Choosing A Meal Plan
By CHAD FULLERTON, MACINSIDERS
*UPDATED FOR 2014/15*
Yummy... look at that cheese burger. Delicious. You're
never going to get tired of eating burgers right? WRONG. Your thoughts about burgers, pizza, and french fries are going to change quite quickly once you come to university. There's plenty of other choices to eat on and off campus, and if you're a first year student going into residence you're going to have to choose a meal plan that best suites your needs, since a meal plan is manditory for students living in residence. However, if you're not living in res you still have the choice of getting a meal plan, and as you'll read below... it
does have it's benefits.
The Meal Plan system at McMaster has three 'tiers'. I'll try and briefly explain the three types:
BASIC: This is your 'base' amount of money you have to spend during the school year. It is non refundable. Also, when you spend from this you get a
13% discount on food.
FLEX: This is basically the exact same as 'basic', and you buy FLEX dollars once you've used up your basic dollars and need extra. There's no point buying FLEX dollars until you've used up the BASIC since they'll take from your BASIC until its all used up. Money spend from here gets you a 13% discount on food. The FLEX account is an optional and refundable portion of the Residence Meal Plan and it is initially set at $0 value. So basically you'll only get it when your BASIC account is exhausted and you still want to benefit from the non-taxable food purchases at the Hospitality Services dining locations on campus.
FREEDOM: This is the best option since
it can be used on AND off campus at the restaurants that have partnered up with Hospitality Services (TwelvEighty - the bar/pub on campus, Eastside Marios, Boston Pizza, Pizza Pizza, Pita Pit, Kelsey's, Basilique, Gino's Pizza). Plus you can add money to this easily via the web, it is refundable at any time, and you only have to put and initial
$100 on it to start. The only negative thing about this is that you only get a
5% discount instead of 13% with the basic/flex money. If you're living off campus and want to save 5% you CAN put money on this plan.
The FREEDOM account is a fully taxable and fully refundable portion of your meal plan and it can be used to purchase non-food items at Hospitality Services facilities (eg. recyclable containers, seasonal novelties, hygienic items, etc.) or to dine at participating Off-Campus Vendors.
Advantages to buying a meal plan include the fact that you no longer have to carry as much cash around with you. All you need is to swipe your student card! Easy. But be sure to keep extra cash on you as well, we'll get more into that later.
On campus, there are a lot of
places to eat that are run by Hospitality Services. Now note that while there are a lot of food outlets, most of them offer the exact same things (most have Pizza Pizza, Tim Hortons, Pillars, and misc food like candy and packaged sandwiches). Your choices therefore usually consist of pizza, burgers, soups, pitas, sandwiches, subs, salads, donuts, candy, coffee, pop, juices, and all the other PEPSI brand beverages. You can, however, break out of that mold by visiting some of the more unique
dining spots on campus run by Hospitality Services, plus there's also two restaurants on campus - The Pheonix, and TwelveEighty (aka. 1280).
Off-campus here are also a lot of locations that you can use your meal card. REMEMBER... these locations ONLY accept the FREEDOM dollars and not BASIC/FLEX dollars.
GREAT THING ABOUT FREEDOM DOLLARS IS YOU CAN TOP UP ONLINE! You can go to
https://mealcard.mcmaster.ca/ and top up right from your res room via credit card, etc. so if you end up running out for the month just add more freedom dollars. You can also
check your balance online to see what you have left.
Think about it for a second. You're in residence... you
do have the ability to cook your own meals if you wanted to (there's even clubs on campus that help teach you how to cook!) and cooking your own meals is much cheaper. Most residences have a common area with a kitchen, and some of the suite style residences have kitchens you share. Second,
you are going to get tired of campus food very quickly. Eating pizza and burgers each day has it's toll on you and after realizing that there's more to life than junk food, you'll start to want to eat more healthy choices and you'll want
more variety. To do this, you'll want to eat off campus such as going to SUBWAY, Tally Ho, Pancake House, the new places across the street from McMaster like PINKS burgers, or Burrito Bandito, etc. with your friends. When you go to those places, you'll be spending your own out-of-pocket... money that isn't locked into a meal plan.
Keep in mind that
you will want spending money that is NOT locked into the meal card to spend in places that don't accept it!
Union Market does NOT ACCEPT STUDENT CARDS/MEAL PLAN. A lot of students forget this and end up not buying from there since they want to use just their meal plan. But UNION MARKET HAS AMAZING PRICES AND DEALS! Cheap chocolate milk, cheap cheap bagels / cream cheese, cheap deals on bottled water and cans of pop, etc. Everything is cheaper at Union Market, since it is run by the McMaster Student Union). So you'll want to have pocket money to buy things from there that isn't locked into a meal plan.
You can also see answers to commonly asked questions about the Meal Plan on the Hospitality website
here.
Happy eating!