Coming back from winter break, students were met by longer lines and lower prices in the Usdan Marketplace. While the point allocation system has been revamped and the café options expanded, the Marketplace is still cramped by logistical problems.
The most significant of these changes was allowing students to purchase “all-you-care-to-eat” meals with points, halving the cost of eating a filling and healthy lunch or breakfast.
According to an e-mail sent by Bon Appétit Regional District Manager Delmar Crim, this change will “provide maximum flexibility in the meal plan to allocate your meals and points depending on your specific dining habits.”
However, the lowered prices may not be quite low enough for juniors and seniors on the all-points plan. Buying lunch at $7.50 and dinner at $9.25 every day, and nothing else, would bring a students balance to zero at roughly the time reading week starts.
While upperclassmen are unlikely to eat all their meals at Usdan, most locations have comparable dining costs.
Crim points to the expanded café selection as the solution to this problem.
“[The new offerings] will take care of most of the needs of the students,” he said.
Some upperclassmen have hedged their bets, however, and switched to the 8-meal plan, where, as Matt Bush ’09 notes, a shrewd use of points can allow a full two meals a day, with $2.06 worth of points to spare.
Despite any new problems, it is undeniable that all students can now get more food at a lower price. This is an important change, says Dining Committee Co-Chair Becky Weiss ’10.
“[Last semester] it was difficult for students to get a balanced meal unless they spent an exorbitant amount of points,” she said.
There are still a few kinks, however. The promised burrito station has not yet materialized, and the lunchtime lines have not been eliminated. At the same time, the addition of buffalo wings as a regular item has been received favorably, and, with both dining rooms full at lunch, it is clear that Bon Appétit has made a key change.
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