Students living off campus have an alternative to spending cash on food or participating in the University’s on-campus meal plan.
Instead, they can choose to sign up for the Off Campus Meal Plan, a substitute for using cash or credit cards.
Students on OCMP purchase a meal plan similar to the University’s meal plans. Each meal consists of $6 worth of food, and every half meal is $3. Students are charged one meal for every meal purchase less than $6, and a meal and a half if the purchase is between $6 and $9.
Students can purchase anywhere between two and 21 meals per week, in contrast to the point system the University currently offers. If a student does not use all the meals they are allotted per week, those meals get added to the next week’s meal list. Meals, however, do not transfer between terms, according to the OCMP Web site. OCMP’s 14-meals-per-week plan, which
averages out to about two full meals a day, costs $983.39 for 10 weeks. One lunch and one dinner at Carson, one of the University’s dormitory dining halls, each day for 10 weeks costs $1,190. Carson supervising cook Dennis Savedra said that students who are on the standard meal plan average two meals per day.
Dining venues for OCMP are selected by students, and they’re polled at the end of every semester to help determine which venues were popular with students, said Michael Hauke, director of marketing. According to the OCMP’s Web site, students can request to put their favorite dining venue on the OCMP by contacting OCMP’s help line, then contacting the venue they want added.
“OCMP is an easy way for students to eat at campus without using credit cards or debit cards,” Hauke said.
The meal plan puts parents at ease when they’re giving students money for college, assuring them that the students will be using the money for food, Hauke said.
Students on OCMP cannot go into debt using the card, which is often a concern of parents, said Hauke, and they cannot purchase alcohol with their OCMP card. Parents are more likely to give money to students if they know that the money is going toward food instead of other things, Hauke said.
“(OCMP) is easy because I don’t have to worry about where my money for food is coming from,” said sophomore Cori Mintzer, a marketing intern for OCMP.
The program was started 12 years ago when the program’s founder and current president, David Diana, was an undergraduate at the University of Massachusetts. He was dissatisfied with the dining services that his University was providing, and found himself eating off campus often.
OCMP plans on changing the way meal payment works. Starting next term, students’ accounts will reflect the amount of money they spend instead of the amount of meals.
Forty-seven different campuses currently use OCMP. Hauke said he estimates more than 100,000 students are on the OCMP meal plan nationally, but local restaurant owners say that little of their business comes from OCMP users.
Tony Jentile, manager of Mazzi’s Restaurant, said only about 2 percent of Eugene restaurants’ business comes from OCMP users, and Bagel Sphere employee Heather Ringe says that she sees the OCMP card about one or two times a week.
The OCMP card has not caught on at The Glenwood Restaurant on campus, but restaurants do not pay to be a part of the plan, Glenwood manager Jessie Clements said.
Contact the business, science and technology reporter at [email protected]
