they’ll buy a cheeseburger.If I tell someone to buy chicken tenders, they’ll buy chicken tenders,” a Frist employee who identified himself as "Mike" — who is also the labeler of The Rodeo — said on Thursday night.

“It’s fun. I think it’s fun to maybe mess with them a little bit and crack jokes,” he said, adding that, overall, customers are pleasant.

This cavalier approach does not seem to extend to pricing, however. Prices for pizza on weekends do not deviate from those on normal weekday nights.Frist does not take advantage of the effects of alcohol, which clouds attention and decision-making, and potentially make a profit of charging higher prices to inattentive consumers.

Some students the ‘Prince’ spoke with on Thursday night, however, admitted that they didn’t check — or care for — the price of a pizza.

“Frist pizza can come at any price — it is invaluable,” Sean Drohan ’14 explained. “At 2:30 a.m., there is one food source on campus. And it is Frist pizza. And we need it.”

Others, like Patrick Valent ’15, chose not to purchase pizza given the price, revealing a more considered, dispassionate approach to his purchase habits.

“The difference is there [are] competitive stores like Wawa and Studio ’34, and then there’s this which isn’t really competitive because it’s related to the University so it’s kind of not in the competitive atmosphere that Wawa is,” he explained.

When asked if intoxicated students would pay any price, Valent pointed to the massive line of students awaiting $3.45 pizza behind him.

“Not anything,” Valent laughed, “but perfect example right here.”