It’s hard to imagine what our day would be like without lunch. In a day that may not have free periods, it’s that oasis where we get to see our friends again, chat, relax and, of course, enjoy some delicious food.
Sounds great, except one small issue: not everyone thinks that food is delicious, especially according to some Marksmen. The reasons vary, from not liking the daily selections to simply criticizing the taste and preparation, but there is one common thread: the problem, as many argue, lies with SAGE, our food provider.
Picking on SAGE has become somewhat of a common occurrence around campus, especially as boys ask questions about the company’s choices for our lunch. At the end of the day, though, lunch will never be perfect, and Marksmen should give SAGE more credit for what it has been able to do.
There are two major elements of SAGE’s food that students typically criticize: the meals that they choose to give to us, and how well they’re prepared.
When it comes to meal choice, there are valid criticisms: almost everyone can think of one particular day every cycle that they don’t like, and people have overlap, too.
But there also lies the problem. There really is no satisfying everyone and choosing the exact right meal. There’s also much more consideration that has to go on behind the scenes.
First of all, SAGE has to attempt to create a quality balance of various cuisines so that we aren’t just getting Italian or Tex-Mex every day, although they definitely are more common. To this end, we’ve gotten a pretty good taste of a lot of the world for school lunch.
At the same time, they also have to juggle making the meals nutritionally balanced. While it’s up to us as students to take what we want, SAGE offers an impressive variety of (usually) healthy food up front and in areas like the always-open salad and sandwich bar.
Lastly, and maybe most importantly, SAGE has to carefully choose foods that work for those with dietary restrictions. While some Marksmen with specific needs still bring their own lunch, they generally tend to have great options through SAGE, allowing them to be included as well.
It’s easy to take all of this for granted, but these things are significant, especially compared to other schools’ offerings.

When compared to other schools, it’s much clearer how strong our lunch really is. Many private schools around Dallas use dining companies like SAGE for their lunch services, but typically offer less. This even extends to Hockaday, our closest peer, who also found SAGE to be the best option for themselves, yet who actually have less options at their lunches than we do.
That’s to say nothing about how our lunch stacks up to that of public school. As anyone who used to go to a public school can likely attest, the food there is not only more limited and noticeably less healthy but also suffers much more from issues of being mass-produced and quickly reheated. Comparatively speaking, lunches here are vastly superior.
However, longtime students of the school have also pointed to another potential issue with SAGE and one that is grounded in some more experience. Some remember when the school had its own food in-house without using the company. Many students argue that those lunches in years past were better than the ones now.
Obviously, this is an opinon that’s hard to verify. It’s grounded in actual experience, but it could also be chalked up to nostalgia. However, this take does seem to be a valid criticism of the school’s switch to SAGE, if true.
That being said, it’s also worth considering the reasons to use a dining company in the first place. As mentioned previously, a number of private schools like Hockaday also use SAGE itself or a similar service, so our school is not alone in this respect.
While it can come at the expense of the quality , freshness and some degree of customizability in the meals, the savings and economies of scale created by companies like SAGE matter a lot. It means that we have a pretty consistent lunch service and without breaking the bank as a school. So, while there are some losses in not making our own food, it carries a lot of benefits as well.
It’s also easy to forget that they have to do things beyond just lunches. They manage snack after school and catering for any number of special events, such as meetings in the dining rooms and events where parents or alumni come to campus. Having a company with routine experience in these areas lessens the school’s burden significantly.
This is not to say that SAGE is perfect or that it was definitely the right move for our school to use its services. But it does tend to receive overcriticism for the issues it has and underrecognition for the benefits it provides for us.
Students, when they notice problems, should absolutely make active attempts to constructively criticize and provide advice, as opposed to just tearing down the company without knowing the full picture. A few years ago, SAGE actually opened up a little stand by the cafeteria where students could write their feedback on notepads. When presented with this opportunity, most of us wrote gibberish or borderline obscenity.
That is obviously not the way to go about things, and if we want SAGE to change, we shouldn’t actively discourage their attempts to listen to us. Let’s be respectful of the work they do, and particularly to the hardworking employees who feed and serve us everyday. And when we find issues, let’s talk about them the right way.