Food For Thought Cafe is one step closer to reopening in winter term by having their request for rent and funds for a Point of Sale system approved by the Student Fee Committee.
Over the last five months, an advisory board has been working on a business plan and presenting to stakeholders to reopen the cafe, which was closed last year because of a major budget deficit and insufficient records.
The Smith Advisory Board has decided that Smith Memorial Student Union, room 26, the space which previously housed the cafe, will remain a student space until FFT or another Portland State organization is able to open. This prevents the space from being used by a third party, but doesn’t guarantee the space for FFT until they are approved and ready to be operational by Jan. 5.
“At the Smith Advisory Board meeting, they provided a rather ambiguous decision which did not necessarily leave the space for the cafe guaranteed in any way,” said Hayden Leach, co-chair of the FFT Advisory Board.
FFT is hesitant to move forward with hiring until they are officially given the space.
“Our plan is to go back to Brian Hustoles, who is the director of [the] student union, and bring him a draft memorandum of understanding, which would be an agreement between Student Activities and Leadership Programs on behalf of Food For Thought and the student union that outlines when we can use the space and how,” said Aimee Shattuck, director of SALP.
From there, FFT must purchase a POS system, a system similar to a cash register but that can keep track of
more information.
Leach said that the Oregon University System, Aimee Shattuck and Domanic Thomas, assistant dean of Student Life and director of Conduct and Community Standards, all required that a POS system be in the cafe. The group revised their original start-up cost request to consist of just the POS system and rent.
The FFT Advisory Board submitted three quotes for the POS system, two of which did not comply with university guidelines, leaving them with one possible choice.
“The POS system that we chose and that was approved allowed us to stay within the university guidelines, and granted, yes, it may not be the cheapest one we can buy, [but] it’s one that is fairly priced and within our realms of guidelines that we need to follow,” said Elyse Cogburn, Associated Students of PSU sustainability director, who has worked closely with the FFT Advisory Board.
“It’s going to give us all of the information that we need on a screen with the click of a button instead of going through the tape like they used to,” Cogburn added.
The POS system will allow employees to clock in and out, can monitor who is operating the till, will allow stakeholders to monitor the cafe and keep more sufficient records, among other things.
If the cafe reopens, the first six months will focus on breaking even after start-up costs.
“The menu for the first six months is very bare-bones; that was a stipulation by [Shattuck], that given that we would only be open for six months, because we won’t be open for the summer, it needed to be nearly guaranteed that the cafe is not going to be losing money,” Leach said. “Really, the situation is that if the cafe loses money, it will be shut down. This is our last chance.”
With the circumstances leading to the closure of FFT, the current FFT Advisory Board has a lot to prove if they are to open.
“Everyone is going to be looking really closely at Food For Thought because we have a lot to make up for what happened in the past,” Cogburn said.
Shattuck, who made the final decision to close FFT, is looking forward to the cafe’s potential reopening.
“I think that when it closed, the biggest loss to the campus was the community space and the sense that that gave,” Shattuck said. “So it feels good to be a part of a group that’s helping to have it reopen and open in a better place.”