Columbia University says it spends $450 a week on Nutella at its dining halls, after a report that students went nuts when it began offering the hazelnut chocolate spread and caused the budget to skyrocket to $5,000 a week.
Columbia said in a statement that "it is true that in the first 3-4 days after Nutella was recently added to the dining hall selections, demand was indeed extraordinarily high, with students enjoying a large amount that initial short period."
But the cost, the school insists, was about $2,500, and soon stabilized to $450 per week.
The Columbia Spectator first reported that administrators suspected the high demand for the treat was because undergrads were taking extra amounts back to their dorms.
“The demand [for Nutella] has been greater than originally expected,” the executive director of Dining Services, Vicki Dunn, told students in an email, according to the paper. “Students have been filling cups of Nutella to-go in Ferris Booth Commons and taking the full jars out of John Jay, which means we’re going through product faster than anticipated.”
