BY MIMI WELLS
Edgewood College is considering new meal plan options for students through dining services company Chartwells, which is based in Rye Brook, N.Y.
Edgewood is considering three-to-four meal plan options. These plans would be All-You-Care-To-Eat plans that other colleges across the country are offering, including Beloit College and Cornell University, which is located in Ithaca, N.Y. These proposed plans would use flex dollars, similar to Beloit’s meal plan options.
Proposed All-You-Care-To-Eat plans would only work at Phil’s, unless students wanted to do a meal exchange and buy a specific meal package in Wingra Café.
The All-You-Care-To-Eat option would be different from Edgewood’s current meal plan because students could pay for two meals in one swipe of their meal card, instead of paying for them separately. For example, if a student wanted stir fry and a sandwich, they could pay for it with one swipe of their meal card instead of paying for the meals separately.
These new plans would not be happening until 2019 or 2020, if Edgewood decided to go through with it, according to Chartwells employee and Dining Services Director Jennifer Fellows. “Edgewood would make the final decision,” Fellows said.
Edgewood is in its 3rd or 4th year in its 10-year contract with Chartwells. Nichole Rosa-Robinson, Edgewood’s events and conferences manager, said that Edgewood chose Chartwells for its “affordable quality dining options.”
Edgewood College officials chose not to make Edgewood’s contract with Chartwells available.
Edgewood is hosting student-only sessions to talk about its All-You-Care-To-Eat meal plan idea. The April 23 session attracted very few students.
The students were interested in the idea of an All-You-Care-To-Eat meal plan, but some ideas were met with skepticism, like the idea of guest passes, where a student would only have a limited amount of money to buy food for friends and family.
Most students said they wanted to choose what they did with their money.
The April 23 session did not touch on the fact that students’ meal plan money expires at the end of the semester. Texas A&M, a public college, had a similar clause in its contract with Chartwells in 2014, according to a Feb. 23, 2014 article by Texas A&M’s college newspaper, The Eagle.
The Eagle said Texas A&M “found that more than one out of every five meals purchased, which expire at the end of the semester, went unused. That’s about $2.7 million in unclaimed meals purchased by Aggies or their parents.”
Parents and students complained about their “wasted money.” Representatives of Chartwells said that the expiring meal plans were a “part of their business model and is an industry norm.”
Edgewood representatives chose not to provide similar information.
Edgewood officials said that they were open to hearing feedback from students. According to Robinson, dining services is always looking to evaluate and improve things. One to two surveys are posted a semester on EC Today or Wingra Weekly to get feedback from students, although not many students take these surveys. “Students have not been engaged with the surveys,” she said. “The sample is rather low.”
Edgewood introduced vegan and vegetarian options in January as a result of student feedback. The main way Dining Services acquires feedback from the students is by working with Residence Life, according to Edgewood’s VP Business and Finance/CFO Michael Guns. Guns also said they hold focus groups with Residence Life to talk about other colleges’ meal plans to compare them to Edgewood’s.
Edgewood also has a monthly Dining Services Taskforce meeting, which students can attend. The task force discusses student feedback and ways to improve current dining services.
Fellows said that she wants the new meal plan ideas “to meet the needs of what Edgewood students are looking for.”
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