In the cloistered arcade of the Memorial Union, students will soon tote lattes and textbooks rather than video-game pistols.
Starting next fall, a Peet?s Coffee and Tea will occupy the space in Memorial Union now taken up by the arcade and the former STA Travel room. Where two pint-sized girls stomped through a frenzied match of ?Dance Dance Revolution Supernova? Tuesday afternoon, coffee drinkers will eventually stomp off their boots before ordering a cup of joe.
The vacant travel agency will become a Union-operated cafe offering the menu and decor of the national coffee shop chain. An entrance and seating area will replace the arcade, which Union management said has declined in use over the past decade.
It?s a win-win-win situation, according to the Union and Peet?s, which inked a licensing deal in January: Students will get Peet?s brand of ?artisan coffee,? the Union will get a revamped coffee service, and Peet?s will get $10,000 and 5 percent of each month?s sales for five years, as stipulated in the contract.
Union officials say the new coffee shop, which is slated to open Sept. 1, will meet a student need and generate money toward Union programming. But some worry the self-proclaimed ?heart and soul of Madison? will lose a little of its soul with the introduction of a national coffee chain.
?The Union was and should still be a place with unique options,? said Jake Diestelmann, a University of Wisconsin senior who sells beer at Der Stiftskeller in the Memorial Union. ?An outside force [like Peet?s] kind of ruins that.?
Peet?s operates 166 retail stores nationally, most of which are on the West Coast, according to a spokesperson. The company also has 37 licensed partners, including colleges and student unions.
Amanda Green, vice president of public relations for the Wisconsin Union, said she initially worried the Peet?s outlet would run counter to the spirit of the Union but has since warmed to the idea of a ?branded concept? as the most feasible and cost-effective solution to a pressing need.
?It goes against our values but does not compromise them,? Green said. ?By being able to temporarily reevaluate our values ? we are going to benefit greatly.?
Deciding the future of Union coffee
The push for a coffee shop in the Union grew out of an online survey conducted during the lead-up to the Student Union Initiative, a plan to renovate the Memorial Union and construct a new Union South that passed during troubled elections in fall 2006.
A survey administered in fall 2005 by the planning firm Brailsford and Dunlavey asked more than 41,000 students ?to indicate what they would like to see added or improved in each Wisconsin Union facility,? according to a report of the results. Of the 5,483 students who responded, 44 percent picked ?coffeehouse? for the Memorial Union, making it the second most popular choice behind ?movie theater? with 54 percent.
The following summer, the Union administration asked food service directors from other student unions to review the Union?s own food service. According to Wisconsin Union Associate Director Hank Walter, their recommendations included a coffee shop established under a licensing agreement with a coffeehouse chain.
Both the survey and the peer review prompted Union officials to consider constructing a coffee shop in place of STA Travel, which was at the time attempting to renegotiate a lower rent and whose contract has since expired, Walter said. They also visited other student unions with chain coffee shops.
?The mission of the Union is building connections between the people of the campus community, and a coffeehouse is one of those things that promote that,? he said.
The Union administration decided to contract with a coffee shop chain because such an arrangement would offer the quickest and most efficient way to bring high-quality coffee to the Union, Walter said. Under what a Peet?s spokesperson called a standard licensing and supply agreement, the Union will pay to build and operate the shop, while Peet?s will provide planning advice and on-site training, as well as its recipes.
In addition, officials also considered moneymaking potential; although the Union made a profit last year, this year it will likely lose money, Walter predicted. A financial crunch would mean either higher fees or a cut in student programming since the Union receives 30 percent of its funding from student fees, he said.
Green also noted working with a national brand was simply the easiest route.
?Financial, quality and path-of-least-resistance concerns ? I would use all of these qualifiers,? Green said in describing the decision.
Upstairs/Downstairs: A question of values
The criteria developed by the administrators and the Union Council ? a policymaking body with a student majority ? don?t always resonate in the public areas downstairs in the Memorial Union. Some employees and students view the Union?s choice of Peet?s with skepticism.
?Ours is kind of a different Union than other schools?,? said Steph Haima, a graduate student studying in Der Rathskeller Tuesday night. ?The Union has so much character, and adding a chain will detract from that. I can?t believe the Union would agree to that.?
