On Thursday, Feb. 13, Trinity Dining sent out an email to students outlining changes to the meal plans for the 2025-2026 school year. The changes included raising prices, lowering the overall amount of Bonus Bucks available on each plan and changing the meal swipe system to a “per week” basis.

Removal of the Junior/Senior Meal Plan:
Most notably, Chartwells has removed the Flex Junior/Senior meal plan. Under Aramark, this plan gave junior and senior students living on-campus and off-campus $2,364 in Bonus Bucks and no meal swipes to spend each semester. Chartwells has suggested the Bronze plan as a replacement for on-campus students. LeeRoy’s Choice, the remaining Bonus Bucks only meal plan, offers $500 Bonus Bucks as opposed to $2,364 with the Junior/Senior meal plan and is only available to students living off-campus or in CityVista. However, this plan costs $2,017.78 less than the junior/senior meal plan.

Breakdown of meal plans:
Though the names are different, the other meal plans are comparable to previous years’. There are three on-campus options — Bronze, Silver and Maroon Unlimited — and three off-campus options — Tiger 50, Tiger 75 and Tiger 100 — compared to Flex 200, Flex 240 and Flex Unlimited (on-campus) and Commuter 350, Commuter 500 and CampusWide Meal Plan (off-campus).
On-campus:
For the on-campus meal plans, applicable to first-years, sophomores and juniors not living in CityVista, the prices have increased by $59.29, $177.53 and $116.91 respectively.
In addition to the raise in prices, Trinity Dining has also implemented changes to each of the plans. They have changed the meal swipe system from a “per semester” to a “per week” one. With around 18 weeks in a semester (give or take), this means that students have four more meal swipes per week with the Bronze plan as opposed to the Flex 200 plan and six more with the Silver as opposed to Flex 240.
Off-campus:
For off-campus meal plans, they have increased by $270.62, $324.75 and $597.54 respectively. Trinity Dining added meal swipes (35 and 50 per semester) to the Tiger 50 and Tiger 100 meal plans, and they increased the number of meal swipes for the CampusWide-comparable meal plan from 35 to 100 per semester with Tiger 100.
However, Chartwells has lowered the number of Bonus Bucks offered to students with the Bronze, Silver, Tiger 50 and Tiger 75 meal plans. On average, Dining lowered them by $231.25 across all four plans. Trinity Dining has increased the number of Bonus Bucks offered for the Maroon Unlimited and Tiger 100 meal plans, though, by $200 and $50, respectively.

Other changes:
Beyond the meal swipe and Bonus Bucks changes, Chartwells has increased the meal swipe exchange rate by $0.49 and allowed students to use up to 10 meal swipes (with Maroon Unlimited) for guests as opposed to paying for their meals with Bonus Bucks or an extra swipe. They’ve also introduced “Ozzi Boxes,” take-out boxes from Mabee Dining Hall that are comparable to the token system currently in place. In the future, they are opening all Mabee meal stations during the weekends rather than one or two and are planning “movie nights, cultural events, and student organization collaborations,” as they stated in their email.

Student reactions:

Students expressed their thoughts on the meal plan changes in Coates Student Center earlier this week. Across the board, all of the students interviewed had negative reactions to the alterations. Miguel Otero, junior human resource management major and current residential assistant, said that he thinks it will negatively impact people.

“Whether [students living on campus] are fulfilling the three year requirement or if they’re a part of Residential Life, they’re going to have to be forced to buy a raised price meal plan,” Otero said. “I understand why they’re trying to get people to go to Mabee, but I feel like putting limits on how many swipes you can do in a certain time frame is making it a little bit disingenuous in a lot of ways … It’s really money hungry.”

Ashley Mattke, sophomore biology major, expressed similar sentiments.

“At first I was scared, because I swipe my boyfriend in a lot and he doesn’t go here, so I swipe twice when I go to the dining hall. But then I was like, ‘Wait, I’m not going to be able to now,’” Mattke said. “But they did introduce guest swipes, so I guess that made me feel a little better, but I’m still kind of worried I might use my meal swipes too much during the week and run out by the end of the week or something.”

Mattke said that she would still stick to her initial plan of buying the cheapest option. However, Otero and Lawson Hayes, junior biochemistry and molecular biology major, are diverting from the meal plans.

“My original plan was to continue working as a RA, but I’m looking at these cost options, and they’re not feasible for me, because the point of becoming an RA is to get free housing,” Otero said. “But I’m forced to live on campus, so I’m forced to get a meal plan, so I feel that with raised prices there’s less incentive for me.”

