This article is featured in the 2025 Winter Carnival Special Issue.
This term, Novack Cafe has undergone significant structural changes. The dining location, located in Berry Library, has long been searching for a better line management system to increase payment efficiency and to thwart item theft — a problem well-recorded in The Dartmouth. In November 2023, for example, Dartmouth Dining tried installing cameras above the snack trolleys to deter theft. And this term, Dartmouth Dining has introduced a new policy, supposedly aimed at increasing efficiency: a two-cashier system. To me, the change seems more geared toward preventing theft — by introducing a second cashier by the cafe’s kiosks, the cafe can better prevent students from grabbing items from the kiosk side and proceeding without payment. Regardless of motive, though, the impact is clear: the new system has become an unnecessary burden on students’ meal plan budgets.
Prior to this term, Novack operated as a multi-purpose cafe, offering made-to-order beverages and bakery items alongside a kiosk for packaged or refrigerated snacks including biscuits, yogurt and salads. Students could pick up items from both sections before paying at a single cashier on the cafe side. This system worked well for students’ fast-paced schedules. You could grab a peach parfait and an almond latte — your substitute for breakfast — before rushing to your 9L, all while conveniently using a meal equivalency or Dartmouth Dining Dollars to keep costs reasonable.
With the new two-cashier system, students now must pay separately at the kiosk for any packaged snacks before heading to the cafe side for beverages or bakery items, requiring a second payment. This change means that if you want an Americano to go with your biscuits, you must stand in two lines, pay twice and — more importantly — lose more of your dining plan benefits.
This is due to the workings of the dining plan options at Dartmouth. Dartmouth Dining assigns a set value to meal swipes, depending on the time of day. Breakfast swipes are worth $6.25, lunch $8.50 and dinner $10.00. If students choose not to use a swipe at the Class of 1953 Commons, the College’s “all-you-care-to-eat dining facility,” they can instead spend their meal equivalency at cafes like Novack, Collis Cafe, The Fern Coffee and Tea Bar or Courtyard Cafe. However, meal swipes must be used in a single transaction — any unused amount is forfeited. Under the new Novack system, this becomes a costly problem. If you buy a $5 parfait at the kiosk, your entire breakfast swipe is considered spent, even though you haven’t used the full $6.25. Then, when you go to the cafe side to buy a coffee, you must pay out of pocket using dining dollars — since students can no longer use two swipes per meal period outside Foco — thus magnifying your daily spending.
As a gluten-intolerant student, this change impacts me directly. Novack’s cafe side lacks gluten-free bakery options, so I rely on the kiosk for items like gluten-free brownies or salads. Now, after my meal swipe is used up at the kiosk, I have no choice but to pay extra for coffee. As a result, my daily food expenses have nearly doubled compared to the fall term.
While I understand the intent behind these changes, they are neither effective nor practical. If Dartmouth Dining’s aim is to increase efficiency, I believe the issue was never primarily due to the single-cashier system. The library, particularly during the winter cold, is overwhelmed by students before and after each class period — by students running for a coffee before their 9L or lunch before their 12. Similarly, if the issue is about preventing theft, I believe Novack’s real issue is its status as a student-run cafe — it was fairly common for cashiers to give free items to friends. Increasing the number of cashiers does nothing to prevent this behavior. Increasing the number of cashiers does nothing to prevent this behavior. In contrast, previous measures — such as adding more security cameras — were a more reasonable approach. More than failing to increase efficiency or prevent theft, the new system significantly disadvantages students. As a library cafe, Novack is meant to be a convenient place to grab a quick snack throughout the day. Now, even a simple purchase has become inefficient and unnecessarily expensive.
To address both theft and increased efficiency, a better solution would be an order slip system. Novack’s marketplace could issue order slips for purchases —either in physical form or digitally—that details their selected items. These slips would then be integrated with the cafe order orders or directly issued if the only purchase is made at the cafe. This integration would not only streamline the checkout process but also help ensure accurate billing and reduce the potential for item misplacement or theft, as each transaction is carefully tracked and consolidated into a single, unified order. This way, students could make a single payment, maximizing their meal equivalency while covering any remaining balance with dining dollars. At the end of the day, students should be able to spend their dining budget on actual food — not on an inefficient payment system.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
