Dining Board

Thursday, October 24th, 2013

Sevy Meeting Room

Present:

Katie McKenna, Dan Bergeson, Kelly Roehl, Andrea Robinson, Sophie Glassford ’16, Florence Wong ’16, Lucas Morrill ’14, Kelsey Cox ’14, Lilly Athamanah ’15, Claire Kelloway ’16, Patricia Hare ’17, Robbie Emmet ‘16

Comment Cards:

  • Burton

Cookie dough brownies were really good.

Please get skim lactose free milk, LDC has it, not Burton. LDC’s lactose free milk is not skim. We’ll see about getting it though.

Banana craisin cookies were good.

Sweet potato soup was wonderful.

Applesauce is delicious

New frozen yogurt is awesome.

Coffee bar please, I love it and miss it.

Strawberry frozen yogurt.

Calzones always have meat in them. Not today.

  • Sayles

Where is my Vitamin water, gogoflavor.

Butternut squash soup was too sweet, I threw it away.

Sushi was frozen. The freezer is currently getting worked on.

  • LDC

Increase green beans and cauliflower medley into more meals.

Everything at Wild Thymes was wonderful.

Please bring back the old fortune cookies with the lucky numbers on the back.

Fruit yogurt is usually really good, today it was not.

  • Online

In the Burton sandwich bar, there are slices of zucchini and summer squash. They seem a bit sweeter than the raw form. Are they sugar roasted or is it just the natural sweetness? They are roasted in a little oil and salt.

Are there vegetarian/vegan sandwiches at eXpress lunch? Yes.

Jack at the pizza station was fabulous!

Is the granola vegan? The house-made granola is.

  • Other Feedback

Hot cider in Sayles.

Meal Plan Discussion:

  • “The Economics of Meal Plans at Carleton” document attached.
  • Claire would like to see something like the 12 with no or fewer dining dollars.
  • Patricia is more concerned with price; she’d like to see a cheaper plan, particularly for first year students. Dan and Andrea explained that Carleton, along with many other colleges, purposely does that to “force” socialized dining (and living too) for first year students. Carleton is probably one of the few that allows you to change after first term.
  • Lucas is off campus and feels the 5 plan is a really good deal.
  • Doug would like to see something in between, say a 15/16 meal plan.
  • Patricia also suggested changing from one card swipe per meal period to three swipes per day.
  • Doug asked about a second meal equivalency.
  • Patricia brought up possibly only opening Burton during brunch and leave LDC closed to save money. Katie will look into participation numbers for breakfast.

Upcoming Events:

  • Thursday, Oct. 24th – National Food Day
  • Monday, Oct. 28th, 5:30pm, Burton – Dining with the Dietician
  • Thursday, Oct. 31st – HALLOWEEN, caramel apples in the dining hall and decorate your own cookies
  • Tuesday, Nov. 5th, Naked Juice on Campus promoting products
  • Wednesday, Nov. 6th, 5:00pm, LDC – Dining with the Dietician
  • Wednesday, Nov. 6th – Well Being Wednesday
  • Thursday, Nov. 7th – Grill out at Sayles

Next Dining Board Meeting: Thursday, November 7th, 12 – 1pm, Sevy Meeting Room

The Economics of Meal Plans at Carleton

The first thing to understand about meal plan economics is that meal plans are not priced or built by meal by either the food service provider or the college. Even though there is a cash price for those who want to eat in the dining halls that don’t have meal plans, those prices have no direct relationship to meal plans. In other words, one can’t use those prices in determining the how a given meal plan is built.

Bon Appétit uses an industry standard formula-based approach to setting the price that they charge Carleton for students on meal plans. It involves a metric known as the “daily rate.” Included in the calculation are all of the known costs for their services (food procurement, staff compensation, uniforms, vehicles, insurance, etc.), the features of the plan (amount of meals, amount of dining dollars, meal replacements, guest meals, etc.), the number of meal periods in the academic year and the number of students on each meal plan. There is a unique table of rates created for each meal plan and the tables scale up or down based on the changing numbers of student on each plan during the course of the academic year. These numbers vary each term depending on overall enrollment, students on leave or on an off-campus program and how many students have chosen each plan. Bon Appétit bills Carleton weekly based on the number of students on each meal plan that week multiplied by the daily rate for each plan.

The formula for the daily rate takes into account a component known as the “missed meal factor.” Data analysis of dining behavior shows that students on meal plans on average don’t eat all of the meals on their plan. This is true no matter how many meals the plan contains and is usually somewhere between 20-30%. The assumption then is that the potential meals available in a given term will not be utilized. If Bon Appétit assumed 100% participation by students on meal plans, the daily rate would be correspondingly higher.

The board charge that students pay Carleton is greater than the price that Carleton pays Bon Appétit for the students’ daily rate. The additional amount covers all of the fixed costs that are incurred in the dining halls by the college. Bon Appétit purchases, prepares and serves the food, but Carleton owns and maintains the buildings and all of the equipment in the kitchens and the seating areas. Just as most homeowners borrow money to purchase their homes, Carleton borrows money when it builds buildings. The college is still paying down the debt it incurred when building the LDC 13 years ago. It also pays for the electric and gas utilities that are needed and performs all of the maintenance needed to keep the equipment in working order.

Students often ask what happens to the “extra money” that remains if they don’t eat all of their meals or use all of their dining dollars.

As stated earlier, the college doesn’t pay the dining provider based on the number of meals eaten during the week, but only on the number of students on each meal plan that week. If one or more students don’t eat all of their meals that week, the college doesn’t get to deduct any dollars from the Bon Appétit invoice for those missed meals. Missed meals are an assumed part of the calculus of meal plans and are factored into the pricing from the beginning. Similarly, all of the fixed costs mentioned above that the college absorbs are constant regardless of the number of students on meal plans the number of students in attendance for any given meal period.

Meals and dining dollars only have relevance in the time period that has been designated for a given meal plan feature. Even with the missed meal factor in the conversation, any student that wishes to eat 100% of the meals in a given week can do so. After that week is over, however, any meals remaining simply disappear. They no longer exist. The same is true for dining dollars, although dining dollars aren’t governed by week, but by term. Any given student has the right to spend 100% of the dining dollars contained in the meal plan until the term is over. Dining dollars remaining after the term is over have no intrinsic value.

Meal plans can be constructed to allow unclaimed features to carry-over from week-to-week, but it’s more expensive to do that. That’s not what we have at Carleton. Carleton’s meal plans are more like club memberships than they are like bank accounts. They exist within a prescribed time frame and have a set of features governed by a set of rules. If a person has a monthly membership at a fitness center, but doesn’t go to the gym for 5 days one month, that person doesn’t get a refund for the 5 days that were missed. Likewise, when the time period is over for a meal plan week the benefits of the plan (the meals for that week) stop. They aren’t transferred to some sort of reserve where they continue to be available. When the time period for the entire meal plan is over, all of the benefits of the meal plan cease. There are no residual benefits.

If Carleton chose to alter existing meal plans, Bon Appétit would adjust their pricing to cover their costs for the new plans. Those costs could go up or down depending on the features of the plans. However, the college’s costs for maintaining the facilities wouldn’t be reduced unless the square footage used for dining was reduced, an outcome that isn’t feasible in the foreseeable future. As long as enrollment stays at current levels, the college needs every square inch of available dining space to provide an appropriate dining experience for the student body.