What is Buffalo Mash?
Buffalo Mash is a bowl of mashed potatoes with chicken tenders, celery and tomato garnish, buffalo sauce, and ranch. It is served every Friday at D-hall. The dish is quite odd but is one of the most popular food items served at JMU dining halls.
What kind of marketing do these items receive and how much?
JMU dining services uses social media, their online website, and promotional items to promote their popular food items including, tacos, grilled cheese, chicken nuggets, and buffalo mash. The main promotional item is a t-shirt for each item which JMU dining services given away on promotional days or for ordering your meal-plan in advance.
Why does Buffalo Mash not deserve the marketing it’s getting?
The main reasons Buffalo Mash does not deserve its current level of marketing is because it is not the highest performing JMU food staples, it is not the healthiest, and there is a cheaper option for getting the same quality of Buffalo Mash. Compared to the other items JMU spends marketing dollars on, Buffalo mash is the 3rd highest performing item on JMU Dining's social media. I researched the JMU Dining Services Instagram to find the total and average likes of each major JMU food staple, in the last year. The two types of post for either food item was a food-based post or a t-shirt centered post for. Here is what I found:
Instagram posts for Food-centered posts
Food Item | Average Likes per post | # of posts |
Chicken Nuggets | N/A | 0 |
Grilled Cheese | 578.5 | 2 |
Buffalo Mash | 542 | 5 |
Tacos | 218 | 3 |
Instagram posts for T-shirt centered posts
Food item | Average Likes per Post | # of posts |
Chicken Nuggets | 623.75 | 4 |
Grilled Cheese | 503.67 | 2 |
Buffalo Mash | 450 | 3 |
Tacos | 436 | 1 |
As you can see, Chicken Nuggets for Chicken Nugget Thursday are the highest performing food item and Tacos for Taco Tuesdays are the lowest performing. Buffalo Mash is receiving the most amount of post but is not performing as well as grilled cheese or chicken nuggets. Next, the JMU dining plan is not the cheapest way to get the same Buffalo Mash. The cheapest alternative for students is by buying the ingredients at Walmart or their local grocery store, from which you would pay around $4.45 per serving of Buffalo Mash. Compared to that, a punch in a JMU dining plan can cost between $7.89 to $12.80, depending on which dining plan you choose and how many punches are waisted per semester. On top of that, students would not be sacrificing quality if they shopped for ingredients at Walmart because they would have control over finding products that are likely equal or greater in quality. For this, it is important to note that food like Buffalo Mash is made to serve the masses, which means there is a cap to how high its quality can be. Often, the food you find at D-hall is food you can make for yourself at home and get the same quality of food. Lastly, Buffalo Mash is not as healthy and/or tasty as some of the other items served at D-hall or E-hall, like the Stir Frye, the E-hall cheeseburgers, or the Mediterranean bowls.
How could things be improved for the JMU Dining Staples?
The things that JMU Dining services can do to improve their food staples are to improve Buffalo Mash or change the selected foods. For the first option, JMU Dining services could change Buffalo Mash or add an option to how it is served. For example, they could give students an option of either having Buffalo Mash with mashed potatoes or have it with mac-n-cheese. The other thing they could do is have another popular food at JMU to take the place of Buffalo Mash as the new staple, like the waffle, the ice cream cone, or the pizza.
How could the marketing plan for JMU dining be improved?
To enhance their marketing activities, JMU dining services can do several things including expanding the food staples to other dining facilities, like Festival, adding the food staples to the mascot food race at football games, and selling the t-shirts for the food staples in the JMU bookstore. I think expanding the food staples to other dining facilities would be beneficial because it would expose more students to the foods, especially for Buffalo Mash. There is a divide between students who live on the main side of JMU’s campus and the east side of campus. Many students do not explore their opposing side of campus for food because the trek is long and the dining facilities on either side are close to the dorms. For example, students living on east-campus will most likely eat at either Festival or E-hall because it is less than a 5 minute walk from the dorms, compared to a 20 minute walk to D-hall. It would be awesome to have Buffalo Mash served at Festival since it would make a good to-go meal.
Next, JMU dining services should add the food staples to the popular food race at the football games. Currently, the foods in the race are a Pepsi can, a hot dog, a bucket of popcorn, and a lobster. The reason 3 out of 4 of the items are picked is because whichever food wins the race, fans will be given a promotion for the food. For example, if the hot dog wins, then the price for hot dogs drops from $7.00 to $3.00. While the Lobster is there to create false hope and entertain the Marching Royal Dukes. To raise the attention for the food staples of JMU, it would be a good idea to have their mascots involved in the race because over 22,000 will be watching.
Lastly, JMU dining should put their t-shirts for each food staple into the bookstore to sell. They have already realized the first reason why t-shirts are a great way to market their product, which is free advertisement by the consumer. Of course they must incur a cost for the t-shirts, but that goes away and they gain more marketing from consumers wearing the t-shirts, over the long term. The second benefit is instant recognition from other students and any passerby. JMU Dining services has done a great job with designing the t-shirts with the colors and the designs to make the food item synonymous with JMU. But to optimize their marketing, more t-shirts need to be made available for students. Currently, JMU dining services only gives away t-shirts on special occasions, which means students must get lucky or purchase the dining plan a semester prior to the next. I understand why they do not sell them, which is because it drives students to the dining halls with the chance of getting a t-shirt. Although, it could be just as profitable to sell them for a limited time at the JMU bookstore. Also, it could benefit the students or parents if it means JMU does not have to raise the dining plan prices with its extra t-shirt profits.
For the past three and half years that I have been at JMU, they have done their best to battle through the pandemic to remain on the best college dining service n the country. The great thing about JMU dining services is they offer a variety of options, especially for the people who are against Buffalo Mash (me). Although, I do strongly believe that JMU dining needs a revive or some TLC. Let me know what you all think about Buffalo Mash and the marketing ideas for JMU dining. For more thoughtful content, subscribe to my blog list.
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