Elevating the Campus Shop Experience

Michael Buzalka

CHECKS PLEASE. Checkerboard design touches highlight the 50s diner motif in Binghamton U.’s Woods Diner, as does the 57 Chevy grill wall mount.

Once upon a time, the college convenience store existed in a spartan form as a convenient outlet for students to purchase items they needed for dorm life: toiletries, cleaning products, plus candy and gum.

That stuff still flies off the shelves, but it represents a much smaller part of the product mix these days, and the campus c-store is morphing into a much more comprehensive services provider. Not inconsequentially, it is also growing as a campus foodservice outlet as the minimal packaged sweets are joined by elaborate prepared foods designed either for immediate consumption or for later.

Through its annual Best in the Business Campus C-Store awards program, the National Association of College and University Food Services (NACUFS) highlights the most innovative convenience retailing outlets in the nation. And they in turn provide a look at some of the emerging trends in the onsite c-store category.

On the following pages, we briefly profile the winners in the six awards categories…

Judges for the 2011 competition included a team of students and campus c-store managers as well as Dean Wright, director of dining services at Brigham Young University; John Lawn, chief editor of Food Management magazine; and Jason Gilbert, who represented sponsor PepsiCo Foodservice.