As the 2025-26 school year begins, Bon Appetit Management Company and the Dean of Student’s Office are releasing new updates to Carleton students’ meal plan. Recently, in an effort to provide less flexibility and incentivize students to pay more, Sayles Cafe has changed its meal-equivalency policy. In previous years, students on the 20 meal plan were able to swap one dining hall meal for one Sayles meal each week. This year, students on the 20 meal plan can now use two meal equivalencies a week with an increasingly limited menu. After hearing student feedback, the menu has been updated once again and offerings now include canned water, bottled water (bottle not included), and water in a paper cup that starts to get mushy as soon as it is poured. Rather than limiting these options to students using meal-equivalency, students on all meal plans are now able to purchase these items with their dining dollars. 

Due to fluctuations in demand and complex supply system delays, dining dollars will only be able to be spent on these items going forward. Students wishing to purchase alternate food and drink items at Sayles will now have to purchase an additional snack plan alongside their meal plan. The snack plan costs $5,507 per term and provides students with 100 dining dollars to spend throughout the year. To access or change this plan, students will need to create an account on Carleton’s newest digital endeavor, GET Mobile’s competitor, YikYakSnack. 

YikYakSnack describes itself as an easy application for today’s youth allowing live uploading of images of other students’ meal choices and plates to the app. Users are then able to comment and react on these meals, creating a food-based community, or “foodmmunity.” In an effort to retain the utmost anonymity for its users and center data privacy practices, YikYakSnack requires three factor authentication, requiring users to tap their pinky toe onto the screen three times for five, seven and nine seconds each prior to verifying login credentials.

This week’s issue of Carleton Today highlighted these new changes, sharing that the college hopes these changes will help students to hydrate more, reduce demand for drinks and cups in the dining halls and help to combat labor and supply shortages that may begin to impact campus function in the coming weeks. It also hopes that by paying for competing dining apps, students will be able to take advantage of the best features of each.