McGlynn`s Sports Café Celebrates Female Student

DESIGN
McGlynn’s Sports Café
Celebrates Female
Student-Athletes
W
hen the College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn., opened the Gorecki Dining and
Conference Center in 2007, it decided to close
another eatery on campus — McGlynn’s.
“When Gorecki opened, the decision was made to
close McGlynn’s because Gorecki was so popular,” said
Tom Oehler, director of Culinary Services. “The dropoff in business at McGlynn’s really predicated the college closing it.”
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ON-CAMPUS HOSPITALITY
DESIGN
But the new facility — originally profiled in the May 2008 issue of On-Campus
Hospitality — became so popular that it
was operating above capacity. “We had a
tremendous experience with the opening
of the Gorecki Dining Center to the point
where during our peak meal periods, we
were operating at 110 percent capacity,”
he said. “As we moved into the third full
year of operation in Gorecki, one of the
things that we anecdotally heard was that
our students wanted more choices of venues on campus.”
The school conducted focus groups
with its students — as well as those from
St. John’s, an all-male school with 1,900
students, with which they share an academic program — on what they wanted. “Through those focus groups, what really
came out was that they wanted a casual and grab ’n go venue,” said Oehler.
Thus, McGlynn’s was reborn. “We had this wonderful fully equipped operation
that was just begging to be reopened,” he said. “The location made sense. With the
fact that we had to invest very little capital to get it up and running, it started to
make sense.”
More focus groups dealt with what the students wanted to be served in the new
McGlynn’s. “The three things that came up universally were, ‘We can’t get a great
burger and fries on campus,’” said Oehler. “‘We would really like to get a great
basket of wings and we want our deli sandwiches back (which were removed from
Gorecki).’ Those were the three cornerstones of the menu we developed over the
summer.”
These items are now featured at McGlynn’s Sports Café. “I have to say, I am
probably a little bit biased, but the comments we have gotten on those three items
have been just overwhelmingly positive,” he said. “We proudly serve a certified
Black Angus ground chuck third-pound fresh-never-frozen burger. We developed
a wonderful potato bun recipe in our in-house bakery over the summertime. The
burgers are made on a freshly made potato bun lightly grilled on the flat top. Our
French fries are being cut daily.”
In addition to these items, there is a significant grab ’n go aspect to the café.
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DESIGN
“This building is located very close to some of the upper-class
apartments, and so it is a hybrid grab ’n go and convenience
store,” said Oehler. “It is all food and beverage products. We
have a selection of microwaveable products that students can
take back to their apartments, quarts of milk and other small
items they can stock their refrigerators with, as well as readyto-eat sandwiches and salads.”
About 60 percent of the sales are for eat-in. “The eat-in is
at capacity for both lunch and dinner, which I think is driving a
lot more of the grab ’n go,” he said. “It has a fairly small seating area in terms of number of seats — it is about 60 seats. Fortunately, they turn
over rather quickly.
AT-A-GLANCE
At 7 at night, you
are hard pressed to
find a seat. Our initial goal was to serve
500-700 meals a
day. We are currentSt. Joseph, Minn.
ly serving approximately 1,100.”
COLLEGE OF SAINT
BENEDICT
Enrollment: 2,082
Type of operation: Self-operated
Number of dining facilities on campus: 4
Approximate number of meals served
daily: 3,200
Annual food/beverage purchases (in
dollars): $1.3 million
Key Staff:
Tom Oehler, director of Culinary
Services
Sonja Gidlow, executive director of
Auxiliary Services
Becky Terwey, manager of
McGlynn’s
Chuck Gibbons, sous chef
Carmen Welinski, Culinary Services
manager
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The Look
McGlynn’s
Sports Café is located in the school’s
main athletic complex. “That is how
the concept of making it a sports café
morphed,” said Oehler. “It is a direct
result of them being
able to eat prior to
games and after games as well as serving visiting teams and
we see a spike when the sport activities are going on.”
They wanted the look of the new McGlynn’s to keep
that athletic theme going — but on a small budget. “We had
$10,000 in mind. It wasn’t a hard and fast figure, but we knew
that we needed to make this happen and we didn’t have a
whole lot of money to work with,” said Sonja Gidlow, executive director of Auxiliary Services. “The original McGlynn’s
was established in the ’90s. Its décor was really dated — rosecolored flower things, lots of grays and mauve-y kind of stuff.
It felt dated when you went in there. The first thing I wanted
to do was to give it a little bit more of a college-spirit feel.”
A good portion of the new decorations were donated.
“Sports cafés often have that memorabilia feel to them —
you’ve got stuff all over the walls — and we didn’t want this
to have a cluttered look, but we really did want it to look like
a place that represented our women athletes,” she said. “Because we are a women’s college, everything is about women
here. That is pretty unusual on college campuses. We asked
our athletic staff for any old or no-longer-used equipment,
jerseys, things like that, and that old battered stuff was better than brand-new stuff. We have got items from each sport.
There are 11 sports on campus, and each one is represented
typically with a jersey and the equipment used in them.”
The furniture and booths were also reupholstered in the
school colors — red and black. “We did some painting and some photo murals on
the wall that are pretty
amazing,” said
ON-CAMPUS HOSPITALITY
Gidlow. “We did that in house. The
murals are photo murals, so we created
a mural using photos of our women
athletes — some contemporary, some
from the archives. We had a local printer print that on a wall covering, and
then we had a wallpaperer install it.”
To the school’s knowledge, this is
the only sports café on any campus
exclusively celebrating a school’s female athletes. “It is also expanding on
the sense of pride, acknowledgement
of our women athletes and helping
the community support them and acknowledge them and their accomplishments,” she said.
—OCH
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