A recent delay occurred at Louie’s Place, the grab and go food service at Seward County Community College’s Industrial Technology campus. Unlike last year, students are being asked to pay in cash only, not being allowed to use their meal plan card ever since the beginning of the semester.

This problem sparked confusion and frustration among students who have meal plans and stay in the dorms. CNC machinist, Brice Martinez, thinks this problem in particular is inconvenient to students who attend classes over at the tech.

“It’s inconvenient because they give us about 20 minutes for a break and so if we don’t have money, it’s kind of a waste of time going to the cafeteria on campus and then come back. We barely get any time to eat,” Martinez said. “I like being able to grab something fast between classes and if I can’t, it’s just an inconvenience.”

Martinez said even the lunch ladies and chefs were confused as to why this problem happened. People living down his hall and around his dorm room also talked about it and found the problem frustrating. 

“In my opinion, it’s a waste of money for students if we can’t use our meal plan at Louie’s and the cafeteria,” Martinez added.  

However, this will soon be fixed. Students will soon be able to use their meal plan card at both places fairly. 

The change is due to the fact that last year, an experiment was done where students were able to pay at Louie’s using their meal card, yet it would not go towards their meal plan or count as one meal. The solution to this would be to now allow students to use their meal plan at Louie’s Place and the cafeteria so that one meal at Louie’s would be equivalent to a meal from the meal plan. 

“Essentially, students who have a 19 meal plan are able to use 19 meals throughout the week. With a swipe of their card, students would be able to use their one chance for a breakfast, lunch or dinner that day at the grab and go or the cafeteria,” vice president of finance and operations, Dennis Sanders, said. “We are currently working to come up with meal equivalents for Louie’s Place and the meal options will be released soon.”

Before any of this is done, food service director, Maria Sandoval, stated that the POS systems of both the cafeteria and Louie’s place have to combine and work together in order to let the staff know when students have used up their meal options for the day.

The POS systems are the systems on the computers. For example, when a student swipes their card for their meal of the day, such as breakfast, that lets the cafeteria staff know what meal the student is eating and if they’ve eaten at Louie’s place already or not. If they did, they would not be able to use it at the cafeteria for another meal unless it was lunch or dinner, not breakfast. 

“The point of the solution is so that the meal plan is used fairly and so that students can use their meal plan at both cafeterias, but they’re not getting food from two places at the same time for one meal,” Sanders said. 

The meal options will include a breakfast, lunch and dinner option. The start date to this solution is to be determined and the options will soon be revealed to the public as well.