At the March 14 meeting of the A.S. Council, councilmembers and staffers from the Grove Caffe stuck their brains together – and also butted heads – over how to deal with the nearly $23,000 operating deficit the Grove faces.
The majority of the council appeared surprised that the Grove was facing financial problems, but this is neither a new issue nor an unexpected one. Though construction in the Student Center is exacerbating the situation, even in the best years, the Grove – along with other A.S. enterprises – barely breaks even. And it’s not difficult to see why.
Running a college business is inherently more difficult than running most businesses: As seniors graduate annually, student businesses lose their most experienced employees and a substantial portion of their regular customer base. One of the possible solutions put forward at the meeting, hiring a staff manager to oversee operations at the Grove, would probably slow this annual evaporation of business experience. A manager has certainly helped A.S. Lecture Notes, another A.S. enterprise, ease back into the black.
But as Grove employees and A.S. councilmembers pointed out at the meeting, a manager would come with a deal-breaking price tag – around $40,000, according to Assistant Vice President of Enterprise Affairs Sydney Goldberg. A hired manager would have to earn back his or her salary on top of the current $23,000 fiscal gap.
More importantly, hiring a nonstudent to manage A.S. enterprises would undermine the main goal of A.S. Enterprise Operations, which is to encourage student entrepreneurship. What’s the point of having a student-operated business if it’s going to be run by a hired professional, with students relegated to service jobs they can get at any McDonalds?
For better solutions, the Grove and the A.S. Enterprise Office should follow the guidelines of their own charter and compare notes (so to speak) with the office’s most successful enterprise, A.S. Lecture Notes. This service has an in-demand product that faces very little on-campus competition.
The co-ops, student-run nonprofits that are independent of the A.S. Council, keep afloat by settling into similar in-demand niches: the General Store boasts lower prices than other campus stores and is the only on-campus vendor of cigarettes; the Food Co-op aims at the vegan and vegetarian market; and Groundwork Books carries titles that the UCSD Bookstore doesn’t have the cojones to stock. And doubt not that the Che Cafe has a target audience in mind.
But the main products at the Grove – coffee, soups and sandwiches – are readily available in other places at comparable prices, which makes the business difficult to sell as unique. A key selling point is the eatery’s fantastic location, which gives it probably the best coffeeshop ambiance on campus.
A successful business plan at the Grove must aggressively court incoming students, potential customers who could push the eatery back from the brink. Regular concert nights (a la Espresso Roma’s Monday night concerts, which are heavily advertised by University Centers) and a barrage of Welcome Week flyers might get on-campus residents in the door, while the ambiance will keep them coming back.
But the fiscal hemorrhage at the Grove is symptomatic of a larger problem with the A.S. Enterprise Operations office that reaches far beyond its current head. By now it’s no surprise to anyone that effective communication between the operations office and the enterprises is seriously lacking. The enterprise operations charter charges the office with “”analyzing and discussing the status or progress of current enterprises”” and “”strengthening the sense of cooperation between the enterprises and the ASUCSD,”” but if the responses of Grove employees are any indication, this rarely happens.
The charter even appoints a liaison officer who “”shall work on behalf of the Commissioner to monitor and oversee dining and/or food related operations, including, but not limited to, the Grove Caffe”” – the only food-related A.S. operation. Where is this person and what have they been up to since fall?
Moreover, the office has been plagued by a lack of serious innovation. Other “”enterprises”” run by the commission – a cluster of massage chairs in Price Center and a challenge course – are more like afterthoughts than well-planned endeavors. Another, A.S. Soft Reserves, has only a tenuous grasp on success, mainly because university policy prevents competitors from selling readers on campus.
How about a student-funded parking structure? A joint venture between the Associated Students and Transportation and Parking Services (which has its hands tied by UC Master Plan funding restrictions) might use student fees to pay for part of a new parking structure, with a portion of annual ticket and meter revenues put back into council coffers.
Even better, enterprises could take advantage of the talents of UCSD students:
How about a Web design service? UCSD students have started online blog sites and discussion forums (sduncensored.com and the now-defunct YouCSD.com) – how about it?
Or how about a student-run computer repair service? There’s certainly a talented pool of technology-capable students, and the only organized competition is from Academic Computing Services, which charges a whopping $75 per hour.
Or how about an A.S.-run book exchange? There’s five or six private exchanges out there, but an “”official”” version with A.S. financial backing would concentrate participants in a single location and give buyers and sellers a better chance of finding what they need. Operation costs would be minimal – especially if you stole some people from the Web design group.
Undoubtedly, these ventures would cost money. But surely the lobbies that passed a $3 million athletics fee could muster the political muscle to scrape up a paltry sum to materialize a few genuinely enterprising businesses.
