Valentine is once again offering the Lunch and Dinner Plan for upperclassmen that desire a little more choice in their dining habits. It’s a pretty simple plan – instead of access to breakfast, you get $100 of “Bonus Bucks” to be used at Val, Schwemm’s, the Underground Bakery (whatever that is), Catering, or any of the vending machines. You still get unlimited lunch and dinner.
I routinely hear 3 objections to the Lunch and Dinner Plan:
- The full meal plan at Amherst is expensive. $100 pales in comparison to what we pay for all three meals. $100 is not fair compensation for a 33% decrease in meals, especially as it’s not in the form of cash but rather as a food credit.
- $100 doesn’t go very far at Schwemm’s, the likeliest or most convenient place to use Bonus Bucks.
- Unlike AC Dollars, Bonus Bucks don’t carry over from semester to semester.
These three criticisms are all valid. $100 isn’t much at all when compared to the overall cost of the meal plan. Schwemm’s is overpriced (you’d be much better off getting a foot-long at Subway). And you’ll inevitably mismanage the Bonus Bucks and either run out too soon or end up with a lot left the last week of school.
But I choose to look at it a different way. The key thing to remember is that you can use your Bonus Bucks to buy breakfast at Val. The discounted breakfast price under Bonus Bucks or AC Dollars is $3. Given that it’s all-you-can-eat, this is actually a very reasonable price.
Counting Finals week – but excluding Thanksgiving – the semester has 13 weeks after Add-Drop, the date when a student opting to join the Lunch and Dinner Plan would lose breakfast.
From here, it’s really a matter of simple arithmetic.
For a student who will go to breakfast 1 time per week, he can use his Bonus Bucks to buy breakfast 13 times, costing him $39 and leaving him with $61 to spend at Schwemm’s. This student should unambiguously choose the Lunch and Dinner plan.
For a student who will go to breakfast 2 times per week, he can use his Bonus Bucks to buy breakfast 26 times, costing him $78 and leaving him with $22 to spend at Schwemm’s. This student should unambiguously choose the Lunch and Dinner plan.
For a student who will go to breakfast 2.5 times per week, he can use his Bonus Bucks to buy breakfast 33 times, costing him $99 and leaving him with $1 to spend at Schwemm’s. This is our classic “wash” scenario – this student is essentially indifferent between the two options.
The student who plans to attend breakfast 3 or more times per week should under no circumstances get on the Lunch and Dinner plan.
Conclusion: if you plan on eating breakfast less than 2.5 times per week, you should elect to join the Lunch and Dinner plan.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Emily Moin (emoin09) // Sep 6, 2008 at 8:31 pm
I eat breakfast almost every weekday but barely go to Val on the weekends at all. I wish there were a plan for a certain number of meals per week instead of just automatically losing breakfast.
2 eandrews09 (eandrews09) // Sep 7, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Good points about it being a decent plan for those occasional val breakfast eaters. Still, you should also mention another source of discontent: that two years ago it was real cash that was reimbursed, but now it’s “bonus bucks” only. Just in principle alone that switchover made me a bit disgruntled. I mean, here we were already with a meager set of meal plan options, and then they decided to quietly make it slightly worse to wring out a few more bucks–perhaps I’m being absurd, but it did feel a bit cheap.
Professor Nicholson summed up Val pretty well methinks, saying, “It’s about what one would expect from a monopoly.” Gotta love the econ humor.
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