In order to meet student needs and create value for student dining options, NC State Dining must consider many factors when setting dining hall prices and meal credit rates across campus.

For a student without a meal plan or dining dollars, the cost to eat lunch at Fountain Dining Hall is $9.10. For dinner, the cost increases to $9.50. Using Dining Dollars decreases the price by $0.25, according to Randy Lait, senior director of administrative services within Campus Enterprises.

Lait says that because Dining is part of NC State and not an outside company, they are able to charge the lowest possible price for the services provided on campus.

“In general, setting the cost is based on the cost of providing the meal,” Lait said. “You’ve got the cost of the food on the plate, the employees in the building and overhead costs such as electricity and water. If you add all that and divide it by the number of people coming through and eating it gives you an idea of what you would need to charge in order to cover all those costs.”

Shawn Hoch, associate director of NC State Dining and interim director of Hospitality Services, said that the change to meal plans with all-access to the dining halls was to facilitate more availability of food on campus.

“We want students to stop thinking about their meal plan in terms of swipes — it’s all about going when you need to,” Hoch said. “If you want a salad and 30 minutes later your friends are all coming down to eat before you couldn’t go back in because you just spent your swipe. That’s off the table now.” 

Hoch added that a meal plan allows students access to food that would not be possible to get without one.

“Years ago, we had an engineering student that looked at what it really cost to use the full meal plan and when you do the math, you can’t feed yourself for it,” Hoch said. “If you fully utilize every meal period and the equivalency, you can’t go to restaurants or make food cheaper than what we’re able to provide.”

NC State offers 35 meal periods per week where students can use their meal credits at campus dining locations. The meal credit rate varies based on the meal period and dining location.

Hoch said the earliest rates were based on prices at Chick-Fil-A, but were changed to a variable equivalency rate meaning that the dollar amount covered in a meal swipe varies at different campus dining locations.

“At Chick-Fil-A that rate worked and that model worked for years, but when you go to a couple locations like Los Lobos where you could get queso and always be $0.75 over we had to look at how we could make it work,” Hoch said.

The rates have been tweaked over the years but are reliant on the offerings of the location. 

“In the pavilion where you’ve got Jason’s Deli, Red Sky, Los Lobos and Tuffy’s — Red Sky is pizza which is inexpensive to produce, so you can get two slices and a drink for less money so we can set a lower rate there and allow more over at Los Lobos where we’re roasting our own barbacoa and making fresh ingredients which cost a little more to produce so it command a little higher price point,” Lait said. “We want to set the equivalency rate that will allow students to eat where it’s convenient for them and be able to get a reasonable meal within their meal equivalency so that you don’t have to go all the way across campus to a dining hall to eat.” 

One of Dining’s goals when the remodel of Talley was complete was to be able to offer better ingredients, according to Hoch.

“We make an effort to slow smoke our brisket 12 hours every time we do a batch to making fresh salsa to using scratch made sauces — we’re putting more effort and emphasis on higher quality ingredients,” Hoch said. “Our culinary skill that we’ve brought in the past couple years has gone up immensely. At one point earlier this year, we had the most certified chefs on a college campus in the country.”

Hoch said that the entire intent of Dining’s effort is to offer students value for the food that they acquire on campus.

To learn more about the various meal plans and prices per meal period, students can visit Dining’s website.