Leaving an Ara-mark

 ASU’s food vendor has a storied history of controversy, leaving students questioning its relationship with the University

By Evan Silverberg

Illustrations by Lavanya Paliwal

Sukruth Rao, a senior studying business, came from India to ASU excited to pursue education in a new country. Due to his student visa, he was not permitted to work anywhere off campus, so he took initiative and found a job on campus with Aramark, ASU’s food service provider. Soon, however, he came to realize the company’s work environment was more than he had bargained for.

“I was working next to this guy who got hired with me; it was our first day,” Rao said. “I was a freshman, so I just wanted to introduce myself. ... As he was telling me his name, my manager walks in, and she starts screaming at us, ‘Hey, less talking, more working!’  We were working while we were [talking], and it did not slow anything down.

“Later on I was like, ‘It’s my first day, I need to know how I enter hours in,’ and [my manager said], ‘I can’t help you with that, who do you think I am?’ I’m like, ‘What does that mean? You’re the manager.’ And he didn’t even help me find the right person.”

Between the shouting and disrespectful management, Rao was overworked and underpaid. “They claimed that I was hired to do [one thing], but they made me clean the dishes, package food for POD Markets, clean the tables — they made us do all these things, and we still got paid minimum wage,” he said.

Not long after, he decided to quit — the experience left a bad taste in his mouth. Throughout his college career, Rao realized that his experience working for Aramark wasn’t isolated and even tame compared to others.

Aramark at ASU

While many at ASU may be unfamiliar with the Aramark name, the company plays a pivotal role in the lives of students. As the University’s food vendor, it operates countless restaurants, dining halls and POD markets on all four campuses.

Rishik Chaudhary, a junior studying business, supply chain management and data analytics, is an Undergraduate Student Government-Tempe senator. He said every on-campus event that uses on-campus dining is supplied by Aramark.

“Every dining hall is Aramark; the POD Market is also Aramark,” he said. “A lot of the restaurants that are housed at the Memorial Union as well as just around campus are under Aramark. ... I went to an event yesterday [morning], and they were serving Aramark breakfast, and I went to an event in the evening, and they were serving Aramark dinner.”

Despite its consistent relationship with the institution, Aramark has been accused of alleged employee discrimination and mistreatment of its student workers.

For international students on student visas — who are not permitted to work anywhere off-campus — the company is oftentimes the only option for employment.

“They’re not allowed to work off-campus, so they will work as hard as they have to, do anything, endure anything that they need to keep their jobs on campus, which puts them in a difficult place,” Chaudhary said. “Even if they are being mistreated, they don’t really want to use their voice to share their concerns because they are very scared that they will lose their jobs and not have a source of income when tuition is very expensive for international students.”

On Oct. 29, 2024, USG-T passed a resolution suggesting that the University not renew its contract with Aramark if an investigation finds evidence of employee discrimination.

“The most common [complaint] I’ve heard is students having an issue of having to touch meat,” said Rao, who is now president of ASU’s Indian Students’ Association. “Religiously, a lot of Hindu Indians don’t touch beef or handle beef because cows are a sacred animal for us. Just the fact that even despite all that they’re still making us handle beef is one thing.”

“In my case as a Hindu, I don’t eat meat, I don’t touch meat, so that was something that hit close to home,” Chaudhary said. This is not Aramark’s only alleged act of discrimination against Indian students at ASU. “A lot of Indians wear threads on their hands because it’s religious, but they’re not allowed to do that,” Rao said. “You’re supposed to remove it [at work], but you cannot remove it because it’s something that, culturally, we wear.”

Aside from accusations of discrimination, Rao said Aramark takes advantage of its student workers in many ways. “I had a friend who had a medical emergency, so the previous night he emailed his manager being like, ‘Hey, I cannot make it to work the next day because I have to go to the ER,’ and [his manager] said, ‘If you don’t find someone [to cover you], then you’re going to be fired because there’s no one to cover the shift,’ even though there’s a medical reason and he had proof of everything.”

Chaudhary said Aramark is often not accommodating of its student workers’ schedules. “When they requested time off during breaks to go back to India to visit their family, they were not given that time off,” he said.

Rao added that those who cannot work all of their scheduled hours are often subject to firing.

International students are most vulnerable to Aramark’s treatment. While Rao decided not long after his first shift that he could not work for the company, many other students can’t afford to do so.

“Students put up with it because they need the money, because there’s not enough supply of jobs,” Rao said. “I heard that for one job [on campus], it had about 1,000 applications. The fact that for one job there’s so many people applying, and the majority of them are international students, it just shows how much of a demand there is for jobs. But since most of them won’t get it, they end up going for these jobs in Aramark where they may be treated badly or they may have to do something that goes against their beliefs, but they still have to put up with it because rent is not cheap.”

