For five years now, students have enjoyed Captain’s Coffee, or Seattle’s Best, in the library on campus, giving them that coffee-fix that they so often need, along with being a place to hang out and complete assignments.
However, recently, UTM and Sodexo have been exploring the idea of bringing a Starbucks to campus, giving students an even higher quality coffee establishment.
“I can’t confirm or deny anything at this point. We’re always trying to look into ways to bring innovation or expand our retail brands, so Starbucks is something that I am looking in to right now. If it were to come to campus, it would replace our current Seattle’s Best in the library. There would probably be some construction, but it definitely wouldn’t be its own concept away from the building or a free-standing location,” said Sodexo General Manager Benjamin Long.
According to Long, this Starbucks would offer better quality drinks to students without much of a price difference and still allow them to use Skyhawk Cards.
[The menu] would be very similar to what we have now … but more extended,” Long said. “I’m trying my best to negotiate the costs so that they don’t go up very much more than what they are right now.”
With this change, Sodexo and UTM hope to give students better value drinks with a stronger retail brand.
“We want to be able to keep our retail brands strong for the students [and] give them the best value. Seattle’s Best has served us very well, but it’s been there for five years, so it’s about time to re-phase it, to look at if we can do it better. I think that Starbucks is a stronger brand, and it has more recognition,” Long said.
Not only would this give students better quality, but it would open up new options.
“[It] would give us the opportunity to do some of the cold drinks that we haven’t been able to do in the past,” Long said.
According to Long, if this new establishment happens on campus, it should be completed very soon.
“[If it were to come on campus it’d be] hopefully by the end of the semester. I was really trying for before now, but it just takes a lot of time planning everything out. So I’ve got a pretty good look on what it is, and I’ll be discussing it with the University,” Long said.
