Dining cooks up new meal plans
Soda cost rises, new choices added to appease students craving variety
Lindsey Lewandowski
Issue date: 9/9/04 Section: Campus News
New meal plans offered
A topic that boiled to the surface in a series of dining service committee meetings last year was that students seemed to crave meal plans offering more flexibility, Sodexho General Manager Gary Prellwitz said. The university asked Sodexho support staff to devise new plans, which produced the new 7-meal plan, super 7-meal plan and 19-meal plan.
"Sodexho has a huge resource of talented people who do this professionally," Kilcrease said, adding there were focus groups, as well as other groups, working to develop the plans - from a group that works nationally to create plans to marketing students doing class research projects.
"We did use some of it to apply to meal plans," he said.
Prellwitz said the plans created in December were "tweaked" in January and presented to administration early spring semester. They tentatively approved the proposal, which was presented to the dining committee. The committee approved the plan, and student senators proceeded to communicate with students; posters were put up, an advertisement ran April 15 in The Spectator and plans were discussed at a session during freshman orientation.
"We really targeted that this year," he said. "We not only sent out brochures to students during orientation, but sent out a brochure prior to (students) leaving for the semester reminding them to sign up for meal plans online."
Student senators also sent students a brochure and letters telling them which meal plan they had chosen or been given by default; an iPod giveaway promotion was also arranged to remind students to choose meal plans online by Aug. 27.
In the past, students had chosen meal plans using a mail-in form, but since it no longer exists, Kilcrease encouraged students to utilize the Web site recently updated to accommodate the new plans.
Freshman Pakou Vang said she found the Web site easy to access and use; signing up for a meal plan only took her a minute or two.
A topic that boiled to the surface in a series of dining service committee meetings last year was that students seemed to crave meal plans offering more flexibility, Sodexho General Manager Gary Prellwitz said. The university asked Sodexho support staff to devise new plans, which produced the new 7-meal plan, super 7-meal plan and 19-meal plan.
"Sodexho has a huge resource of talented people who do this professionally," Kilcrease said, adding there were focus groups, as well as other groups, working to develop the plans - from a group that works nationally to create plans to marketing students doing class research projects.
"We did use some of it to apply to meal plans," he said.
Prellwitz said the plans created in December were "tweaked" in January and presented to administration early spring semester. They tentatively approved the proposal, which was presented to the dining committee. The committee approved the plan, and student senators proceeded to communicate with students; posters were put up, an advertisement ran April 15 in The Spectator and plans were discussed at a session during freshman orientation.
"We really targeted that this year," he said. "We not only sent out brochures to students during orientation, but sent out a brochure prior to (students) leaving for the semester reminding them to sign up for meal plans online."
Student senators also sent students a brochure and letters telling them which meal plan they had chosen or been given by default; an iPod giveaway promotion was also arranged to remind students to choose meal plans online by Aug. 27.
In the past, students had chosen meal plans using a mail-in form, but since it no longer exists, Kilcrease encouraged students to utilize the Web site recently updated to accommodate the new plans.
Freshman Pakou Vang said she found the Web site easy to access and use; signing up for a meal plan only took her a minute or two.