New food options at UH pleasing, profitable
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer
As customers begin stacking up in front of Ono Pono, a vegetarian lunchwagon that's one of many new culinary offerings on the University of Hawai'i-Manoa campus, grad student Dana Miller speed-dials her boyfriend to ask whether he's down for organic, healthy, vegetarian pasta with pesto or the curry with veggies and rice.
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Jonah Chang Purdy, a 19-year-old sophomore in Hawaiian Studies, swoops past them by skateboard, stopping long enough in the leafy Kuykendall Courtyard to proclaim the virtues of the new Chow Mein Express' orange chicken over at the Paradise Palms Café.
Marizel Hiponia enjoys an iced white chocolate mocha from Starbucks at UH's College of Business Administration.
Meanwhile, Jill Higa and Brandon Ing have skipped lunch at the dorm — though it's part of their paid meal plans — to lay down $6.50 each for Ono Pono's veggie pasta special. And Electrical Engineering chairman Todd Reed and his wife, assistant professor Nancy Reed, smile over steaming cups of the lunchwagon's organic coffee.
Welcome to lunch hour at UH's flagship campus — a growing feast of food choices and financial strategies.
"This has lured me back to campus," said 23-year-old astronomy graduate student Maria Pereira, who used to take her lunch business to Manoa Valley eateries. "It's nice to eat healthy," she said, balancing an Ono Pono salad of kale, two lettuces, plus beans and sprouts with Savory Island dressing made fresh.
Everyone benefits
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Staff and students applaud the growing smorgasbord on campus, while officials high-five one another for the increase in revenue and look at it as maybe the first drop in a bucket of potential new income for the UH system.
The Ono Pono vegetarian lunchwagon at Kuykendall Courtyard has become a popular spot for UH-Manoa students who want a healthier lunch alternative. The wagon is part of a growing smorgasbord of food choices on campus, which pleases students and university officials.
J.R.W. "Wick" Sloane, UH chief financial officer, calls the incremental profits "substantial" from the new culinary mix he helped engineer — $80,000 in the past quarter alone in the Campus Center cafeteria, with the possibility of a net of $200,000 for the year.
Ono Pono opened in January, just a few months after Subway moved into Campus Center — and lunch lines are also long there. Food giant Sodexho, which holds the master contract for campus food service, poured $688,000 into improving cafeteria food from the former somewhat institutional offerings, by adding such items as sushi, pasta, bagels, tossed-to-order salad, vegetarian plate lunches, grilled meats and fresh-baked bread.
That's not counting coffee carts popping up, and the new "cookout" strategy with the roving barbecue tent that turns up at different parts of campus to offer grilled steak and chicken plate lunches. Or the expanded hours at the exterior Starbucks window at the nearby Paradise Palms Café that will stay open until 1 a.m. when Hamilton Library goes 24 hours three nights a week — Mondays through Wednesdays — starting today.
"We're trying to get the word out (to food vendors) about how much foot traffic there is on the UH campuses," Sloane says. "Forty-five thousand people a day on 10 campuses."
Sloane says entrepreneurial efforts based around providing comfort and convenience to students could be a major windfall for the system and make campus life more student-friendly.
"Our students take long bus rides and have jobs and they should be able to have something good to eat conveniently when they're here," he says. "This is a deliberate effort to bring in new revenues and make campus life easier."
Last summer Sloane looked into the Sodexho cafeteria contract, realized competition wasn't precluded, and reopened negotiations to improve services at not only Manoa and UH-Hilo, but the community colleges as well.
Sloane believes additional choices could include everything from small convenience shops to more vending machines and assorted lunchwagons and coffee carts. He even envisions a sliding scale of dorm accommodations that fits different budgets, but also brings in revenue.
"Boston University earns $40 million net from their dorms, both premium and basic rooms, and selling cheeseburgers," Sloane said.
New revenue sources
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Legislators have encouraged the university to look at increasing its entrepreneurial efforts, as well as exploring other ways to bring in new money not dependent on state money.
"We've been here a month and we already have regulars. ... We believe a hearty vegetarian meal will satisfy any meat eater," said Gene Tamashiro, proprietor of Ono Pono.
For instance, at Kapi'olani Community College, about $4.2 million in revenue comes from food-related ventures, including about $400,000 from short-term culinary and hospitality contracts, $1 million from campus cafeterias, and as much as $300,000 from culinary training contracts with the military.
The Honda International Center under KCC Senior Academic Dean Leon Richards coordinates contract programs at all seven community colleges, and makes around $1 million annually from international programs.
"The bigger market is Hawai'i as the education destination for culinary training," says KCC chancellor John Morton. "We're targeting not the average citizen but the professional. I think there's a great market for that ... That's exactly what we're going to try to do with the Cannon Club."
When it's eventually built, the club will be the heart of a four-year culinary arts program, but the school needs to raise $12 million to $14 million to put up the building and is looking at doing that with a combination of private, federal and state money.
Different tastes
Sloane considers better and more varied food service overall a no-brainer. According to Ono Pono proprietor Gene Tamashiro, the theory is proving out.
"The ramp-up has been phenomenal," says Tamashiro, sitting at one of 10 new tables dotting the shady Kuykendall Courtyard, tousled hair under a purple bandanna. "We broke the record within two weeks.
"We've been here a month and we already have regulars. At first it was just the women students and faculty. And then the girls started bringing their boyfriends. We believe a hearty vegetarian meal will satisfy any meat eater."
Customer Natalie Nagai said she has been coming every day since Ono Pono opened.
"I enjoy the flavors," said Nagai, who is on staff in a nearby research office. "Even though it's a little more, I'm not opposed to paying that."
Over in the College of Business Administration, at the top corner of campus, Julie Yoshioka and Leslie Ho are deep in calculus at an intimate table next to the new coffee cart loaded with mochas, oatmeal cookies, pound cake and other baked goods, plus salads and sandwiches.
"It's more convenient," says 20-year-old Yoshioka, a junior in the College of Business Administration who stops for coffee at least three times a week. "This way I can stay here, because it's such a long walk (to Campus Center)."
There's yet another coffee cart at the newly enlarged Bachman bus terminal. It opened in the past couple of weeks with bakery products, Seattle's Best coffee, snacks and bottled drinks.
Meanwhile, sports fans are discovering life beyond hot dogs at Stan Sheriff Center, where there's now a carving station for roast beef and turkey, not to mention Dippin Dots ice cream and sushi.
"There are so many food choices at Stan Sheriff now," Sloane says, "we're worried about people missing the basketball game."
Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.
Correction: The name of the major food-service contractor at the University of Hawai'i was incorrect in a previous version of this story.
