The Martin Luther King Jr. University Union will include Qdoba-Mexican Grill starting Fall 2023.

According to a press release, Eastern has been talking with several national fast-food chains and decided upon Qdoba. They are currently in the contract process with Qdoba and Eastern is “confident we can make this option available.”

The restaurant will be placed in the corner between the Charleston Market and ACE Sushi.

Executive Director of Housing and Dining Mark Hudson said he hopes the addition will bring more traffic into the MLK University Union.

In the past, there was a Subway but that was not able to generate enough revenue to sustain. Eventually, Subway was taken out and ACE Sushi was put in during the Fall 2022 semester.

ACE Sushi brought in more money in one semester than Subway did in two semesters.

Hudson said he wanted to bring more cultural diversity in the food options so students have different choices.

Hudson said the housing staff thinks of ways to improve the food court and how to make it work well amongst students.

Hudson also said new improvements are expected to come to Chick-fil-A next semester too.

“It’s gonna be a larger footprint within the food court,” Hudson said. “It’s going to look like a little more traditional counter service, and you see at a brick-and-mortar store. It’s gonna have more technology built into it. So, our hope is that we’ll be able to do like GrubHub or something like that, [and] that we’ll be able to take advantage of that [and] we’ll open it up to be more convenient for students, to our faculty or staff or be with people in community who want to order it that they can, you know, go through that app and then we can deliver that as well.”

Cam’ron Hardy can be reached at 581-2812 or at dennewsdesk@gmail.com.