Similarly, Hayes stated that he would have gotten the junior/senior meal plan next year, but now, he is not purchasing one.

“I probably won’t. The junior/senior meal plan sounded like a really good idea for me,” Hayes said. “My senior year, that meal plan with just Bonus Bucks would’ve been a lot better. I think I just won’t bother buying a new one next semester, because I plan on living in an apartment.”

In response to how the changes impacted him, Hayes touched on the efforts to move students toward Mabee.

“I do think that Mabee needs improvement. I’ll go there whenever I don’t feel like going shopping … but a lot of times I’ve been to Mabee and haven’t even found food that I can eat,” Hayes said. “I like Coates being as developed as it is. There’s a lot of people who come here during lunch, and I don’t think we should pull our attention away from it.”

Chartwells’ Response:

Chartwells responded to the changes to their meal plans. According to them, this was the first year their contract allowed them to alter the meal plans, and they worked alongside Trinity and a third-party consultant to initiate the changes. Chase Taylor, resident district manager of Trinity Dining, who was not involved in creating the new prices, said Trinity Dining received feedback from student surveys and that the consultant hosted focus groups to find places to improve. 

From the surveys, focus groups and collaboration with the school, Trinity Dining decided that it needed to put the focus on Mabee Dining Hall. As Taylor described, Trinity Dining intends to make Mabee more like a “living room” than just a dining hall.

“This is such a big dining hall for such a smaller campus, that the focus should be on the dining hall,” Taylor said. “We want people to come out here and just hang out, not necessarily just come down for a meal and go. We’re just trying to change the whole vibe.”

Taylor said that this was the reason behind the change to fewer Bonus Bucks. He also stated that the meal swipes moved from a “per semester” to a “per week” basis to prevent students from running out of meal swipes. 

“A lot of students had 75 swipes left at the end of the semester,” Taylor said. “We’re hoping that with the new meal swipe by week, it’s just going to really add more balance and predictability every week.”

Trinity Dining also introduced guest swipes and the 30-minute cooldown period between each swipe to take the pressure off of students to swipe in their friends.

“A lot of that stems back to students being forced and pressured into swiping their friends or swiping a friend of a friend, so that’s why we implemented those guest meals as well,” Taylor said.

In response to the students who expressed frustration with the removal of the junior/senior meal plan, Taylor suggested the Bronze Plan as a substitute.

 “If you were spending eight dollars of Bonus Bucks for lunch every day anyway, now you just use a meal swipe [exchange] instead,” Taylor said. “So it’s not like you’re technically not able to get the same type of food.”

One student also expressed confusion as to why Trinity Dining was moving attention away from Coates. To this, Taylor said that only about 50 students were eating at Legends during the evenings and that this would not result in students straying from Coates.

“If everyone is eating their one meal swipe at lunch anyway, they can still eat it up in retail, so I don’t really see a dip in the operations at Coates at all,” Taylor said. “It’s just a different form of payment that they’re using instead.”

For students like Otero, who are considering living off-campus due to the raised prices, Taylor encouraged getting LeeRoy’s Choice or simply coming to eat at Mabee anyway.

“Just because they have LeeRoy’s Choice or they have a credit card, we still want to bring them back on campus,” Taylor said. “We hope that having a fun new feel in the dining hall and more of a hang out spot, people will want to come down here for lunch or for dinner as well.”

In terms of how Trinity Dining will make Mabee more of a “hang out spot,” Kristin Alderete, marketing manager of Chartwells, said that they want to collaborate with students more. This includes replicating the Swig drinks and Redbull Fusions, hosting more activities in the glass room, holding themed events like movie nights with a popcorn station and having decorations and themed food for holidays.

“Our goal is not just to put out flashy events, but to have that plus back it up with the good food based off of feedback from the students,” Alderete said.

Taylor said they take student feedback seriously, and Trinity Dining has added cuisine like pho, wings and barbeque based on past feedback. To showcase their changes, they are hosting an open house for students on March 20. They also have many methods for students to provide feedback, including a survey that goes out every fall, a text-to-chat number (830-465-3669) and email ([email protected]). However, Taylor encouraged students to come and talk to the managers and supervisors about their wants and needs in dining most.

“If we can make it happen, we will most certainly make it happen,” Taylor said.

*Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that these changes will apply to the 2024-2025 academic year. They will apply to the 2025-2026 academic year.