Guest Mealz 4 Realz

Some useful information (if a bit late) that it seems most people were unaware of and that's conspicuously absent from BA's dining service overview. According to Dean Rick Culliton, you can now use two meals per semester as guest meals. That's about 103 fewer meals than you should be able to use to treat others, but as upperclassmen undoubtedly recall, there were no guest meals at all last year. So for those of you who are out of points, despair not!

On a related note, hopefully I'm not the only one who finds it moderately disturbing (on multiple counts) that this information was never shared with us and that I was only able to find it out through an e-mail on the parents' listserv...

[EDIT] Looks like this was a bit premature. According to Dean Rick (comment #11), this was something that was discussed by the Dining Committee but ultimately not implemented.

[edit by Ben - 1:30 pm 12/12]

Updated Points Spreadsheet

I've updated the points spreadsheet for this fall.

For those of you who are new to this, the points spreadsheet is a way to tell if you're spending too many or too few points to end the semester with a zero balance. You can also use it to ration out your remaining points from now to the rest of the semester.

New this year is that everything you can do with points, you can also do with meals!

The way it works to track your "ideal" usage since the beginning of the semester: Enter the number of points and meals that correspond to your meal plan in the two boxed cells. Leave the "enter the current date" field alone.

To track your "real" usage based on what you have right now, enter your current point and meal balances in the two boxed cells, and today's date in the cell next to "enter the current date."

Note that for those of you using the "ideal" option, you may want to deduct your starting point value for certain large, initial purchases, like the Fruit and Veggie co-op, or a meal contract at the S&C, or something.

Also, the spreadsheet assumes that you use the same number of meals each day of the week, but rounds all the totals to whole numbers.

Post comments with bugs, problems, questions or whatever.

It's official: new meal plan

E-mails were just sent out informing us about the new meal plan we hinted at earlier. Here's the official word:

Here is a summary of the meal plan information for 2008-09:

The following plans are available to freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors:

• Block 210 MEALS/$100 POINTS PER SEMESTER (averages 14 meals per week)
• Block 165 MEALS/$275 POINTS PER SEMESTER (averages 11 meals per week)
• Block 135 MEALS/$475 POINTS PER SEMESTER (averages 9 meals per week)
• Block 285 MEALS/$50 POINTS PER SEMESTER (averages 19 meals per week) (with an additional cost of $300 per semester)
  

The following plan is only available to sophomores, juniors or seniors:

• Block 105 MEALS/$675 POINTS PER SEMESTER (averages 7 meals per week)

The following plan is only available to juniors and seniors:

• ALL DECLINING BALANCE POINTS / $1,478 POINTS PER SEMESTER

Another note made in the e-mail concerned Summerfields:

In addition to the changes in the meal plans, Bon Appetit will be introducing a new menu at Summerfields which will include a variety of grill items, quesadillas, wraps, soups and salads which will be available as a meal or by using points. More information will follow on this over the summer.

I'm going to try to reserve judgment until we get more info, but I'm concerned; I hope that they don't change the restaurant-feel of the place (its primary appeal) to make it more cafeteria-like, and that "grill items, quesadillas, wraps, soups and salads" aren't all it's going to have to offer.

Next year's "Meal Plan Selection" options?

Ben Cohen '10 tips in that if you check your E-Portfolio, there's a link to a "Meal Plan Selection" option. The choices seem to be:

• Block 105 Meals / 675 Points
• block 135 Meals / 475 Points
• Block 165 Meals / 275 Points
• Block 210 Meals / 100 Points
• Block 285 Meals / 50 Points
  
• All Declining Balance Plan - 0 Meals /1478 Points

Note that there's an additional fee for selecting the 285 Meal plan.
No word yet on whether this is officially what's going to be happening in the fall or just a bug in our portfolios.

Cohen also points out:

For the sake of comparison, Aramark's block meal plan was 165 meals/165 points (110 fewer than BA's 165-meal plan), which I believe amounted to about 11 meals a IIRC (I usually ate at Davenport 3 times a week, and I didn't run out of meals). I figured this could be useful...

