Starbucks enters the race to caffeinate students.
URI welcomes Starbucks to its Kingston campus in Brookside Bistro, the Fascitelli Center for Advanced Engineering and the Daily Grind. PHOTO CREDIT: Elizabeth Wong
The University of Rhode Island has run on Dunkin’ for many years, but Starbucks is finally making its way to the Kingston campus this semester.
Starbucks is currently doing a soft opening for three locations on URI’s campus in Brookside Bistro, the Fascitelli Center for Advanced Engineering, and the Daily Grind. These campus coffee spots are offering a limited number of drinks currently, but will have a full menu soon.
By Oct. 4, all three locations will have between 70 and 80 percent of all the Starbucks beverage options. This includes cold brew, refreshers, teas, the pink drink, cappuccinos, lattes and more. There will also be frappuccinos; however, this is exclusive to the Brookside location.
Students will also find digital menus with a clear understanding of what is available as a meal plan grab-and-go swipe during the early-October launch.
One of the major reasons URI Dining Services is bringing Starbucks to the University comes from student feedback they’ve seen in past semesters.
“Whenever I talk to students, I always say that their feedback is important,” Pierre St-Germain, the director of Dining Services, said. “So as we look to make changes in the dining program, or what’s available on campus, that’s kind of a critical thing.”
When it comes to bringing a new national brand such as Starbucks to campus, there are many steps for Dining Services to go through, St-Germain said. First, they consider the student feedback. Then, they create a bid proposal. This is a document that outlines what Dining Services wants from the company. Then, the University releases their request publicly, and any company who believes they can fulfill the requests put in their bids. After all of the bids have been submitted, Dining Services reviews them and makes a decision of who can best satisfy their initial request.
One of the major challenges that Dining Services faced adding Starbucks to the Kingston campus was training staff on how to make all of the drinks.
“The first struggle of training was that we were training on a day that we’re normally open,” Jo-Anne Stephens, URI’s retail dining administrator, said. “Instead of having a full day of training while being closed, each of our three Starbucks locations just had a two-hour chunk of time with the two Starbucks reps.”
She said that many student employees have worked with coffee stores before such as Dunkin Donuts, Marylou’s or Starbucks, so they are familiar with these new recipes and orders.
Although the lines have been long, students seem to be excited about the new options. The Dining Services staff is actively learning how to get wait times down for students in line.
“I have been speaking to the students and the customers waiting in line, and they seem to be more excited than perturbed about having to wait,” Stephens said. “It’s something new when we’re learning we’ll get the speed of service and the ticket times down, but like anything new, there’s a learning curve.”
There are also plans in the works to create a remote ordering option for on-the-go customers.
According to St-Germain, the University has started a collaboration with Grubhub in order to be able to preorder items on campus.
St-Germain anticipates that by Oct. 4, certain Starbucks beverages with a Bagelz brand bagel will be available as a grab-and-go order.