Case Western Reserve University Top Questions

There are no "options" at Case. Every student is contractually obligated to be on a meal plan for the first two full years if they want to obtain this education. Because the meal plan is this king of monopoly, the company who runs it (Bon Appetit) knows it does not have to care about the student's opinions or their ability to pay for the expensive meals. The meal plan is $2,800 a semester for a certain number of swipes per week. However, they force you to pay for more swipes than you can practically use because of all of the rules they enforce at the dining halls. No double swiping others in, no swiping more than 3 times a day here, once a day here, once a week here, only after 6 here, and so on. Because of this, you end up wasting swipes every week, causing the practical cost of every meal to be around $16 for every student. In addition, Bon Appetit does not provide $16 a meal quality food to students. They claim to be ultra "sustainable" about all of their food, but they are a penny pinching business just like any restaurant. They switched to Tyson chicken, which is notorious for animal cruelty. Also, most of the time they intentionally do not restock things such as the salad and sandwich bar, the juices, or the soups, so that they do not have to pay for the extra food. It is very often that a student will waste a swipe going into a dining hall and then find that there is nothing to eat. Bon Appetit knows they have a certain number of students every year guaranteed by contract with the school, so they do not have to worry about retention or return customers.

There are two dining halls on campus that take meal swipes. Leutner is located in the North Residential Village, while Fribley is located in the South Residential Village. There are also a Denny's All-Nighter and the Jolly Scholar, both of which accept meal swipes and Case Cash. We also have a couple other dining options located on the engineering quad, Grab-It and Einstein Bros. Bagels.