Wilf Restaurants Stop Accepting Caf Cards After YU Allegedly Delays Payments
Since Saturday, Nov. 8, all restaurants on the Wilf campus, except for Chop Chop, have stopped accepting Caf Cards after YU allegedly failed to reimburse them for more than a month, leaving several businesses struggling to cover rent, payroll and vendor bills.
Signs posted at Golan Heights, Burgers and Grill and other restaurants read: “NOT ACCEPTING CAF CARD UNTIL YU PAYS WHAT THEY OWE US.” Chop Chop remained the only establishment still taking Caf Cards.
Restaurant owners say the system depends entirely on YU’s timely repayment. The university tracks every Caf Card transaction and then reimburses restaurants, minus a 15 percent fee, on a biweekly schedule. That schedule has allegedly collapsed.
“They aren’t paying on a regular basis,” said a restaurant owner who requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their relationship with the university. The owner added that his business and the other ones around YU operate on faith that YU will pay. “They deduct their percentage, and then they make a payment biweekly. It’s supposed to be biweekly.”
YU denies that it stopped paying for Caf Card transactions: “As agreed with the restaurants, we transfer funds ‘twice a month’ to cover the student purchases,” Samuel Chasan, head of Dining Services, told The Commentator. “We have been making those transfers and are surprised by the signs posted by some stores. We have reached out to a representative of the stores to inquire and hope to address any concerns.”
The owner responded to YU’s statement: “The part they’re neglecting to mention is what they’re paying for,” he told The Commentator. “They’re not covering consistently. They’re behind on the payments.”
“We’ve only been paid for September, and we can’t even verify what they’re paying for because the tracking system is so sloppy,” he added.
David Nahon, who owns Falafel Crunch and Burgers and Grill, told The Commentator that YU has not paid any of the restaurants for Caf Card transactions in more than 30 days. Nahon said he has had to cover employee salaries, vendor payments and rent out of pocket while waiting for YU’s reimbursements.
“It’s not a matter of if they’re going to pay me or not,” Nahon said. “At the end of the day, they pay, just extra late.”
“The school takes a 15% cut of our transactions,” he added. “Our margins aren’t large enough to support that in the first place.”
The Caf Card program is a significant source of revenue for the seven Wilf Campus restaurants that participate. All students enrolled must enroll in YU’s Dining Club. Students who live on campus pay at least $1,975 per semester as part of their tuition, $225 of which are Flex dollars — funds that can be redeemed in restaurants. Students living off campus must pay $650 per semester, which is allocated entirely as Flex Dollars.
Meanwhile, restaurants are struggling to keep up.
“We still have to pay rent...[the] electric [bill]…the employees…our food distributors,” a restaurant employee told The Commentator. “Stuff like that doesn’t go on pause just because YU has gone on pause.”
“We are all dying here,” another restaurant owner told The Commentator. Referring to the owners, he said, “It looked like a Yom Kippur scene out there, everyone checking their phone with no payments.”
The outage has also left students unable to use the money they already paid into the system.
“I have a couple of hundred dollars in my flex account that I can’t use,” Yishai Gross (YC ‘28), who said he previously ate at the restaurants two to three times a week, told The Commentator. Now, he said, he doesn’t know whether he “will go to restaurants at all if the Caf Card is down.”
Photo Caption: A sign displayed near the Golan Heights cash register on the Wilf Campus in Washington Heights
Photo Credit: Gabriel Simon-Hakalir
