A Guide To Every Place You Can Spend Your FlexDine At UC Irvine

When getting a UCI meal plan, you’re guaranteed to end up receiving some FlexDine.

What exactly is that? It’s money that you’re free to use on whatever you’d like at different food sites on campus (except the University Club and Café Espresso). It can be easy to spend it all at once, but you’re free to reload your FlexDine whenever you like. It’s also more likely that you’ll forget you even have it until the end of the quarter, but luckily, FlexDine rolls over to the next quarter until the end of the academic year. It can be tricky knowing where or what you can spend your FlexDine, so here’s a comprehensive guide to every place you can spend your FlexDine to get the most out of your meal plan:

Anteatery and Brandywine

To start off with the obvious, FlexDine can be used at either of the dining halls on campus. If you don’t want to purchase meal swipes or end up running out of meal swipes, FlexDine can always be used to pay at either location. However, it’s important to note that meals at the dining hall cost a different amount of money depending on the time you go, and using FlexDine means you’re paying those different costs rather than using up 1 meal swipe each meal.

Side Door, P.O.D, Zot N Go

Looking for snacks? FlexDine has you covered. On the side of Brandywine, you can find a small shop called Side Door which is basically a small convenience store with snacks, drinks, frozen food, and some other small items (ex: lip balm). Provisions on Demand (P.O.D), which has two locations on campus in the Social Sciences and the Humanities has a similar range of items available for purchase. Lastly, the Zot N Go in the Student Center offers a large selection that includes hot meals.

Food Courts

The Student Center Food Courts and the Phoenix Food Court offer a wide variety of dining choices from sushi to sandwiches, and like everything else in this article, FlexDine works for all of them. Although there are established spots like the Wendy’s and Anthill Pub and Grill (one of the only on-campus sites to serve alcohol), there’ve been some new additions too (the long-awaited Jamba Juice). The options are always growing, and there’s a lot of seating available in these areas too. If you aren’t sure what you’re craving, the food courts are a great place to browse while you’re making up your mind. 

Cafes

If you’re like me, coffee or pastry can really turn a bad day around. With the exception of Café Espresso, FlexDine works at any of the Starbucks locations or cafes on campus, so use it as an opportunity to grab your favorite drink during finals week (it’s a little treat).

GrubHub and Starship

This is possibly the least known way to use your Flexdine, but it’s can be one of the most helpful. Setting up your FlexDine on Starship lets you get food delivered from a lot of different places across campus (food courts and cafes), and not only are you saving time, but you have a cute ZotBot delivering your food! With GrubHub, you can use your FlexDine to get food from these locations delivered to you even when you’re not on campus. Either option can be a huge time saver, but be aware of delivery fees! Make sure to take advantage of the GrubHub+ Student Membership you get as a UCI student. It’s a great way to cut down the additional fees attached to your food when it’s being delivered.

Check out this map of where all these dining locations are!