Food Services proposes shorter summer hours for SLC Tim Hortons
At the Food Advisory Board meeting today, Director of Food Services Lee Elkas proposed a summer schedule of reduced hours of operation for the SLC Tim Hortons. The changes would mean the Tim Hortons would not be open 24/7 and will be closed during holiday weekends.
According to documents from today's meeting, the proposed schedule would set the closing time at 10:00 pm on Mondays to Thursdays, and 4:00 pm on Fridays to Sundays. The hours of operation would return to 24/7 for the period of 29 July to 10 August then back to reduced hours until the end of August. It will also be closed on weekends beginning 12 August.
Also proposed are closures for the Victoria Day weekend (20 May to 22 May), Canada Day weekend (1 July to 3 July) and for the period of 28 August to Labour day (4 September).
Because of the Labour Day weekend closures, hundreds of orientation leaders that are on campus preparing for orientation week and moving new students into their residences will have to go off-campus if they want Tim Hortons.
The Food Advisory Board was established in 1996 by Residence Council and the university. Its purpose as stated on its website is to be "[...] the mechanism to advise UW on campus food issues and, specifically, to deal with the food service component of residences [...]" The committee consists of eight student representatives - three residents, three dons, and two students appointed by Feds - and 13 university staff.
The agreement, signed 2004, between Feds and the university regarding the SLC Tim Hortons covers issues dealing with hours of operation and involvement of the Food Advisory Board.
Specfically, sections 3.c and 3.d say:
3. Student Accessibility
[...] c. Tim Hortons SLC will be open on a 24 hour basis from the first day of classes until the last day of exams each term. During the periods in which classes and exams are not being held, shorter hours, as appropriate, will apply. Tim Hortons SLC will be closed whenever the University is closed, ie: Christmas holidays, storm closings, etc. d. The Food Advisory Board will regularly set and/or adjust the peak-hour periods, and determine the principles of use of the space for student bookings. Any change in the operating hours, use of space guidelines, booking principles, or other issues which need to be reviewed will require the approval of the Food Advisory Board before those changes are implemented.
The consequence of what the agreement actually means is whether Feds and Food Services as parties to the agreement, or the Food Advisory Board have authority over changing the hours of operation.
The changes were set to take effect Friday 19 May. However, according to Feds President Michelle Zakrison, the vote on the decision was postponed for two weeks.
- Poor sales force reduced hours at SLC Tim Hortons Imp 29 Jul 2005
- SLC Tim Hortons serving 11,500 customers a week uws 01 Oct 2004
- UW-Feds Tim Hortons agreement uws 10 Sep 2004
- Food Services opens SLC Tim Hortons uws 01 Sep 2004
The Tim Horton's isn't about making money, it is about being available to students. They get prime real estate that they need to keep all the Tim Horton's on campus, student get a 24/7 access to food and coffee and a place to sit. Student on FAB, please keep that in mind if you are told it is loosing money at night. That is to be expected, especially in the summer. I doubt it is significant.
The agreement says:
Tim Hortons SLC will be open on a 24 hour basis from the first day of classes until the last day of exams each term [...]
Any change in the operating hours [...] will require the approval of the Food Advisory Board before those changes are implemented.
It is pretty clear that FAB approval is necessary to change the hours, but is not the only condition required. The FAB has authority over its approval, but not the agreement and the agreement says 24-hours.
I expect that our feds executive will do everything possible to prevent this from happening. The agreement was clear and straight forward and there is no need for compromise. When this contract was written , it was known that having a 24/7 service would have some effect on profitability, it was just part of the deal. If these changes go through then food services would have basically cheated us into the contract , they might have had this planned all along. So basically a deal is a deal, students WILL be affected by this, so our answer to Food services should just be NO.
If the whole reasoning behind closing shop early during summer hours is to minimize financial loss and maximize profit, then it would seem completely contradictory to be completely closed during times of potentially high sales, especially the weekend right before frosh week. Almost all frosh leaders (close to, if not over 1000 in total) are on campus starting the Saturday before frosh week, and frosh (not to mention their parents) would start arriving Sunday and Monday.
I, for one, can attest to how much coffee and bagels we frosh leaders consume...it is the only that that keeps me going leading up to and during frosh week.
To be closed during such a time when huge sales and profit are guaranteed would, on the surface, seem silly. However, I think a very logical explanation would be that they're trying to divert traffic to Brubakers. Now, I cannot remember if Brubakers is normally open during that period, but I think it's safe to assume it is since the residence cafeterias are.
Why would they do that? Well, for one, we all know how ridiculously expensive Brubakers is...so there would most likely be a higher profit margin than Timmy's. Not only that, but they don't have to pay a cut of their revenue to Feds. So basically, they could make more money through Brubakers alone than to have both Brubakers and Timmy's open. Why compete with yourself right?
Another possible reason might be that it is difficult to get workers to work over the Labour Day long weekend. This is between terms, so there may be no student workers.
Is Brubakers ever open on the weekend? Cafeterias are normally open on the weekend when people live there in res, but even with frosh and frosh leaders around a big part of Bankbreakers market is not there, university staff and the rest of the student body. Frosh can use the caf and frosh leaders mostly know better.
Is it kind of funny that recently a Board decided against Feds in favour of a bus company with a monopoly and a food Board is trying to decide against Feds in favour of a food operation with a monopoly. Does it make you want to pull out the board and play Monopoly with Feds? Is that too much of a stretch? "Of course this is all just speculation."
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