Resident Dining

Dining Plans

Welcome to our New American cuisine in our Residence Halls. Each dining location offers a wide variety of choices from several different food formats. Our menus offer international cuisine, traditional American entrees, salad bars, deli's, as well as made to order entrees and much, much more. Western Illinois University is pleased to provide its students, faculty and staff the A La Carte Dining Plan. A plan that features access to a cash plan rather than guaranteed meals. All students living in residence halls are required to have an A La Carte Dining Plan. The A La Carte plan permits food purchases on a per item basis. The customer determines available funds for food. There are three A La Carte Dining Plan options:

A La Carte Basic - designed for the student who is a very light consumer. This type of student skips breakfast, occasionally misses lunch or dinner, is away from campus on weekends, and does not plan to use the dining plan in the snack bars or in the University Union Food Court.

Option 1 - designed for the student who is an average consumer, visits the snack bars about once a week and will occasionally dine in the University Union Food Court.

Option 2 - Because our program is consumer driven, our dining staff plan for and respond to trends in student dining. Our students find that there is a great deal of choice in what is provided for hot meals and many opportunities to carry out prepackaged foods they are accustomed to having at home. Our dining program requires, though, that our students budget their own purchasing power and remain conscious of the costs associated with their dining.

This is how the plan works. Each student buys into the A la Carte program at a rate dependant on the guaranteed rate assigned at the point of acceptance to the university. Students entering pay a charge referred to as "board." Approximately 50% of the board charge is taken off the top in order to pay for fixed costs, like salaries, furniture and equipment, utilities, etc. The student is given the remainder for purchasing power.

We use a declining balance system for purchasing power. This is loaded into their electronic account and encoded on their student IDs. Whenever they purchase a meal from the dining facilities on campus, the charge for the meal is deducted from this account. Because the overhead has already been taken off at the beginning of the semester, food costs are approximately wholesale costs.

Our students are able to eat wherever they want on our campus. It is beneficial for them to eat in the residence hall dining centers because they have already paid the overhead for their dining program. They are able to use their A la Carte meal plan in any food establishment on campus, but because pre-packaged food, and food available in the Union Food Court is considered retail, they will be charged overhead in these places.