The cafeteria on UFV’s Abbotsford campus, including Triple O’s, has closed for the rest of the summer due to the lack of students on campus.
The Abbotsford campus Tim Hortons will remain open, but with reduced summer hours. In Chilliwack, the Rivers Dining room will be closed until September and the Spirit Bay Cafe will have limited hours.
According to Cameron Roy, director of ancillary services, there is hesitancy to cut the operating hours of Tim Hortons; the hours are expected to stay the same for June and July, meaning Tim Hortons will be open 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 8 a.m. – 2 p.m. on Fridays.
About half as many students attend UFV in the summer semester as they do in the winter and fall semesters. Roy said most students take only one or two classes in the summer semester, rather than a full course load, and do not stay on campus after class as they would in the fall and winter. This change in campus life was a motivating factor in the decision to close the cafeteria but keep Tim Hortons open.
“Students aren’t typically asking for lunch to the extent that would allow [Dana Hospitality] to conduct business,” Roy said.
According to Roy, closing the cafeteria is not unusual in the summer, and has been done before due to the reduced student population.
With the way production and service is structured for Triple O’s, sending employees home due to slow business is not an option — there must be at least three employees for it to run. With what little sales is made through the cafeteria in the summer, the labour costs of keeping these employees on is not affordable. The cafeteria — run by Dana Hospitality, UFV’s food service provider — involves the use of stations (such as the deli station, where students can have custom sandwiches made) in its business approach, and requires a number of different people to run those stations, resulting in the same labour-cost issue as Triple O’s.
“We want to be [open] and provide good service for students, but if there are no students around to service, that’s when it becomes problematic for a company like Dana [Hospitality],” Roy said.
Dana Hospitality manages the Triple O’s contract on behalf of UFV. According to Roy, the partnership between the two worked well as Dana Hospitality is a pioneer in sustainability — evidenced in its compostable single-use utensils and plates, practices which larger companies do not share — and Triple O’s is similarly progressive.
“Their brand and their approach to food is fresh, from scratch. They need storage, they need an area for actually preparing food rather than defrosting and microwaving, and that’s really the appeal of Dana [Hospitality],” Roy said. “One of the drawbacks of that is it’s very labour intensive. It’s a lot of prep work that needs to be done. So there is a cost attached to that, and if there’s traffic and revenue to cover that, then they’re all in.”
Although the cafeteria is closed, UFV will still run catering throughout the summer as needed.
