In the military, rank-and-file service members have a portion of their pay withheld to cover the cost of meals at on-base dining facilities. The thinking, presumably, is that it streamlines the process of feeding troops: you pay in, you get to eat. But like so many things in the nation’s biggest bureaucracy, an error or mix-up on something small can gum up the works on much bigger things.
Over the weekend, soldiers at Fort Johnson, Louisiana, ran into one of those hiccups when an administrative delay with those automatic payments and some confusing signs at the base’s only dining hall left soldiers turned away from meals. Once that was cleared up and soldiers got the OK to eat, they had to pay out of pocket.
The trouble began when soldiers headed to the dining hall for a meal this weekend were met with signs stating that soldiers experiencing access card meal plan errors would be “turned away,” according to an image posted to the Army Reddit page that was confirmed by the poster.
Several soldiers, he said, found that their annual meal card plans were not working.
“When someone stops me or my soldiers or interrupts their pay, their food, or their time off, I hate that so much. You don’t get a lot of free time. You don’t get a lot of food. The minimum you can get are the bare necessities,” the soldier said. “When someone tries to stop that, it sends me over the edge.”
The DFAC was the only option on base, base officials confirmed, because a second dining hall has been closed for 45 days due to HVAC renovations. However, the signs about soldiers being “turned away” were wrong, said a spokesperson.
“No soldiers were turned away from the dining facility,” said Shelby Waryas, a spokesperson for the base. “We were made aware that a sign posted in the DFAC caused some confusion. As soon as the issue was identified, leadership took immediate action to replace the sign with the correct information to ensure soldiers understood they would not be denied a meal.”
Despite the Army’s insistence that personnel were not turned away, the specialist who posted to Reddit told Task & Purpose he was told he couldn’t eat there because of the meal card issues. The soldier said staff at the dining hall refused to use a head count form — a hand-written log that soldiers sign so that money can be pulled from their accounts later.
That left one option: paying out of pocket.
The signs directed soldiers to go to their S1, the unit’s office tasked with handling personnel issues. Waryas said that meal card holders who paid out of pocket “are in the process of being reimbursed.”
Several soldiers wondered if the issue began when they returned from an overseas deployment, which moves soldiers to different meal deduction plans. But the Army said the snafu was “not related to redeployment operations” but rather because the meal plans the soldiers were on had not been updated through their unit S1.
The struggle to make meals easy
It isn’t the first time that meal card issues have sent soldiers in search of food. In February, there were posts on Hots&Cots that soldiers at Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, were denied dining hall access for a similar meal card issue.
In 2018, Army leaders made changes to the way soldiers could use meal entitlement benefits by adding the ability to swipe their CACs at base dining halls.
“Soldiers will be able to swipe their CACs with the new meal authorization codes at any Army dining facility to purchase their meals easily and in a more efficient manner,” the service said in a September 2018 release, adding that it would “streamline the meal card management process” for administrative personnel to “process meal payments more efficiently, especially when soldiers participate in field duty.”
But experts on Army quality of life issues say the reality has often failed to live up to the promise.
“Why are we making feeding soldiers so hard? I mean, colleges and universities have figured this out,” said Rob Evans, founder of Hots & Cots, an app designed to give troops living on base a voice around quality of life issues.
Soldiers and veterans, including Army Reddit moderators, took to social media over the weekend to express their frustrations with the posted sign telling soldiers to go ask their S1, who would likely not be available on the weekends.
“What are they supposed to do for food, go to the [post exchange] or go spend their own money when they’re already paying money for food?” Evans said.
In recent years, the Army has pledged to transform the way it feeds soldiers by making on-base food more nutritious and accessible during off-hours. Part of those efforts include looking at how to increase the number of soldiers who eat at base dining facilities.
“There’s only one DFAC open, which is a model that a lot of installations are doing where they’re going down to one dining facility open on the weekend and the rest are kiosks,” Evans said.
The lack of food options for soldiers on post is also compounded by the fact that many rely on the DFACs as their only access to regular meals. A January 2023 RAND Corporation report found that nearly 25% of active duty troops are considered ‘food insecure’ with higher rates among troops living on post.
Fort Johnson’s two dining halls and its kiosks are scheduled to be fully operational by May 5, Waryas said.
“Fort Johnson leadership remains committed to providing reliable, consistent dining services that support the health, readiness, and quality of life of every soldier,” Waryas said. “We appreciate the patience and flexibility of our soldiers and leaders as we complete these necessary administrative and infrastructure improvements.”
Tracking meal card usage
In March 2022, a Government Accountability Office report found that the services, including the Army, did not track whether servicemembers with meal entitlements use that benefit. Army food program officials told the GAO that they do not have data on the total population of soldiers with meal entitlements and that it can vary each day because of always-changing field leave or deployments. A GAO recommendation that the Army track entitlement use is still open. A planned Army software change is in the process to track dining facility patrons but the GAO website states that there have been no updates as of April 2025.
The GAO said that tracking meal entitlement use would help food program officials assess whether more steps are needed to increase servicemembers’ use of their benefit and how to prioritize resources.
“Information on the extent to which soldiers, sailors, and Marines use their meal entitlements could provide a valuable data point for food program budget officials to consider when determining how much to budget for meal entitlements,” GAO said.