When Caden Li, a freshman using the unlimited meal plan, met Mohul Shukla, a sophomore paying in flex dollars and cash at campus restaurants, the idea behind UBerk Eats quickly emerged. The app, founded by Li and Shukla, launched Nov. 13, 2025, allowing freshmen to sell unused meal swipes to other students at a discounted price.<\/p>\n
However, after just 15 days of operation, UC Berkeley Dining emailed Li and Shukla asking them to shut down the app Jan. 20.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say (the app) got pretty positive reactions,\u201d Li said. \u201cThe idea of paying $6 for campus eateries and having freshmen actually make money for swipes they don\u2019t use was received as an idea that\u2019s beneficial to both freshmen and upperclassmen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Freshmen earned $5 per meal, while upperclassmen purchased them for $6; the $1 margin was used to cover operating costs and refund customers if meals weren\u2019t received, according to Li.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The app saw daily growth of 20%, earned the freshmen who sold swipes a combined total of $1,985 and saved upperclassmen a total of $4,125 on meals, according to Shukla.<\/p>\n
Freshman Jaiyen Shetty, who helped with UBerk Eats\u2019 marketing, sold the most swipes. According to Shetty, he sat atop the leaderboard of the app\u2019s ranking system of users, with Li dubbing him as the \u201cNo. 1 provider.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe app launched, and I was like, \u2018Wow, this is actually phenomenal,\u2019\u201d Shetty said. \u201cYou best believe I\u2019m not going to Crossroads, right? \u2026 So I sell my meal, and I get something else, like Chipotle.\u201d<\/p>\n
While he began using the app for personal reasons, Shetty said he quickly realized its impact on the campus community. He noted how it helped students with financial struggles, as it allowed those who had leftover meal swipes to get some reimbursement for the unused ones.<\/p>\n
UC Berkeley Dining became aware of the app after concerns emerged that it enabled peer-to-peer meal swipe transfers, according to campus spokesperson Lindsey Michels in an email.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBerkeley Dining reviewed the matter and determined that the project enabled activity inconsistent with the meal plan agreement,\u201d Michels said. \u201cUC Berkeley meal plans are governed by terms and conditions that specify meal swipes are non-transferable.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Michels, UC Berkeley Dining contacted the students involved and asked that the app be shut down. No further campus action was necessary.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After seeing the email, Li and Shukla immediately disabled ordering, notified their customers and launched a video recapping their experience on Instagram, according to Shukla.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was interesting to see that (UC) Berkeley, after two weeks, was already willing to take serious action,\u201d Shukla said. \u201cSo it was slightly surprising but also confirmation that we had a good idea in the sense that we saw demand, and (UC) Berkeley had to do something about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the app\u2019s impermanence, Li said the development process was a valuable learning opportunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like a lot of experiences that we do have as (computer science) students is a lot more theoretical \u2026 but it\u2019s a very different feeling talking to the people who do end up using your code,\u201d Li said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very fulfilling feeling because \u2026 people (appreciate) the things that you build.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Caden Li, a freshman using the unlimited meal plan, met Mohul Shukla, a sophomore paying in flex…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[76061,2402,35755,76062,22285,76060,143,145,144,76058,76059],"class_list":["post-154941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-caden-li","tag-chipotle","tag-crossroads","tag-jaiyen-shetty","tag-lindsey-michels","tag-mohul-shukla","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-uberk-eats","tag-uc-berkeley-dining"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}