Whitman’s recent revamping of meal plans has created quite a stir. Some 50 students came to the recent Town Hall meeting to discuss their opinions of the changes and Treasurer/Chief Financial Officer Peter Harvey was there to explain and to listen.

“Over the past five years, the financial arrangements have become challenging for Bon Appetit. … About five years ago they were making in the four to five percent range, but that’s been steadily declining,” said Harvey. “In fact, last year they lost money, about $30,000, and they expect to lose the same amount, if not more, this year.”

Harvey said some of the factors contributing to Bon Appetit’s profit loss are Washington’s increase in the minimum wage, Bon Appetit’s use of locally grown and organic, sustainable foods, and the introduction of flex dollars when Reid Campus Center was built.

Bon Appetit’s recent use of local, organic foods, while encouraged by the students is, “frankly, more expensive,” said Harvey.

With Dean of Students Chuck Cleveland, Harvey told Bon Appetit that Whitman would help raise the food service’s earnings back to a profitable level.

“We wouldn’t get there all in one year, but we wanted to work with them over the course of a few years. We wanted alternatives to help make that happen that were not only reliant on raising student’s fees,” said Harvey.

The current meal plans are causing Bon Appetit to lose money because of a measure in the business model called the “Lost Meal Factor.”

“When they create these plans, they know full and well that not all students will use all their meals … it’s called the Lost Meal Factor,” said Harvey.

The Lost Meal Factor used to be about 30 percent, which Harvey said was too high. Whitman wanted to give more value back to students, so they implemented the A, B and C meal plan choices familiar to the student body today.

But the efforts to correct the Lost Meal Factor worked too well. “The Lost Meal Factor went down to five to 10 percent. Quite honestly, it went a lot further than we expected .… Students say ‘I bought those meals, I should be able to use them.’ And I totally get that, but the pricing didn’t assume that they would eat them all.”

“The culture of the students has changed since they realized that it [multiple swiping] was available. And that culture has evolved to giving those meals to off-campus students who are not on a meal plan. That was not the intent,” said Harvey.

As a result, multiple swiping has been banned. However, students may still use flex dollars to pay for guests’ meals, as they have been for the past five years.

Harvey wanted Bon Appetit to be involved in the development of the alternatives to be used in addition to price raising, so he asked for their ideas.

“Some of [the ideas] were quite frankly just in conflict with our program and admission goals for the college … like stopping the delivery of meals to the Interest Houses,” he said.

Whitman understands the extra labor costs of delivering meals to the IHC, but feels that such a change would infringe upon an important part of the college community.

“Two issues they identified that we felt would have the least impact and still save some money were multiple swiping and the hours of Reid’s café, said Harvey. We decided we would shut it down between 2 and 5 p.m. and at 9 p.m. on weeknights, but 11 p.m. on weekends to support the current coffeehouse and other things going on there on the weekends. Quite frankly we think Bon Appetit has been wonderful in customizing their program to meet our unique needs,” said Harvey.

Bon Appetit has raised next semester’s meal plan prices by six percent and looks to save about one percent by implementing the new measures.