Students who rely on campus dining services after midnight will need to prepare to search for other options — next semester, Cal Dining will offer no sit-down dining options after 11 p.m., with Crossroads dining hall no longer open until 2 a.m.

Crossroads previously offered late night service five days a week from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. after closing regular dinner service at 9 p.m. Instead, beginning in fall 2017, Crossroads will be open for continued service after dinner from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Sundays to Thursdays, according to campus spokesperson Adam Ratliff.

Ratliff said in an email the reduction of late night operations at Crossroads was needed as part of the campus’s “budget improvement strategy” and “the campus need to reduce costs.”

“These decisions were made this summer, and while it is too early to know what exact cost savings may look like, we anticipate this move will help us better serve our students during our regular breakfast, lunch, and dinner hours,” Ratliff said in an email. “We are not eliminating night service, though we are reducing some hours.”

Cal Dining has already scaled back late night dining services at other campus dining halls. Late night dining services at the Foothill dining commons — which originally had been offered from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. — were suspended and replaced with extended dinner service in April.

Ratliff noted that select Cal Dining locations will offer nighttime to-go food options past 11 p.m. The hours of The Den — a campus dining storefront next to Crossroads which contains a Peet’s Coffee & Tea store and a made-to-order deli — will be extended on Fridays and Saturdays to 12 a.m.

Talal Jaber, manager of Seniore’s Pizza on Durant Avenue, which remains open till 3 a.m., said his store makes about 70 to 80 percent of its business during night hours. Jaber added that competition between nearby businesses continues to grow, citing the addition of Taco Bell Cantina on Durant Avenue in January.

“I hope we can take a bite out of the additional customers (Crossroads) will be losing,” Jaber said. “There are just too many (businesses) in this area.”

Students had mixed reactions to the planned changes for Crossroads’ late night dining services. Campus rising junior Joe Harrison said he appreciated Crossroads’ revised operations schedule eliminated the previous hour gap in service, adding that the “cost of running late night — and hiring employees to work late shifts — might have been too high” to continue maintaining.

Rasika Sudharshan, another rising junior, raised some concerns about Crossroads’ new Late Night hours. Sudharshan noted that midnight was “not a stopping time for hungry students,” especially when students are studying on campus during finals season.

“Late night was also a cultural experience for students,” Sudharshan said. “I think if you surveyed students about what services they would want to see cut, Late Night would have been towards the bottom of the list.”

Bobby Lee is an assistant news editor. Contact Bobby Lee at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @bobbylee_dc.