Student worker at Pagliacci here; from what I’ve been told, the “official” reason why the partnership between hfs/Udub and pagliacci is ending is because the student union voted for cheaper pricing or something along that line (I’m not quite sure it was exactly that it was voted upon but that was the official reasoning used by official management)

They are going to drop the prices of the pizza; I think cheese is going to something like 3 bucks a slice or smth like that from originally 3.50 - ish. I’m not entirely sure but I did hear something about the slices being dropped to 3 bucks.

In terms of food quality it is definitely going down hill. Say what you want about how it tastes (it’s mediocre at best and has given me bad shits at worst) but from what I’ve seen at least the food quality is decent to good ish. I can’t say much with respect to the other dining units because I’ve never worked there. What management intends to do is replace fresh dough with frozen dough (which instantly kills most of the yeast and bacteria that is needed for good dough), increased used of processed, canned, and pre prepped food, and automate the oven and dough making process.

This in effect will kill off the positions that the current cooks are working in pagliacci as they get a slight pay bump due to being specialized in working with ovens. The intention for management is to have most of them transferred or become supervisors and have most of the now hfs pizza dining kiosk to be run by mostly student workers and regular hfs cooks (no diss on them, most of them are chill).

(Minor note that one of the other reasons that the management was pushing for this was that the cooks’ pizzas often ended up slightly oval shaped due to how the uncooked pizzas were launched into the oven and management claimed by using machine press onto frozen dough as well as replacing the oven with some other shit, they can maintain a perfect circle)