By Jessica Wind (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: September 4, 2013
AfterMath’s annual reopening was abruptly cut short on its first day. After approximately three hours of service, the pub closed its doors.
The student-run lounge made many changes over the summer to run a more student-oriented and efficient business. Three students were brought on board to divide managerial duties and new kitchen and serving staff were hired.
Predicting a customer count similar to last year, AfterMath opened its doors on the first day of classes only to be swamped by hungry students, explains SUS president Shane Potter.
“All our projections got blown out of the water. Way more people than we ever anticipated showed up,” he says.
Food appeared to pile up at the window and on the edge of the bar as some students waited over an hour for their food. AfterMath events and marketing manager Stephanie Martin elaborated on the causes of a the congested service.
“The issues – there’s just too many to effectively run the service. Debit/credit machine [was] not working, the squirrel system where we input all of our menu items [was] not quite working properly either,” she explains.
The doors were closed to preserve a high level of service, Martin notes.
“With all the hiccups that we’re having … we’re not having service up to our standard and so we’d rather not offer the service,” she says, adding that they will reevaluate and reopen once they can provide students the optimal campus lounge experience.
Potter assures that the lounge will be up and running again sometime next week, once they can hire and train more staff to accommodate the customer flow.
Potter announced the rescheduled grand opening on Facebook.
“At this time, we feel it is better to re-launch our grand opening once we have implemented the necessary changes for increased demand,” he says.
But for now the doors will remain closed.
