"You might have to wait 10 minutes, which in the scheme of thing is pretty long," says Mark E. Lee '01-'02 says, chair of the Quincy House Committee. "There is a lot of traffic."

With only one side of the servery open frequently, it is common to see people standing all the way down the stairs into the front entry to Quincy while waiting for their chance to get their trays.

McGahey says they need to close one of the lines at times, so that the food items will not sit out too long.

But even with these precautions, Quincy residents still say many dishes have a tendency to cool quickly.

"I think it's unfortunate that they can't kep the food warm," Jennifer L. Chu '01 says. "Nothing tastes fresh. Everything feels like it was prepared four hours ahead of time."

HUDS has developed a solution to solve the problems of both line closures and stale food.

"We proposed to the focus group that rather than having food in full sized pans we're going to have smaller pans with smaller quantities," McGahey says. "But both lines will be open--not at the very beginning of each meal--but after that each line will be open."