Pitt announces meal plan changes for fall

Pitt announced several updates to student meal plans in a Thursday email, as part of changes being implemented by incoming dining contractor Compass Group.

Compass Group will offer meal plans for the fall in three categories — unlimited, lifestyle and off-campus — and students can select from a total of 12 meal plan variations, as opposed to the previous 21. Any student who previously selected a meal plan must now choose a different one by July 10 at 11:59 p.m. If a student does not select a new plan, they will automatically be assigned the “Unlimited + 150” plan, which includes unlimited dining hall access and 150 dining dollars.

Unlimited plans, which include unlimited access to Market Central and The Perch and one “meal exchange” per day, are required for all first-year students living on campus. The plans come in 5-day or 7-day varieties, with differing amounts of dining dollars.

Lifestyle plans offer one or two meals a day at any dining location on campus. The plans come with either 500 or 750 dining dollars. This plan category is available for off-campus students and upperclassmen living on campus.

Off-campus plans offer one meal a day at any dining location on campus, or solely dining dollars. Students living off campus or in apartment-style accommodations, such as Bouquet Gardens, Forbes Craig Apartments and Ruskin Hall, can purchase plans from this category.

All three plans include a 10% discount when dining dollars used at on-campus non-national brand locations, and 25% of the plan’s dining dollars are reserved for use at predetermined local, off-campus merchants in the Oakland community.

The pricing for the new plans remains relatively similar to the old ones, with the most expensive variation still priced at $2,650. Lifestyle plans, which are similar to the previous Dining Pass plans, have condensed the previous 14 options down to just three, ranging in price from $1,550 to $2,400, similar to the old pricing.

Off-campus plans, which are most similar to the previous commuter plans, range in price from $200 to $1,250. Previously, the commuter plans were priced from $400 to $1,000.

The University also announced it has renamed Market Central to “The Eatery at Market Central” and has added multiple food stations within the dining hall, such as Butcher and Baker, Rooted and Kale to Pitt.

Contributed reporting by Jon Moss.