Nectar at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., has been named the winner of the 2007 National Association of College and University Food Services (NACUFS) Best in the Business competition in The Big Idea: Customer Service Innovations category. This is the second year in a row that a Vanderbilt c/store has won the award.

Nectar, located in a freshman dormitory, is a natural-food store providing students high-quality foods and sundries in what it calls a “convenient, contemporary, Zen-like shopping experience.”

According to Camp Howard, associate director and executive chef for Vanderbilt Dining, the idea of creating a store featuring natural food came about through focus groups that are held on a regular basis and because students had requested these items in their other five c/stores on campus. “Over the past five years or so, we've had an increasing number of students asking for natural and organic and sustainable products in all of our markets,” he said. “They may be familiar with a certain frozen entrée or a certain beverage or some type of salty snack, so over time they would request these different items and we would bring them in if we could. They became very popular.”

Outtakes Café & Convenience Store at the University of San Francisco, in California, has been named the winner of the 2007 National Association of College and University Food Services (NACUFS) Best in the Business competition in the Foodservice Application category.

Outtakes Café & Convenience Store is what Holly Winslow, general manager at the school for Bon Appetit Management Co., calls a “multi-faceted solution to convenience retail and upscale dining needs. This venue serves as a great companion to the student dining scene as it acts as a retail convenience store offering vast quantities of groceries, from organic to comfort foods and of course all of the essentials of day-to-day dorm living.”

The store's food concept, called Fresh Cuisine, is the most popular element in the store. It consists of chef-prepared entrees that are created from scratch. The food offerings are prepared from the Main Market Kitchen, located on the school's lower campus. “The great thing about the concept is that they feel like they are still getting gourmet restaurant-style meals, and for me as a businessperson, without having all of the additional labor,” said Winslow.

The Fresh Cuisine line is made up of many different components, including homemade pizzas, calzones, soups and fresh baked breads, as well as a baked-potato bar with assorted toppings. “Then you finally get to the Fresh Cuisine cases, where you can select your own hot entrees, whether you are a vegan, vegetarian or carnivore,” she said. “We have something for everyone. The next deli case is filled with desserts and cookies and tarts and pies and cakes.”

Seawolves MarketPlace at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, has been named the winner of the 2007 National Association of College and University Food Services (NACUFS) Best in the Business competition in the Product Mix/Variety category.

“It all starts with a single cup of coffee,” said Donna Klingel, the manager of Seawolves MarketPlace and associate director for retail services, when asked what drives the store's product mix. The self-operated store offers 16 different varieties of Green Mountain coffee every day, in addition to a full line of espresso and cappuccino beverages.

“The self-serve coffee bar was specifically designed in the center of the store to provide a unique attraction around which the entire product mix of the store would be based,” she said. “When faculty, staff and students walk in to get their daily cup of coffee, they feel a sense of being in a friendly community, even though it is surrounded by an 1,100-acre campus.”

The three-sided coffee bar was created to allow for maximum customer interaction. “Students, faculty and staff from a wide variety of campus departments select and prepare their coffee while facing each other, encouraging conversation and friendly interactions,” said Klingel. “Along with their coffee, they can select from 10 to 12 different varieties of pastries brought in from two local bakeries: Rolling Pin and Harvest Bakery. The store sells over 75 muffins a day. Non-coffee drinkers can select any one of over 25 varieties of teas.”

Sparty's at Michigan State University in East Lansing has been named the winner of the 2007 National Association of College and University Food Services (NACUFS) Best in the Business competition in the Marketing/Merchandising category.

Sparty's has 19 different locations on campus and the school has a variety of programs designed to market the stores. “About two years ago, I began, with my team, really talking about the issue of image and what kind of image we are trying to portray to our customer base,” said Ken Deneau, general manager of the stores. “We work off of a three-pronged vision, which is our customers, our co-workers and our community. When you look at those issues, image is really important on all of those. What are you trying to be? What are you trying to convey yourself as?

We actually hold what we call image and opportunity meetings, which really play right into marketing — it is our name for marketing. What image are we going to be presenting? What are the opportunities out there for us? That puts us into a mental focus that things don't have to remain the same. Don't just keep doing what you've always done. That led us along in some different directions.”

One of those directions is a program called “Get Caught Being Our Customer.” In the past, the school did a typical loyalty-card program, where customers received punches or stamps on a card for purchasing a particular item, and when they reached the preset number of punches, they receive that item free. “We said there is a greater opportunity here, we don't need to be necessarily always doing the same thing,” he said. “We're giving away the product they would have bought anyway.”

He continued, “So we tried to create a vehicle that allowed us a lot of flexibility and we created the “Get Caught” card, which has the ability to have any number of punches. We have 10 spots on it, but we have created programs at times that only require five punches on those kinds of things. We use a standard card. The flip side of the card is blank and we are using a process of essentially labeling up that side with whatever the current offering is. That allows us to offer a program to customers, keep it flexible and to structure the programs separately if we want to, or collectively by groups or across all 19 locations.”

Campus Market at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo, Calif., has been named the winner of the 2007 National Association of College and University Food Services (NACUFS) Best in the Business competition in the Layout & Design category.

“We are extremely pleased to be recognized for this and even more pleased to be able to share it with our fellow schools,” said Alan Cushman, associate director of Campus Dining. “The best part of being part of NACUFS is that we’re sharing our accomplishments with others so that they can emulate them. Basically, we just all get better together. A big piece of that for us is we are pleased to be recognized and being able to share that, as we all go forward and keep on improving on one another, because as soon as I give the idea to someone else, they make it better and they give it back. It keeps on bouncing and raising the bar for all of us. It’s a wonderful thing. Our customers are the end winners and that is what it is all about.”

Cushman said that the Campus Market replaced the Campus Store, which was first built in 1968. “The campus was growing towards that northwest area of campus and we kept adding components to this little store,” he said. “We put a barbecue out front. We built a counter in front of the office to do coffee and espresso. Its design was very convoluted and we were getting a tremendous amount of business, and that end of campus had minimal service at the time. We needed to grow that area.”

In a continuing series of articles, C/Stores On Campus is following the building of a new Living Learning Center (LLC) on the campus of Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., from conceptualization to its scheduled opening in July 2008.

The first major update is a new name for the LLC. “It is being called the Harper Center for Student Life and Learning,” said Rowland Hughes, director of the Skutt Student Center. “That comes due to an endowment from Mike Harper and his deceased wife, Josie. Mr. Harper has been on our board of directors; in fact, he holds an Emeritus status with the Creighton University Board of Directors. He previously was the CEO of ConAgra Foods and has been very active in Creighton University activities and affairs for two to three decades. Consequently, he has endowed the building for money to operate it once it is open.”

Selecting Product Mix
Hughes said that the school has started to conduct a limited number of focus groups to decide what types of products the c/store in the center will carry. “We have held three focus groups to this point. One was with the Inner Hall Resident Government Association. That was moreso just to talk about food service in general in the building. We have also met with a law-school group of professional students. The law school will be located cattycorner across from the Harper Center. That was interesting. Those students are very opinionated and they have completed their undergraduate degree and especially for the sports café and the convenience shop, they had a lot to say. We’re in the process of summarizing that right now.”