Bon Appetit contract with Adobe to continue

By Lauren Busto

The university will extend Bon Appetit's one-year contract with Adobe Lodge for another year, due to an increase in profit from the last year.

The university contracted Bon Appetit to take over management of Adobe last July as a pilot program after the lodge reported heavy financial losses in the last fiscal year.

According to Joe Sugg, assistant vice president of university operations, there were initial problems with staffing last fall, but the university and Adobe Lodge patrons have been happy with the change overall.

The Adobe Lodge is a dining area for faculty and staff on campus and a venue for private events or department meetings. "It offers a very unique, special, removed place for, what I would call, the collegiality of faculty conversing with one another," Sugg said.

In the past, the university has struggled to find a manager that could be a good chef, caterer, marketer and people person all in one, Sugg said.

These problems have led to net financial losses. In the year before Bon Appetit took over, the Adobe Lodge lost more than $137,000.

As a result, a search for new management was started by the Board of Governors of Santa Clara, which is made up of representatives from each school within the university and the administration and finance division.

The financial changes have been significant. According to Sugg, in April 2007, Adobe Lodge was $83,000 under the break-even point. For this year, they had made a profit of $30,000 as of last month.

The changes Bon Appetit have made to the overall business have allowed them to cut costs in vital areas, such as purchasing and labor.

Because they are part of a much larger company, Bon Appetit has the capacity to buy products in larger quantities from bigger vendors, Sugg said.

They already employ a large amount of workers on campus, and as a result, can be much more flexible with their employees.

In the event of a sudden increase in customers at Adobe, they can supplement the university staff with some workers from other areas, such as Mission Bakery.

This cuts the amount of people working each day, and therefore cuts costs, drastically.

Adobe Lodge, as a smaller venue, has been forced to have enough people working to accommodate the occasional surges of customers in years past.

This forced them to pay much higher labor costs than necessary.

The large amount of workers is more than what is necessary for the majority of the time, when there are much fewer customers.

"We've been given a lot of support for service and revamped how service works here," said Jason Landau, assistant general manager of dining services.

Though there were problems at first with employees leaving and some initial questions about changes Bon Appetit made, student workers said things have gotten better.

Junior Nathan Ayala, who worked for Adobe Lodge before and after the change in management, said, "Once the transition took place and the growing pains got worked out, things went smoothly."

Paul Whaley, a junior and supervisor at the lodge, said it is a good environment for student workers.

"I feel like the management is really working together now," he said.

"Things are really meshing well," Whaley said.

Other changes have been made as well. Landau said much of the actual menu has been modified.

Bon Appetit has moved towards locally-grown and organic products and making more things from scratch, he said.

They have also added a panini grill and a toss-to-order salad station, with new menu items in the works, Landau said.

The structures that house the Adobe Lodge dining hall were part of the mission and built by Franciscan brothers in 1822.

Although the current building looks little like the historic mission, it is still the oldest building on a college campus west of the Mississippi River.

The Adobe Lodge is built out of the only remaining brick from the original Santa Clara mission. It was originally built to house stables, storerooms and workrooms. Later, it was turned into living arrangements with a study hall and classroom.

The current layout was created after a fire in 1926.

Contact Lauren Busto at (408) 554-4546 or lbusto@scu.edu