Coke machine will soon be returned to the Bookstore
For students who enjoyed grabbing a Coke while shopping at the USU Bookstore last year, that option will soon be available again, said Dwight Davis, associate vice president for auxiliary services.
The Coke cooler present during the 2007 spring semester broke down and had to be replaced because the drinks weren’t staying cold, Davis said. A new one was ordered last fall but hasn’t arrived yet, Davis said.
“It’s going to be soon but I don’t the know the exact date we’ll install it,” Davis said of the new cooler. “It will be after rush and after we retract some of the extra registers for rush to keep the lines down. We’ll get at it at that point.”
The absence of the cooler is a familiar scene to what occurred nearly a year ago where a conflict broke out between the Bookstore and Food and Dining Services over the placement of a new cooler in the Bookstore.
In November 2006, the Bookstore installed a Coke cooler near the checkout registers and charged 99 cents for a 20-ounce bottle, the lowest price on campus. But tensions soon emerged between the Bookstore and Chuck Weaver, the former director of Food and Dining Services, over the price of the Coke products, the over-saturation of the soda market in the Taggart Student Center and the ability of the Bookstore to sell Coke products.
Weaver said because Food and Dining Services was responsible for the Coke contract, the cooler in the Bookstore concerned his department and could create potential problems. The Bookstore was asked to remove the Coke cooler and started selling the remaining sodas at 75 cents to clear the inventory.
After vehement student response in opposition to the removal of the Bookstore cooler, a deal was worked out between Food and Dining Services and the Bookstore to allow an evaluation period.
Reflecting on the conflict last year, Davis said, “I guess last year, my perspective was as it came to my attention we worked together immediately. The goal was to meet our overall mission. We worked together. We’ve got a great team working together.”
Some time after the evaluation period was up, the cooler broke down, and it has taken some time to get the new cooler in place.
Davis said he thinks putting the cooler back in Bookstore will be a good thing based on student response.
“As we visited with students, the feeling was that we were able to provide a convenience factor of being able to buy a drink while they’re in the Bookstore purchasing something else,” he said.
A year later, the battle over the Coke cooler is over and a stable agreement has been established between the Bookstore and Food and Dining Services, Davis said. Things have changed since then as well, as both the director of the Bookstore and the director of Food and Dining Services are new. Attitudes toward the Coke contract have changed as well.
Alan Andersen, director of Dining Services, said his department is one of two on campus that can purchase a contact with Coke, the other being the athletic department. He said this is done to prevent confusion over Coke machine placement and to provide a central contact for Coke to work with at USU.
Andersen said Food and Dining Services is “the largest purchaser of Coke” and the Bookstore works “closely with us.”
“I’m the go-between with (the Bookstore) getting a Coke program set up there,” Andersen said. “It’s all about them helping meet their customers’ needs. If David (Parkinson, the Bookstore director) feels like they need to sell Coke down there to meet their customers’ needs, I’m fully down with that.”
Davis said Food and Dining Services has also worked out a deal to help provide the Bookstore with cold drinks to stock in the new cooler.
“It’s important to be able to put drinks in the cooler that are already cold,” Davis said. “The Bookstore is collaborating with Dining Services to have drinks that are already cooled and we stock the cooler with those drinks. That’s one of those issues we realized was a problem, so that’s been fixed. They’re working together in that regard to provide the service from start to finish that drinks are cool.”
As far as the price goes, no official price has been set yet, though Andersen said it is up to the Bookstore to set its own prices.
“(Parkinson) has leeway to set his own price. We work together,” Andersen said. “It doesn’t make sense to compete against each other. We try together to provide the best pricing in town.”
Davis said, “We all fall under the umbrella of auxiliary services, and quite honestly we have a real collaborative team in terms of the overall mission of our auxiliary is to exceed customer expectations while providing world-class customer service and product. We’re here to serve Utah State University. We have a good group working together.”
Andersen said Food and Dining Services and the Bookstore are independent of one another and work to pay their respective bills, but “any money that’s left over is reinvested into the university somehow. The money they make doesn’t come back to me. They run their business, I run my business.”
-seth.h@aggiemail.usu.edu