My D will be a Freshman this Fall and she is trying to decide what meal plan will make most sense for her. We are way OOS so she will be on campus until Thanksgiving break. She’s a distance runner (not on team though) so she eats more than you might expect from a 5’4" girl.
Also, she considers Starbucks to be part of the food pyramid which, of course, is not covered by any meal plan as I far as we can tell.
Any advise? Thanks!
Luckily we have several Starbucks locations on campus:
Health Science Center
Levin College of Law
Library West
Marston Science Library
Reitz Union
The Hub
Norman Hall (Coming 2020)
What is it with the Gator Nation and Starbucks? 
My son had the meal plan, but looking back, it would have made more sense to have passed on the plan and added money to his debit card. He simply didn’t use it enough (no more than 2 meals a day), and he preferred eating at the Reitz Union or off campus.
By the way, UF has an active Florida Running Club on campus. If she still wants to run and even compete (at the club level), she may want to check them out. You can find them on facebook.
Shoot - I thought they told us 5 Starbucks when we toured last Summer … 7 is pretty awesome! The campus does have a lot of energy!
@Gator88NE Do you know if you can change meal plan mid semester or mid year? If so, I agree I don’t imagine D will eat in dining hall more than once daily.
Pretty sure D is planning to check out running club. Her goal is to start training for 10K or 1/2 marathons, but starting off with cross country in the Fall would be a great way to meet people.
Thanks.
When we had it (two years ago), we had the option of changing it, during the semester, to a declining balance.
https://gatordining.com/mealplans/faqs/
Looks like you have to make the change during the grace period. You can try out a standard plan in the Fall, and then switch to a declining plan in the spring (during the spring grace period).
The only thing that I have to add is that the declining balance doesn’t “expire.” My daughter lived at Lakeside, which is apartment style and doesn’t have any food options, but we gave her a declining balance card and she barely spent any of it. Thankfully, it carried over to the next semester and she had it for occasional snacks on campus.
D will be in Broward and I would like to encourage her to eat at least a few times a week at dining hall (not sure why I want this, just seems like the thing to do).
Maybe I’ll start her with 10 meals/week +flex dollars … Are flex dollars different than declining balance?
Last night I skimmed dining link you sent, but I’ll read more closely today. I guess we’ll learn more when she attends Preview next month
Thanks for your input.
@houndmom You will get plenty of information at Preview and there will be students hired by Gator Dining around every corner to talk with you about it. Remember they are hired by Gator Dining, so take their opinions with that in mind.
They usually offer specials (additional Flex $) if you sign up at Preview and you will have the opportunity to eat at Broward one evening. (Word is that the food is much better in the Summer while Preview is happening.)
They set the pricing so it usually makes sense to go with the full access plan, unless you know that the student will not eat 2 meals per day on campus at the locations that accept the plan. Take note that some of the restaurants only accept Flex $ (Chic-fil-a and some others) and not a meal swipe. Other locations give you a certain $ amount towards a meal for a meal swipe that may not cover the full cost of the meal at those locations.
Let’s look at it using actual numbers and see how much difference there is.
First, let’s look at the big eater who is going to eat 3 meals a day every single day. For purposes of this analysis, I have excluded flex bucks as my assumption is that these get spent during the semester for coffee/icecreams, etc.
There are 16 weeks in a semester so there are 336 possible meals if you assume 7 days a week and never miss a single meal. This student could either choose to buy the meal plan or to pay each time they visit the cafeteria. The price of the cafeteria is $6.99 breakfast, $8.49 lunch and $8.99 dinner which averages to $8.16 per meal.
The Open access meal plan is $2,300 less $450 in flex bucks or $1,850 for the cafeteria. Buying all those meals would cost $2,741, which means that the savings are $891. Once a student starts to miss meals, this saving is eaten into. A student that misses 1 meal a week would realize $130 less in savings( 16 * $8.16 average). Given this, the breakeven is about 14 meals per week and below 14 meals per week, it cost more to have a meal plan. A student that only eats an average of 10 meals per week will lose about $500 on the meal plan.
For a smaller eater, I assume that that breakfast will be skipped every day and that the 10 meals per week plan will be selected. This meal plan cost $1,765 per semester less $550 in flex bucks or $1,125. Given the same 16 weeks, there are 160 possible meals in total. A student that eats every single meal will realize a savings of $183. A student that misses one meal per week would realize $140 less in savings (16 * $8.74 average). The break-even is between 8 and 9 meals a week. A student that only eats an average of 5 meals per week will lose about $500 on the meal plan.
The above analysis assumes that the meals lost are simply not eaten but the reality is that the student often prefers Chipotle, a slice of pizza, kababs or other “cheap eats”. If you factor in the additional spending the meal plan looks even worse from an economic standpoint.
In summary, a meal plan converts real money into a food club member. Go often enough and you can make it work but for the majority of students, the meal plan is simply not a good deal. My recommendation is to take the cost of the big eater plan ($2,300) and break it down into 16 weeks of payments or $143.75 per week and deposit it into the students account every Thursday and let the student figure out how to most efficiently and effectively spend those dollars every week. My guess is that they will figure out places to eat that they really like and find a place that has $6 taco Tuesdays. They will also splurge and go out with friends and spend $30 on Sushi but those times will need to be infrequent as the budget just does not allow too many splurges.
If your student blows all of their money and calls you on Monday begging for more money? Agree that you will send them as much as they need but that you will reduce the following weeks by 125% said amount.
@FlaParent Thank you for taking the time to break that down. I need to find a time when I have D’s attention to figure out what to do. Based on everyone’s advise, I believe she needs the 10 meal/week plan at most. Although she may like the freedom she would have if we just set up a declining balance for her to manage.
@fl1234 good reminder about the “sell” I kinda remember that when I took my S14 to his orientation at a different big U. Of course, it was me that was enticed by the “buy now, get additional Flex dollars …” promotion.
@FlaParent Awesome work. Very helpful.
@FlaParent Thanks. That’s very informative. Although I worry that my daughter won’t make full use of it, we’ve pretty much decided to go with the full 21-meals a week plan, at least for the first semester. Even if she doesn’t eat three meals a day in a dining hall, I hope that she’ll eat there at least twice a day and use the option to spend up to $6.50/day at one of the select locations that permit daily swipes (which includes the Chomp It next to her dorm).