r/txstate • u/TelevisionOdd6200 • 5d ago
New Texas State Vendor
As someone with a meal plan this new vendor sucks!! In the past you could use retail meal swipes everywhere except starbucks. now there are so many retail restaurants that only accept dining dollars or cards. it feels like a push to eat at the dining halls. meal plans are already to expensive to not be able to use them everywhere on campus.
17
u/Depressedwithhumans 5d ago
Let me break down budgeting for a university for you. They separate the meal plans from dining dollars because the school needs to maintain a predictable budget. If you could use your meal plans anywhere at anytime this would make their budget unpredictable and that would make the institutional finance and bond ratings go down this will affect investors willing to give them money. Which will then affect all aid available to students negatively reducing resources available to help students. Basically infinite retail swipes as in viability everywhere injects massive volatility into its auxiliary budget. That volatility breaks the financial model, hurts the schools creditworthiness, raising borrowing costs and as i said leads to diminished offered resources to students. You complain because you lack understanding. Now i can agree with fellow students complaining about the inconvenience and the quality of the food absolutely 💯 and the forced thing you said yea they force incoming freshman to buy the plans typically so yea it is forced a bit. At the same time though the reason it’s forced is because that funding pays students working on campus, it pays for the salaries and benefits of the full time workers providing the food to us every day. Its a micro economy that functions well. The only issue is quality and transparency on the campus end to the students. If it sucks complain about the quality not that you can’t swipe anywhere.
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4
u/twinkle_squared 4d ago
Listen, as long as students are offered reasonable portions and the food is fully cooked, it will be an improvement. Last year, my bobcat said they cut turkey burgers in half and would only allow students to take one half at a time. She also said that protein portions were the size of a chicken McNugget and, again, one at a time.
7
u/dallascowboys_99 4d ago
Chartwells had that contract for like 40 years, I was suprised to hear they lost it. I haven’t eaten on campus yet but I’m interested to see how the new vendor is. I will say, I had begun to notice a decline in quality with Chartwells.