Webster University’s Cyber Café in the Emerson Library has housed three different coffee shops in as many years: Kaldi’s Coffee, Sun Roasters Coffee and this fall, Starbucks Coffee.
Not only is Starbucks now offered in the library, but prepackaged Starbucks is available at all dining locations from the East Academic Building to Marletto’s to the University Center.
Starbucks is the third coffee shop to be in Cyber Café since June 2020, when a petition on change.org forced Kaldi’s off campus. The student-led petition on change.org accused Kaldi’s at the time of unfairly treating its Black employees.
After Kaldi’s left, Webster replaced it with Sun Coffee Roasters, but that didn’t last long, apparently due to supply-chain and product-availability issues.
“When I came on board at least one shipment took a month to get here,” said Matt Sullentrop, general manager of Sodexo, the company that runs the university’s food services. “(We were) not able to deliver on our product and service to our customers at the level that we wanted to.”
While supply-chain issues were a problem in the past, the university hopes with Starbucks, those problems don’t resurface.
“Because it is such a huge national brand, it is a lot easier to get something when you need something and hopefully less likely that they are going to run out of a product,” said Katie Knetzer, University Center director and co-advisor of the Dining Advisory Board.
In the first month since Starbucks has been on campus, there have been big changes at Cyber Café. Not only does it serve Starbucks drinks, it also has brought back food items from prior years, including salads, sandwiches and sushi, along with new-to-campus Rootberry meals.
“This year is way busier than it was last year, in terms of the flow,” said senior Shavante Brogley, who works as a barista at Cyber Café.
When adding Starbucks to Cyber Café, not only did Webster upgrade some of the equipment, but the employees who work there got training from Starbucks on how to make the drinks.
“They came two weeks before school started, and we had five hours blocked out to figure out how to make the drinks,” Brogley said. “We have ‘drink bibles’ and it shows us what drink we are making and the recipe for the drink. The newer stuff was the Refreshers and the Cold Brew machine.”
One thing Starbucks regulars will notice is while Starbucks drinks are available in Cyber Café, the chain’s food menu items are not. The concept is part of a “We Proudly Serve” program between Starbucks and the university.
“This is a Starbucks ‘We Proudly Serve.’ We buy their supplies and we can use them within their guidelines,” said Rachael Amick, director of Housing and Residential Life and co-advisor of the Dining Advisory Board. “We get to have a little bit of control over the pricing. We have more flexibility with the ‘We Proudly Serve.’”
With the control that Webster has over the pricing, certain drinks come out to be less expensive at Cyber Café than they do at the Starbucks in the Old Orchard Shopping Center.
For example, a venti Strawberry Acai Refresher and a danish on campus cost a student with a meal plan or Gorlok Bucks $6.50. At the Starbucks in Old Orchard, that same order costs upwards of $10.
“My goal is to keep costs as low for students as possible,” Amick said.
The lower prices are a good thing, because one other difference between the on-campus Starbucks and a typical Starbucks is that the Cyber Café does not take the Starbucks app, which allows users to accumulate “stars” for free drinks and participate in other customer-appreciation promotions.
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