“UT dining makes changes for upcoming year”

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UT dining makes changes for upcoming year Posted: 26 Jul 2010 05:05 PM PDT Robby ODaniel - Editor Tuesday, July 27, 2010 issue Click here to print Students do not want more dining dollars. They would like to use their meal plans everywhere on campus. UT dining marketing director Mary Leslie Patterson said this was what students said in their feedback to UT dining. And UT dining listened. Now meal equivalency is available at all the national brands ��places like the Rocky Top Cafe restaurants ��for dinner meal equivalency. Previously meal equivalency was only available at Sbarro in Rocky Top. Now one can go to all the locations � Sbarro, Petro�s, Chick-fil-A and Subway ��and use his or her $4.55 meal equivalency in any way. It essentially makes the unlimited meal plan the same as 20 meal equivalencies a week on campus ��breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week, except for Saturday dinner. Though the Rocky Top locations� meal equivalency is only for dinner, Patterson said several national brands have meal equivalency at other times. Among those, IHOP has it for breakfast, and KFC Express and Quiznos have it for lunch. In addition, students can eat dinner later than the previous semester. Locations on campus like Quiznos at Andy�s Pantry and Vol Hall, KFC Express, Starbucks and Subway have meal equivalency for dinner now until 8 p.m., instead of the previous 7:30 p.m. Rocky Top Cafe still closes at 7 p.m. because the University Center, which houses Rocky Top, closes at 7 p.m. Guest meals Campus meal plans will also now offer five free guest meals, so students can bring a guest to eat and pay for them five times per semester. Patterson said it was largely a response to, again, what students wanted. Previously some students would swipe twice in order to pay for a companion, but while she said this was not a problem, this should not be happening. �A student should only use their meal plan for themselves and not feeding their buddies,� she said. �Other campuses have guest meals, and the students requested it. They wanted to be able to bring a friend.� The five free guest meals is available on all residential and apartment meal plans except the Varsity Inn plan, and students who do not wish to use the guest meals can use them for themselves. �On the Any Ten plan, if you wanted to use one of the extra meals that week, you could use it,� she said. Meal plan costs Meal plans themselves have gone up at a rate of 3-percent this year. The most expensive residential plan ��the Vol Block plan ��costs $1,658 per semester now. Meanwhile, the apartment meal plans cost $1,034 per semester. She said the raises in price were comparable to recent years. In 2007, there was no increase from one year to the next, and last year, Patterson said the change was also right around three percent. �We look at the SEC schools and compare our meal plan prices,� she said. In that comparison, she said UT looks favorable. �UT meal plans fall in the bottom half as far as expense,� she said. �When you look at some other schools � some are even smaller than we are and are still more expensive. So we�ve been able to offer a lot and still keep them inexpensive.� Popularity of meal plans Patterson said UT dining constantly looks at which plans are most popular with which students. She said, in terms of popularity, the unlimited meal plan was the most popular. It was followed by Any Ten, Unlimited Plus and Any Eight in that order. Freshmen males prefer the unlimited plans. �The access to Presidential (Court) is right there on the unlimited plan,� she said. �What we find with freshmen is that they tend to eat together in large groups. ... With the unlimited plan, they can come in and snack, come in and eat.� She said it was also popular for the same reason with people in Morrill Hall because of the learning communities. However Patterson said a lot of females shifted to the Any Eight residential meal plan in their second semester. And with sophomores, juniors and seniors, the Any Five Apartment Meal Plan and the Any Eight Apartment Meal Plan are neck and neck, followed by the Apartment Dining Dollar Plan. �What students are telling us about the apartment plans is they find themselves saving more money with the meal plan rather than just running the debit card over and over, especially residents on campus because they don�t have to pay sales tax,� she said. Other changes A new fraternity meal plan will become available this year. Patterson said the Interfraternity Council president talked to UT dining, saying fraternities were interested in a specially made meal plan. �So if you�re a student living in Fraternity Park, then the meal plan available to them (is) $350 per semester, four meals per week, and you can add dining dollars to it,� Patterson said. In addition, a new coupon book is being made for UT dining, which Patterson estimates will have about 20 to 30 coupons in it. And the book will have discounts on the national brands on campus, not just dining halls. Patterson said the book, which is free when a student buys the commuter meal plan, was designed to get more commuters to eat on campus. Other changes include making the Tortilla Fresca ��the most popular part of the Smokey�s food court ��two-sided, due to high demand. So now two different lines will process student orders. Another thing students asked for that is coming to UT dining this fall is soft-serve ice cream at Presidential Court and milkshakes at Chick-fil-A. Plus catering will be available at the national brands on campus, so students, faculty and staff can order trays of food to cater their events or gatherings. Patterson said students, faculty and staff had demanded catering. �They�ve been using Quiznos a lot in the past, and McAllister�s, but now we can move forward with Subway and Chick-fil-A,� she said. Student health Patterson said one resource that not many know about, yet is used widely, is Student Nutrition Educator Brittany Ellis. Ellis works in conjunction with the Student Health Center, and the center refers students with dietary restrictions to her. �We always have that position, and it�s a great resource,� she said. �She gets a lot of calls from faculty, staff and students.� Patterson said she is getting a lot of students with food allergies lately. �We go to great length to assure that these students can eat on campus, so we�ll cook separate meals for them.� Also involving health, there will be a health identification program in dining locations in time for the fall, which will better identify food for their contents. On the horizon Patterson said UT dining is looking at adding another location to Volunteer Hall. �Hopefully it�ll be coming on line, I would say, late fall semester,� she said. �And we don�t have a name for it yet.� Business Manager for Finance and Administration Brian Browning said it will be a restaurant that offers Southern-style food and accepts meal plan. �The university is always looking for ways that we can maximize the efficiency and offerings for the students in terms of dining services,� Browning said. He said UT dining changes � specifically making meal equivalency available for national brands � make meal plans more appealing and beneficial to students. Students in the past would confuse or forget which campus locations offered meal plan when, he said. �This will hopefully alleviate that confusion,� he said. Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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