Creekside Eatery — Restaurant in Alaska

I am graduating this semester and have eaten here for the past 3 years of my time here as a college student. Over that time, the one consistent trend has been increasing prices and rapidly decreasing quality. UAA Dining Services is, in my opinion, the worst organization at UAA and seems to have little regard for both the students they serve and the staff who work for them.

I had never really gotten nauseous from food before, but eating here, I have thrown up on multiple occasions and have had to step out and take a break to let my stomach settle dozens of times more. Time and time again, I have gotten hair in my food, had moldy fruits and vegetables, and under-/overcooked meat.

During my sophomore year, they had fresh-cut fruit every morning, and milk, pudding, fruit cups, granola bars, and more available for the go. They also had dining trays, cups with lids and straws, and a regularly stocked ice cream freezer. Today, none of that exists anymore. The same ice cream freezer that was once available to us during meals has been moved to their "Bear Necessities" store, where they mark everything up about 2x the retail price. On multiple occasions, I have seen them preparing the fresh fruit assortments they used to provide for students regularly, and I once asked if they would be available later in the day, only to be told "it's for catering". These cases are just some of the examples that showed me just how little Creekside Eatery prioritizes the students who uphold their entire business and who they actually care about.

In addition to this, they used to have a variety of food options during different meals with things like halibut, chicken breast, steak, cultural foods, and more. Today, the meal options are consistently the same, dry, cheap, malnourishing, high-carb selections of foods. Breakfast is now almost always dry hash browns, dry pancakes, and sugary yogurt with sugar-infused fruit topping, where it used to be different almost every day, with fresh fruit always available for students. Lunch and dinner are now almost always predominantly cheap high-carb pasta with other unhealthy options like Nachos as the primary course at least once a week.

Going beyond the food, the one employee who genuinely did care and had a vested interest in the students left her position after having worked there for over 10 years due to poor treatment from upper management. She worked hard to remember every one of us students' names, regularly attended school games, and would come by the tables and check in on all of us and how we were doing. We all miss her a lot, and since she has left, there is nothing redeeming about this place whatsoever.

If management wants to reply to this review with a response that sounds like it was generated through ChatGPT, telling you how much they care about any of this, they can go ahead. But actions speak louder than words, and over the past three years of eating here the actions and executive decisions of Creekside Eatery have consistently shown just how little they care about the students who keep them afloat. They consistently raise prices and lower quality and availability, knowing they can do so because students who live in residential halls are forced to continue buying their absurdly priced mealplans (about $15 a meal when you do the math, assuming you eat every meal, so more realistically closer to $18-$20).

I really do hope that things can get better and, at the very least, begin to resemble something similar to how things were when I first started eating here. However, if previous attempts at giving survey feedback have shown me anything, I have very little reason to be hopeful. I am just glad that after graduating, I will not have to continue buying the meal plan and eating...

Ate here every day for +2.5 years. Food gets worse every semester due to questionable budget cuts. Staff are incredibly rude to students immediately every time without fail. No vegetarian or pescatarian options, and the vegan options are disgusting...

Food is pretty good, of course not the best quality but that doesn't mean it's bad. The workers are all friendly and the environment is nice...