Editor’s note: This story has been updated with further information from the WKU Restaurant Group.

Panda Express lovers, the time has come.

Orange Chicken is now a Value Meal on campus this fall, meaning it can be purchased with a select side and a regular-sized drink for one meal swipe at The Commons at Helm Library.             

“We’ve had student requests to have Orange Chicken on the value meal, but we also had to take the operations into consideration, as well,” the Restaurant Group said in an email. “We were able to align operations to be able to keep up with the demand, so we were able to add it this fall.”                                                                                        

Previously, the popular entree was not included as part of the WKU Restaurant Group Value Meal options, something many students didn’t agree with. In February, the Restaurant Group posted an Instagram Reel about students having to use meal dollars for Orange Chicken, which has now reached almost 55,000 likes. 

The Restaurant Group said that student reaction to the addition of Orange Chicken as a Value Meal has been positive.

“It’s a good thing that they made it a meal swipe because it’s so popular,” Erica Shelton, a junior nursing major, told the Herald. 

Panda Express isn’t the only restaurant to implement changes this semester. The Den, located in the First-Year Village, DaVinci’s, located in Snell Hall, and Moe’s, located in The Commons, each added at least one new value meal option students can purchase for a swipe.

The full list of value meal options for fall 2024 can be found here. 

Alongside new value meal opinions, students this year will no longer use Dining Sidekick to order food on campus. Instead, the app has been replaced by Grubhub. Students who seek to order food ahead can log into Grubhub with their WKU credentials. 

“The Dining Sidekick platform was ‘sunsetting’ so we needed to find another mobile ordering solution for WKU,” said the Restaurant Group. “Grubhub was the platform that best fit our needs at WKU and was something that most students had already heard of.”

The Restaurant Group recognized the difficulties that may come with the change, but it believes students will come to adapt over time.

Content Editor Ali Costellow can be reached at [email protected]