Flex dollar acceptance, price adjustments and new advisement: The Bistro announces several changes for fall semester
Bistro collaboration with Bon Appetit includes promise to relieve future deficits
This year, the Bistro implemented a number of changes, including a collaboration with Bon Appetit, menu updates and accepting flex dollars.
The Bistro’s acceptance of Flex Dollars as a form of payment is part of a larger collaboration with Bon Appetit, who now serves in an “advising capacity,” allowing the Bistro to “get business and restaurant advising from people on their team who have had real life experience,” said Maddie Schelling (’27), the general manager of the Bistro.
The Bistro has also updated its menu to “include more savory options,” said Schelling, the first of which is their new burrito. The menu updates also include an adjustment to the prices of items on the Bistro menu to “be a little more comparable with other local Salem coffee shops.”
With these multitude of changes within the Bistro, “we’ve actually shown some pretty consistent and somewhat significant increases in revenue,” Schelling said. “The goal is with [this] collaboration, we will be able to have enough footing to not have a deficit this year.”
Additionally, the Bistro’s new collaboration with Bon Appetit includes the promise that “Willamette will take care of any deficit that remains at the end of this year and going forward,” Schelling said.
But the Bistro still has some debt remaining from last year, and this new collaboration does not include paying off the old debt. The Bistro plans to ask the Associated Students of Willamette University (ASWU) senate for relief, likely at the upcoming Oct. 15 ASWU meeting.
“This is the last time we will be asking ASWU to cover the deficit,” Schelling said.
When discussing the Bistro’s previous financial concerns, Schelling cited post-COVID challenges combined with “changes in school infrastructure” and high turnover in manager positions due to students graduating. This combination “caused us to consistently have a severe deficit by the end of each [school] year.”
This is not the first time the Bistro has looked to the ASWU senate to relieve their deficit. Last year, the senate granted the Bistro almost $20,000, with the condition that ASWU and the Bistro work to create an “accountability plan.”
More recently, ASWU and the Bistro have worked out the details of this plan, which includes the Bistro presenting its finances to the senate.
ASWU Treasurer Peyton Edmunds (’29) explained further on the intent behind the plan. “At the end of each semester, the Bistro would come in and basically do a little update,” she said. “They would talk about how their finances are doing and their financial health and any steps they are doing to help make it better.”
However, Schelling shared some concerns. “As the Bistro we are really open to being open to the student body, [but] we also feel that we’re students as well, and accountability implies that we’ve been doing something wrong…when really, in many ways the situation is outside of student managers hands,” Schelling said.
Ultimately, Schelling expressed gratitude for student support as the Bistro navigates economic challenges and structural changes. “The management team’s number one priority is keeping the Bistro as a student-centered space.”
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