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The Rice Thresher
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by Ben Weston thresher staff
The meal plan itself The old terminology of pre-paid versus a la carte is gone. All meals at the residential college are all-you-can-eat style and are purchased as part of the meal plan at the beginning of the year. If a meal is not covered by a student's meal plan, it can be purchased for between $5.50 and $8.50 in Tetra points, a new account-based system for purchases. Kitchen staff will swipe ID cards before students enter a college's servery, and the computer system will automatically deduct from the student's account. Students can reenter and get more food throughout meal times. "I think everybody will like the new meal plan," Assistant Director for Food Operations Matt Morgan said. "I know the feelings were mixed last year. I think everybody will like the improvements that will be made, [and] the speed of service at lunch to me is huge. "Also, a lot of the complaints I got last year were about cashiering mistakes," he said. "I think we removed those obstacles to the service." The base meal plan, required for freshmen, includes 19 meals per week. On-campus students can choose plans with 15 or 11 meals per week. Off-campus students can purchase a five-meal plan or they can use Tetra points to buy meals in the colleges. Any meals not purchased by the end of a week will not roll over to the next week. "I wish that if we didn't eat all our meals, our money would just change into Tetra points," Hanszen College senior Laila Hlass said. "That'd be helpful." Director of Food and Housing Mark Ditman said this would make the meal plan more expensive. He illustrated the problem with this option by comparing the new meal plans with the similar plans of the University of California, Los Angeles. "If you look at the [UCLA] meal plan that doesn't expire, where the meals accumulate and you can essentially cash them out, it costs almost 10 percent more." The 19- and 15-meal plans also include 50 Tetra points. Tetra points are money saved in a debit account that are accessed with a Rice ID card. They can be used to purchase additional meals at the residential colleges, at the Coffeehouse, and at the new convenience store and Subway, among other locations. Since a student may not purchase more than one meal per meal period, guest meals must be purchased with Tetra points. Tetra points will roll over at the end of each semester but are not refundable. Also, there will not be sign-in forms for people with lost or broken ID cards. "It sounds a little bit punitive, ... but if you look at how much time you guys fund for Food and Housing staff to enter [sign-ins], it's remarkable," Ditman said. "The other thing, if you look at the percent of sign-ins that are inaccurate in some way, that we're not able to charge for, that's significant too. The best thing to do is just bring your ID." "I'm not a big fan of [the plan]," Will Rice College senior Matt Frost said. "I don't think it's nearly as flexible as they'd like it to seem. ... I think the fact that they're not making concessions for guests kind of sucks."
New hours in colleges Another big change this fall is having College Food Service open longer hours. In response to perceived student demand, four residential colleges will now serve dinner on Sunday nights. "I probably will go [to Sunday dinner] since I have so many meals on my meal plan," Hlass said. "It's just so much food." Hlass purchased the smallest plan for on-campus students, with 11 meals per week. All eight residential colleges now also have continuous service after breakfast until 11 a.m. This will also be all-you-can-eat style and will be billed as breakfast. The card-swiper system is set up by time, with zones for each meal. "It's going to be more of a continental style," Morgan said. "We'll leave fruits and pastries out, [and] you can get coffee or a bowl of cereal." Grill service will not be available during these periods because the kitchen staff will be using the kitchen to prepare lunch, Morgan said.
Self-service, cards F&H also implemented a number of changes to the way food is served at the colleges. Four of the colleges will now be entirely self-serve. The others - Brown, Jones, Wiess and Sid Richardson Colleges - can't currently be set up for self-serve, but the new common kitchens were designed around this method. "One of the real important dimensions of the meal plan is speed of service," Ditman said. "You have everybody gridlocked at lunch - you're overutilized for 10 minutes and the rest of the day you're underutilized. So the self-serve was the best solution that we could find for increasing the pace through during that 10-minute lunch push. "The idea was that the kitchen staff could cook in smaller batches and replenish throughout the meal as opposed to serving you guys. It'll mean fresher food," Ditman said. "There are a lot of advantages to it."
Prepackaged items phased out With the exception of dairy products, colleges will no longer carry prepackaged items. This includes last year's selection of bottled water, snacks, cereal and other bottled beverages. Each servery will carry cereal in self-serve bins. Milk and yogurt will still be available in individual packages. The biggest change will be the replacement of popular individual Ozarka water bottles with a pure-water dispenser in each commons. These dispensers are intended to be available at any time, at no charge. Each college servery is also now equipped with a dispenser that provides both pure and flavored sparkling water, and F&H is testing a new, larger model in the Baker College outer commons. If this dispenser proves more efficient, Ditman said, F&H will install them in each college to provide 24-hour access to drinking water for students. "Now that you can fill up a mug and take it with you, our hope is that you'll see less of the plastic bottles and cup waste and that sort of thing," Ditman said. "It'll serve the environmental interests of students [and] it'll save you some money from all the disposable cups you go through."
Tetras everywhere Along with the new meal system, Tetra points make their debut this semester. Tetra points are all money added on to a meal plan. They can be used to pay for additional or guest meals at the colleges; breakfast will cost $5.50, lunch will cost $6.50 and dinners will cost $8.50. (One Tetra is equivalent to a dollar.) According to an F&H report from last spring, the name comes from the ancient Greek coin the tetradrachma, which sported an Athenian owl on one side. The Owl on the Rice academic seal is modeled after this owl. These Tetra points can also be used in the four vending machines with card readers will be that will be activated this week, F&H Business Manager Frank Rodriguez said. Three of these are in Mudd Building and one will be located in Herring Hall. Ditman said the Athletic Department is hoping to have card readers in the concession stands at athletic events so students can buy food at games with their cards. "Tetras are something that I don't want F&H to have sole ownership of," Ditman said. "Basically, it's just a convenient way for people to purchase on campus. So, the more operations that offer them, the more value it will have for students." All freshmen began the year with 50 Tetra points as part of their meal plan. In addition, Ditman said that returning students have about $200,000 rolling over from last year's meal cards; leftover meal plan funds were converted to Tetra points.
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