Missed Meals: Plan Under Review

By Hannah Che     11/10/15 3:39pm

The Student Association is working with Housing and Dining to find ways to improve the current meal plan system, which has been criticized by some students for being inflexible, according to Wiess College Senator Hannah Todd. 

The initiative, which will also reconsider offering Saturday dinners, will gather campus-wide opinion through an upcoming survey and develop changes that could be implemented for the upcoming summer and school year.

Todd, a sophomore, said the initiative was started after she became aware of recurring inquiries and complaints submitted by students at Wiess and across campus.

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“How can we make the meal plan more flexible?” Todd said. “How can we make it more fair while keeping the quality?”

The current meal plan consists of six options, with only Option A available for on-campus students. Option A costs $2,155 per semester and consists of 19 meals a week for 17 weeks. According to H&D, this averages to $6.68 a meal if they are all utilized. The other five plan options, for off-campus students, include a fixed number of meals that average around $8 each.

 

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Senior Business Director of H&D David McDonald said the process of determining the meal plan price relies heavily on ID card swipe data to avoid cooking more food than necessary. 

“After looking at historical swipes on a given week or day, we figure out production,” McDonald said. “We use a matrix that uses the predicted number of students each day to determine how much food we should purchase and produce each week. ” 

There are approximately 6,000 swipes recorded every day in the serveries, on average, with the number varying during weekends and breaks, according to McDonald. This is equivalent to about 2 meals used per on-campus student per day, since there are 2,855 students using the on-campus meal plan and off-campus students make up an additional portion of the daily swipes.

Todd said that complaints regarding the meal plan often point to unfairness for students who pay for all meals but miss meals or regularly skip breakfast.

“My main problem with the current system is the inflexibility,” Giancarlo Latta, a Baker College junior, said. “I don’t actually use all the meals I pay for, so it would be great if we could have the option to purchase a plan with fewer meals, or have a way to somehow transfer unused swipes to Tetra.” 

McDonald said he understands concerns over the price, but that  H&D minimizes price increases. 

“The on-campus meal plan only increased $5 in price from last year — the smallest increase we’ve ever had,” he said. “There is bound to be an increase every year to keep up with inflation and wage increases for our staff, but our mission is to keep those annual increases as low as possible.”

McDonald said students may not realize their actions can directly affect the price of the meal plan. 

“[The expected number of meals] gets skewed because of students taking out additional food for others,” Executive Chef Johnny Curet said. “It creates a vicious cycle where our predictions don’t match the amount of students actually eating from the servery, and results in either underproduction or food waste.”

Meals at Rice were not always served buffet style, according to McDonald. In the past, the system was a la carte, where the student would be served individual food items by staff behind the counter then have their plates weighed on the way out before paying.

“The old system was problematic due to congestion — we would get a lot of backup inside the servery and people were sometimes practically eating all their food by the time they got to check out,” McDonald said. 

The current all-you-care-to-eat system is riskier for H&D since it is prediction-based and relies on student honor, according to McDonald.

“We decided that getting students in and out of the servery faster was more important, and that we’d trust you on the honor side,” McDonald said. “When you share food with people that are not on the meal plan, you are effectually increasing the cost for everybody who is purchasing the plan — it’s not fair, and you could even call it stealing.”

McDonald said another way students can prevent an increase in the meal plan price is to minimize the use of disposable ware and return all missing servery plates and silverware to the kitchen. Last year, H&D spent $32,000 replacing missing china, tumblers and utensils and $274,000 purchasing disposable paper plates, cups and plastic ware.

“We are not here to make money,” McDonald said. “All the revenue we receive in the board plan we are trying to put back into the food, and we’d rather not have to spend that money on replacing missing dishes.”

Amy Griffiths, a Jones College freshman, said she thinks the food quality is impressive considering the average meal price. 

“I’m surprised at how frequently we get things like salmon and steak on the menu, since those items are quite expensive,” Griffiths said.

Todd said the planned survey will be sent out in the next few weeks to get a better idea of student opinion of the current system.

“McMurtry SA Senator Mishi Jain and I are excited to work with H&D to come up with ways to optimize the meal plan for students,” Todd said. “Hopefully the potential survey will tell us a great deal more about where students lie on this issue.”

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