Long Island-based Lessing’s takes over food services at Molloy College

Molloy College welcomed a new vendor earlier this month to provide food services to its nearly 5,000 students a few weeks after complaints surfaced about various dishes coming from the school’s cafeterias.

Lessing’s, a family-run Long Island food service management company took over at Molloy on Oct. 9 in the wake of quality of food concerns about former vendor Chartwells, who had served food at Molloy for 14 years.

“We are very pleased that we have gotten someone with their track record and reputation,” Molloy Spokesman Ken Young said about Lessing’s in an email, “and we are certainly pleased that they were able to work with us and ramp up so quickly.”

Anne Collins, president of Molloy’s student government, said she began receiving text messages and pictures from students on Sept. 24 regarding concerns about food quality. She passed them along to school officials, and the college’s cafeterias were shut down several days later.

Molloy and Charlotte-based Compass USA, which owns Chartwells, mutually agreed to part ways a few days later, according to Young.

The university had brought in food trucks for students and provided catering to the 285 students living in the campus’s two residence halls while the cafeterias were closed, and Collins told the Herald that students were encouraged by the school’s quick action in remedying the situation.

Though the Subway and Starbucks operated by Compass USA were shut down on Oct. 5, Young said, Lessing’s provides sandwiches daily and there is a new coffee area where Starbucks was.

Lessing’s, based in Great River, has about 80 accounts in the Northeast and serves more than 40,000 guests per day, according to its website. It operates three fine-dining restaurants, 17 catering facilities and six Blaze Fast Fire’d Pizza franchises, among other establishments.

Kevin Lessing had not returned the Herald’s phone call at press time on Tuesday.