<p>Just curious to hear what people think about the new meal plan options.</p>
<p>I like seeing more choices, but I didn’t look too closely at them. I just let my guy pick what he wanted based upon what he knows he used this past year. I think he said he went with 150 (maybe 120) pass + $800 (maybe 900) in declining. Sorry I didn’t put his info into long term memory. He actually would have done more in declining except he is one who will be with the freshmen and wanted passes to be able to freely eat with them as he chose.</p>
<p>My son went with all declining. Not sure how he decided. What I would really like to see/hear about is how they would improve the food served since we have to pay for some type of plan. I understand the food is not great.</p>
<p>Looks like there’s more flexibility, so I’d say it’s an improvement. My guys will both have the smallest declining-only allowed and will grocery shop and cook most meals.</p>
<p>It seems that most students that can are choosing the smallest delcining plan. I think it is primarily due to the fact that with the initial plan the declining is not dollar for dollar, so they are trying to minimize the “loss”. Any money added later is dollar to dollar.</p>
<p>I am not sure that qualifies as an improvement.</p>
<p>Another common comment I have heard is concerning the quality of the food. That is very disappointing.</p>
<p>^^^ I have also heard the quality of the food could improve which would probably go a long way to making people feel better about the money being spent.</p>
<p>I have heard the food is really good at Cornell (like in the top 10 for colleges), which is only 2 hrs away, so it would be really great if UR would check into who they use for food service. </p>
<p>There is an article about how they went about doing the pricing. Basically the cost of overhead is about 20-25% spread out in some fashion on each plan more or less. </p>
<p>So the ones that are all declining plan shows that actual percent. For example, Plan A is about $2,043 of food and costs about $2,554 to purchase so 20% mark up.</p>
<p>Having eaten in a few places on campus, I don’t understand some of the criticism; the food was better than the typical US diet.</p>
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<p>My guy has never understood the criticism of the food - nor have we. There are plenty of offerings to choose from and it’s all you can eat at the dining halls. Perhaps it’s because we’ve visited colleges with “lesser” food. One can eat as healthy or unhealthy as they wish. From what he’s heard of complaints, more are wishing toward the unhealthy versions. Perhaps the reason we don’t mind it is that we tend toward the more healthy versions at home.</p>
<p>The dining isn’t a 4 star restaurant - or even home cooking - but for mass produced (feed an army) versions, we don’t consider it as bad as many on here (or there) say. I’ve chalked it up to everyone needing to complain about something… 
And again, perhaps Cornell is better (I haven’t been there in YEARS), but MANY colleges we visited were worse.</p>
<p>Cornell also has a school of agriculture and a large farming program (they have a dairy which supplies the milk for its ice cream store!). Rochester, even if it wanted to, doesn’t have the land to grow its own produce or sustain its own dairy.</p>
<p>That’s interesting Chevda. How neat they can grow some of their own food. </p>
<p>Look, I’m a “do not reinvent the wheel type of person”. To improve something, the best place to start is what others are doing and modify it to fit what needs/constraints exists. There is nothing wrong with looking for ways to make the food “Meliora” :)</p>
<p>Here is a list of the top 52 college food plans. UR is not on this list. </p>
<p>[Best</a> colleges for food in America | Fox News](<a href=“http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/09/25/best-colleges-for-food-in-america/]Best”>Best colleges for food in America | Fox News)</p>
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<p>Considering there are between 3000 - 4000 colleges in the US - they say they only did “more than 2000” so they left some out - this just means URoc isn’t in the top 2% for food (according to that ranking).</p>
<p>Their method is also a little “interesting:”</p>
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<p>I like healthy, local, and sustainable personally. The rest isn’t important to me. Most of the complaints my guy has heard are actually due to kids wanting less healthy “stuff” or “aspects” albeit those could make some thing tastier if that’s what one likes.</p>
<p>Has no one else eaten at colleges that were worse? Seriously? We sure have. Same stuff. Old stuff. Truly tasteless stuff. URoc we’ve always seen options that have been quite appealing (and tasted good) - even if not all the options are (for us).</p>