I'm hungry

Bon Appetit has apparently decided to listen to us and make breakfast and lunch "All You Care to Eat." This means that meals will now be usable for lunch and dinner at the Usdan Marketplace. Breakfast will be priced at $5.50, and lunch at $7.50 (Dinner stays at $9.25). This also apparently means that the Cafe downstairs will offer a bit more variety in the way of food.

Also, Bon Appetit is asking everyone to return all of the dishes and silverware we've borrowed throughout the semester in an effort to reduce the quantity of disposable plastic utensils in an event they're calling 'Plate Amnesty Week'. There should be bins scattered around dorm halls and near the entrance to the Marketplace from the 17th to the 21st (right now).

Spring Points Spreadsheet

In the midst of Bon Appetit's "power of the spoon" campaign, I have updated the points spreadsheet for the spring semester.  Suprisingly, I found that it is theoretically possible to eat 14 meals a week at Usdan and not run out of points.  In fact, you'll have a whopping $2.05 per week to spend on late night, cereal for breakfast at weshop, yummy drinks at pi cafe, and other essentials.

A disclaimer: I am a math major, so I've made this rather complicated, but I've tried to also make it super user-friendly.  Please, give me suggestions on how to improve it.

To do the magic 14-meals-at-usdan, you sign up for the 8-meals plan, pay for 7 dinners and 1 brunch a week with meals, and all the other lunches and one brunch with points.  This will require a lot of telling the cashier how you want to pay for your meal, because otherwise you'll spend your meals early in the week on lunch and end up paying for the more expensive dinners with points.  

As far as the spreadsheet, there are quite a few options, not all of which are necessary to use.  The only thing you really have to do is put in your starting number of points in the appropriate cell.  As last semester, the starting point values for each meal plan are listed on the right.  

If you want to get into some fancier calculations, you can tell the spreadsheet that you want to keep spending points at the same rate over spring break (the default is to assume that you don't spend any), or you can tell it how many meals per week you want to buy with points, and it'll tell you how much you can afford to spend on each meal.  If it's halfway through the semester and you want to figure out how to ration your remaining points, just change the date at the top of the spreadsheet.  

At any rate, the only things you should edit are the cells that are outlined in black.  Everything else will adjust itself automagically.  

And yes, I do realize that this is a bit early; I plan on re-posting it next semester.  

PS: It's really gross outside.  See tags.

PPS: already I've encountered a problem.  If you try to adjust the date and don't specify a year, then it assumes that you're talking about 2007, and then acts all weird.  So make sure to put in a year, until 2008 starts, when this will no longer be a problem.

Salutations and Summerfields

To start I'd just like to say hello, and that I hope to become at least a semi-active poster here. (Although classes start tomorrow, and I have absolutely no clue what that's going to be like and how much time that's going to consume.) Anyway, I don't have a whole lot to say about myself, so I'll move on to my main topic now: Summerfields.

I'm not sure how many people have actually eaten there yet, but I ate dinner last night and lunch today there, and I have to say I'm quite disappointed. Living in the Butts, Usdan is at least a 5 minute walk, so I was really looking forward to having Summerfields open. All I have to do to get to Summerfields is walk down a hallway and 19 stairs. I was really expecting it to be so much better than it actually is.

I've been very pleased overall with the quality of the food in Usdan. The food in Summerfields that I've eaten has been, if anything, worse. And the portions are tiny. Last night I had a piece of chicken that was about half the size of a normal chicken breast--I usually eat more than one of those--and some potatoes. Today I had half a sub--which was 99% bread--and some awful sweet potato fries. You can get all you can eat salad and soups (even during lunch), but you end up eating just as much salad as actual meal to make up for the amount of food they give you. And the salad selections are very limited. They don't have a lot toppings that are pretty standard and common (peppers, for instance). After even a few days eating there, I'm going to be pretty tired of salad.

I could live with all of this if Summerfields was still open late. But it's not even open after dinner. It closes at 7! I am not going to be walking across campus to Usdan in the middle of the night. I'm quite willing to give Bon Appetite a chance, but to me it seems as if they have completely abandoned Summerfields to cut costs--paring it down to the bare minimum they can get away with--and I'm very unhappy about it.