Dan, a Union food service employee for 12 years ? who asked his last name be withheld for fear of retribution ? called the Peet?s deal ?the start of something bad.?
?I think down the road I wouldn?t be surprised to see a McDonald?s in [the Union],? he said.
Ald. Eli Judge, a UW junior and city council member whose 8th district includes the Memorial Union, said he would always prefer local and regional coffeehouse brands to national chains.
?I would hope that what we sacrifice in not having locally owned or Union-owned and supplied coffee will be made up ? in going to Peet?s,? Judge said.
Although the new Peet?s represents a break from tradition, the change is not evidence of a privatization trend and was the only feasible option in terms of practicality and finances, Green said.
Union President John Barnhardt, a senior, said bringing a corporate operation into the Memorial Union is ?scary? given his own love for the building. But he defended the Union?s decision on the grounds that Peet?s is not ?a big franchise? like Starbucks, another contender for the contract.
?[Peet?s has] a much different feeling, and we were careful to watch out for that,? Barnhardt said.
Paying heed to the student voice?
Barnhardt also chafed at what he perceived to be an outcry over the Union?s decision-making process.
?There?s the assumption that students weren?t involved in the process, and that really goes against the grain of what the Union?s all about ? it?s pretty absurd,? Barnhardt said.
Union officials pointed to the online ?Wisconsin Union Coffeehouse Survey? conducted in April 2007, which gauged students? preferences by asking them to rate the atmosphere and products at local coffee shops. In addition, the survey sought information on cafe-going habits and asked students to rank the importance of ?Fair Trade Coffee? and other features.
A link to the Zoomerang survey was emailed to 14,999 randomly selected students, garnering 3,400 responses to the most-answered questions. The Union?s marketing wing did a ?very reasonable job of conducting a market research study,? according to John Stevenson, associate director of the UW Survey Center.
Students were not surveyed about how a Union coffee shop would operate due to complexity of the issue, Walter said. But he said the student-dominated Union Council ? which first heard specific information about a licensed coffee shop at a July 2007 meeting ? had several chances to speak out against the proposal.
Green, however, said she felt it was ?too late? to express a different opinion.
?When you see the director of the Union and his second-in-command are totally in favor of it, what are you going to say?? she asked.
Regardless of whether students were properly involved, Judge called for an increased effort to notify the public. ?These kinds of decisions should be publicized enough so that surprises like we had can be avoided,? he said.
Just a cup of joe
Two nearby campus buildings operate their own coffeehouses. The University Book Store has run a small independent coffee shop in its entrance area since 1992, according to Vice President Kevin Phelps. Cafe Atrio, which brews Starbucks coffee, has never been difficult to run, although the lack of a seating area probably helps, Phelps said.
The nearby University Club also holds a small cafe that employee Jennifer Buelow said is fairly simple to operate. Buelow ? a freshman who previously worked at a Starbucks shop in a hotel ? said in her experience, most coffee shop employees can master the entire menu of drinks in a day or two.
?Eight hours of training, and you should be fine,? Buelow said.
But some students bemoaned the Memorial Union?s current ability to serve coffee. Three locations in the building brew its Johnson Bros.-supplied coffee.
?I tried it, and it was a big mistake,? said junior Olger Nano, who was studying in the Lakefront with a mug of Espresso Royale coffee Tuesday night. ?It was lukewarm and improperly brewed and not strong enough.?
Nano blamed poor quality of beans and inconsistent training of the Union staff brewing the coffee, echoing concerns cited by Union officials.
Many students don?t mind the Union?s coffee options and aren?t worried about the new Peet?s.
?I can appreciate why people might be upset, but I don?t really care either way,? said sophomore Sam Hay, who was studying near Der Stiftskeller.
Ultimately, the pitting of intangibles like ?character? against what administrators consider a more pragmatic stance seems ready to play out at Wisconsin as it has elsewhere.
Other campuses have licensed with Peet?s including the University of California-Berkeley, which operates two Peet?s coffeehouses in university buildings. The Berkeley student union is also considering adding a coffee shop run entirely by a national chain, according to a spokesperson.
?I think this is the kind of world we live in these days,? said Arthur Hove, a local historian who authored ?The University of Wisconsin: A Pictorial History? and did not speak strongly for or against the Peet?s shop. ?These kind of considerations come into play all over.?
