Rutgers–Camden Dining Fees
Introduction
What follows is a response to inquiries regarding the 11% increase in Rutgers–Camden dining fees approved by the Board of Governors on July 8, 2024. The 11% increase represents the first increase in Rutgers–Camden dining fees in five years.
Required Meal Plans
For 2024-25, the required meal plans for our resident students are:
Undergraduate Resident Students
Plan 180 in the Fall and Spring semesters. This meal plan consists of 180 meal swipes, two guest swipes and $100.00 Raptor Dollars. The Raptor Dollars have a dollar-for-dollar value. The 2024-25 cost of Plan 180 is $2,000 per semester ($4,000 annually).
Graduate and Law Resident Students
Plan 75 in the Fall and Spring semesters. This meal plan consists of 75 meal swipes, two guest swipes and $100.00 Raptor Dollars. The Raptor Dollars have a dollar- for-dollar value. The cost of the plan is $875.00 per semester (a total of $1,750.00 per academic year). The 2024-25 cost of Plan 75 is $875 per semester ($1,750 annually).
While acknowledging the price increase, the value per meal swipe for each of the required plan:
- Plan 180 equates to approximately $10.56 per swipe.
- Plan 75 equated to approximately $10.33 per swipe
Falls below the food spending habits recently reported by more than 1,000 students who participated in our Spring 2024 dining survey:
Average off-campus transaction amounts:
- Breakfast: $11
- Lunch: $13
- Dinner: $16
- Late Night: $14
Background
Rutgers–Camden strives to establish a dining program that meets high industry standards and where food quality, manner of service, program and menu diversity, and value to the customer are primary considerations. We believe that the dining operation is an important strategic asset for our campus to achieve long-term institutional objectives such as student recruitment and retention, building a community among students and creating opportunities for student/faculty and staff interaction and learning.
In 2019, Rutgers–Camden engaged a third-party partner, Gourmet Dining, LLC, to work with us to achieve these goals and to provide traditional meal plan dining services to its resident students and retail dining and catering to students, faculty, and staff.
Current Approach
In 2024, upon critical evaluation, we have determined that our dining program needs to be reimagined. To that end, we have joined forces with Rutgers–Newark (also served by Gourmet Dining) and have jointly engaged a nationally-recognized consulting firm, Brailsford and Dunlavey, to work with Gourmet Dining and explore ways to achieve our programmatic and financial goals. By partnering with Rutgers–Newark, we are enjoying economies of scale in consulting fees and are strengthening our negotiation position.
Part of the exploration of dining has been the administration of a survey to students, faculty, and staff in April 2024. The participation was 14% and the majority of respondents were students. The key take-away’s of the survey are:
- Dining is a strategic asset for the RU–C campus experience, and the campus community believes the dining program should be a driver for community building, student/faculty/staff interaction, and student recruitment and retention.
- Overall, student satisfaction is generally high (73% of respondents are very to somewhat satisfied) with the dining program and existing dining venues, but faculty and staff are less satisfied.
- However, menu variety, value for price, and food quality are the most important factors for students when deciding where to eat, but there is a gap between the level of importance and current satisfaction.
- Menu Variety = Importance is 95%; Satisfaction is 59%;
- Value = Importance is 96%; Satisfaction is 65% and
- Food Quality = Importance is 99% and Satisfaction is 67%.
- On-campus students utilize campus dining most frequently but are generally less satisfied with the current meal plan options.
- Off-campus students utilize campus dining less frequently, even on days when they are on campus, and are choosing not to eat on campus because of convenience and cost.
- Faculty and staff are less satisfied than students with the dining program and venues, and they tend to bring food from home or eat off campus because it is convenient and less expensive, but also because of the current food options on campus.
Active planning is underway to address and apply these findings for Fall 2024.
While the quality of the dining program is critical, its financial performance is also significant. The continued inflationary pressures on food costs and labor increases combined with decreases to the resident student population and remote work schedules of faculty and staff have resulted in the Chancellor’s Office having to subsidize our dining program in excess of $1 million annually for the past four years.
Outside of increases in food and labor costs, a contributing factor for this subsidy has been the intentional decision to alleviate students’ financial burden. This translated to decreasing meal plan pricing at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and holding it steady in the wake of the pandemic. The required undergraduate annual meal plan price in 2019-20 was $4,250 and was dropped to $3,600 in 2020-21 and remained flat up until 2023-2024.
Had we followed annual inflation trends for Food Away from Home Index (the industry standard for measuring the impact of inflation in college dining programs) current meal plan pricing would be much higher:
Of course, Rutgers–Camden would not increase pricing by 34%, but the need to increase revenue has become apparent. We decided to align ourselves more closely with peer institutions by instituting the 11% increase since we were charging 39% ($1,404) less for required first-year residential meal plans than our peers on average.
We are not relying solely on increased fees. We are pursuing increased speculative revenues such new retail offerings marketing to summer camps/conferences and offering faculty/staff meal plans. We are also looking at expense savings such as targeted operating schedule adjustments that minimize customer impact and improve our approach to scheduling to mitigate unnecessary overtime expenses. Primarily, as mentioned previously, we are working to modify our existing agreement with Gourmet Dining to incentivize driving additional revenues while achieving customer satisfaction targets.