Rao said the lack of a livable income has forced many students from India to share a two-bedroom apartment with four or five roommates. 

“You have two people living in one bedroom, another one in another bedroom, and then you got people in the living room,” he said. “And even then they’re living paycheck to paycheck.”

Following USG-T’s recommendation for an investigation into Aramark, Aramark conducted an internal investigation and claimed it found no evidence of employee discrimination within its operation at ASU, according to Rao and Chaudhary.

“We value and respect our employees, including our student and international team members, and we investigate all issues that are brought forward to us,” an Aramark spokesperson said in a statement emailed to The State Press last November. 

“The student resolution was the first we have heard of this issue, and we are working with ASU to explore these allegations. All employees have an opportunity to discuss their concerns with a manager, supervisor, or Human Resources, including options to do so anonymously.”

The University did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication.

Aramark in prisons

Much of Aramark’s controversial history comes from its business as a food supplier for prisons. An article by Capital & Main reported in 2014 that “Ohio fined Aramark $270,000 and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder fined the company a mere $200,000” after maggots were found in prison kitchens and dining areas run by Aramark, leading to food-borne illness among incarcerated people. In 2015, the Michigan Department of Corrections ended its $145 million contract with Aramark.

According to Prison Legal News, Kevin Lee Hill, a man in an Indiana prison, claimed Aramark’s kitchens were infested with mice and that he repeatedly consumed mouse droppings. Hill referred to his prison kitchen’s refrigerator as a “mouse zoo.” Aramark’s food wasn’t only allegedly tainted, it also failed to accommodate the dietary needs of incarcerated people. It has provided food to incarcerated people so lacking in calories that another man in an Indiana prison claimed he had allegedly lost 10 pounds due to malnutrition.

A person incarcerated in Michigan also alleged that Aramark continued to serve him dishes containing peanut butter with no alternative option despite knowing he had a peanut allergy. He ended up in the emergency room twice due to allergic reactions. It has also been reported that other incarcerated people who are Jewish and Muslim were denied kosher and halal diets for extended periods of time.

In 2009, Aramark’s poor-quality food caused a prison riot in Kentucky, and years later, 19 incarcerated people in a Nevada prison went on a hunger strike for nine days in part to protest the corporation’s inadequate portions of food.

While it was not the only cause of the hunger strike, Prison Legal News reported Aramark was “the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.” Aramark also used unpaid prison labor to serve food. “The 100-or-so residents who clean tables, stir with a canoe paddle the big pots of pasta or rice, or flip patties on the grill are wholly unpaid,” Justin Slavinski, a man incarcerated in Florida, wrote in his prison’s publication. “They make no money.”

Over 100 of Aramark’s paid employees were banned from prison grounds for inappropriate behavior, including sexual contact with and smuggling drugs to incarcerated people, as well as an alleged murder-for-hire plot just in the state of Michigan. In 2019, Aramark paid $21 million to settle two class-action lawsuits in which employees alleged they were never paid bonuses they had been promised.

What’s next?

With Aramark’s deeply troubled history as a food vendor for prisons, as well as accusations of discrimination against ASU students, many students have questioned why the University has yet to terminate its relationship with the company. They wouldn’t be alone if they did — colleges all over the nation have moved to drop Aramark, with some of the largest being NYU and Kent State.

Chaudhary is skeptical of ASU’s ability to follow suit. “It is a [multi-million-dollar deal] that ASU has signed with Aramark, so you can’t get rid of them,” he said. “They are efficient, they are cost-effective compared to other people.”

According to Aramark Chief Financial Officer James Tarangelo, the company’s biggest deal in higher education is with ASU. “[We] not only secured it, but we added athletics and concessions,” he told investment bank UBS in a March document. “We added the faculty allowance of that program as well. So with that, we think we’re very well positioned from a net new standpoint.”

Rao said ISA is doing its part to warn new students about the dangers of Aramark, hosting a yearly webinar with incoming Sun Devils from India to inform them of the risks.

“Just because [students] are on a visa doesn’t mean they don’t have any rights,” he said.

“One of the biggest things that I want to implement is cultural competency training for ASU staff,” Chaudhary said. “No matter who you are, you should be able to very easily put yourself into other people’s shoes, and the best way to do that is knowing what they go through.

“[International students] are leaving every single person they know to come to a different country to get a better education, and I think that if you can acknowledge the fact that they are doing that and take into consideration a little bit more of what they face, you’ll be a little bit more empathetic — and that’s what Aramark should start doing.”

Chaudhary said USG-T has not received complaints about Aramark’s workplace culture since the last investigation did not find anything. “We are working toward making it a little bit better, and I think that investigation helped, regardless of if they found something or not,” he said.