A Tale of Two Cafés

 Outside the window the morning sun rose slowly up the parapets of Old Main. Customers in the new Café on the Quad sipped coffee as students meandered past the quiet Agriculture building. The atmosphere was warm and calm in the Café as a couple professors finalized their purchases and selected an empty table to occupy.

 Three hundred yards away, students retreating from a morning class file into the Quadside Café. The atmosphere is a cacophony of conversation; students entrenched in their studies don headphones as the din grows louder. The crowd, converging toward the register for a morning snack, is less a line than it is a mob. The air is thick with sound and the smell of brewing coffee.

 With the completion of a new agriculture building at Utah State University, students have new labs, high-tech classrooms and a new café bordering the quad.

 “We’ve been open almost three weeks,” said Café on the Quad operations manager Karli Salisbury. “Business has been fantastic; we have regulars now.”

 The café looks west from the east end of the quad. Framed by large windows, customers have a spacious view of the campus from the bar – which features outlets for students to plug in their electronics.

 “I like the outlets. Everywhere you go there is no place to plug your laptop in,” said student Chaleesa Warren. “My battery dies really fast, so that’s nice.”

 Across the sidewalk from the Café on the Quad is the campus library, which has long housed the Quadside Café. For years, the Quadside Café has catered to the campus’ need for donuts, sandwiches and hot drinks.

 “We’ve worked really closely together to make sure our menus don’t duplicate too much,” said Amber Schoenfeld, the operations manager of the Quadside Café. “We both have hot sandwiches, but they are so completely different that people will enjoy going to both places to try them.”

 Both cafés strive to provide unique experiences to the clientele – catering to different tastes.

 The Quadside Café is convenient to students taking a break from studying in the library, Schoenfeld said.

 Café on the Quad is a quick stop for any students entering and exiting class from the agriculture building, according to Warren.

 The Quadside Café has a lot more places to sit and a beautiful view of the sunrise over the mountains, said student Zac Williams.

 Café on the Quad offers unique food, including an ice cream flavor made solely for the café – it isn’t even offered in the Aggie Ice Cream store on campus, according to Salisbury.

 “There is kind of a sense of competition; we are all naturally competitive,” Salisbury said. “But we try to work together.”

 According to Schoenfeld, the competition has been good for business.

 “The first week they opened we were a little bit slower, but our sales have come back,” Schoenfeld said. “It feels like they have taken the edge off of our huge rushes, but more people are coming in throughout the day because people feel with the lines not so long they can be served quicker.”

 Whether students prefer to purvey mountains or campus architecture, sip triple-certified coffee or a cup of hot chocolate, or sit down and enjoy a bagel sandwich or a triple decker club, the Quadside Café and the Café on the Quad are –both—open for business.