Q&A: Bistro management talks higher cookie prices and economic pressures

Bistro cookies, now priced at $2, on Oct. 6, 2025. Photo by Mac Childers.

The Bistro, Willamette’s student-run coffee shop, is known beyond its drinks for its affordable cookies. But as the economy faces inflation and other factors that have caused costs to rise, the Bistro has raised the price of its chocolate chip cookies from $1 to $1.50 and now, as of fall semester, to $2. 

In a conversation with The Collegian’s Aubrey Lee, Emma Stephens (’26), the general manager of the Bistro, and Sarah Leist (’26), the Bistro’s financial manager, broke down the financial considerations the Bistro has to balance, like economic pressures and student affordability. Each has held their respective roles since April of last school year. 

The Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

Lee: Typically, how are the Bistro's finances managed?

Stephens: Sarah [Leist], our financial manager, manages most of the Bistro's finances. That includes doing profit loss reports, paying for invoices, and pushing out tips and wages every two weeks. Her duties are very large; they encompass most of the financial stuff. Myself and the kitchen manager are engaged in some part of it, but most of it's Sarah, and she's doing a great job this year. 

Lee: The cookie price has been raised to $2. Can I ask what led to that decision? 

Leist: Our suppliers have been raising their prices, so it's more expensive for us to buy the ingredients to make everything. I did a cost analysis on all of our cookies, and for the chocolate chip specifically, by pricing them at $1.50, we were actively losing money. It costs more than $1.50 to make a chocolate chip cookie, so raising the price was just kind of inevitable.

Stephens: We really recognize that the chocolate chip cookies are a staple, and they've always been relatively low-priced. We just wanted to keep the Bistro open for everyone. In order to do that, we did have to raise prices. But we didn't do so without recognizing that it would have an impact on the student population in some way.

Lee: What has been the response to the price change from the students so far?

Stephens: We were really worried, especially after last year, when we raised the price 50 cents. Doing so again so early on in our managerial journey was definitely something we were worried about. But I found that people don't really care. I feel like if they're gonna buy a cookie, they're not really deterred by the 50-cent increase. I don't know if that would be true if we raised prices more, but we have not seen a decrease in cookie sales. If anything, with the specials that we've been running, we've been seeing an increase.

Lee: Given the larger state of the economy, are there any considerations for raising the prices of other goods in the Bistro?

Leist: Yeah. We've been getting emails from our matcha provider and from our coffee bean provider that they are raising their prices. So unfortunately, I think more is coming from us. We just haven't gotten to that point yet. 

Stephens: Most of the price increases are probably going to happen next spring. But any decision we make will be with respect to what we think the general student population can handle. We are catering mostly to college students who, in this economic time, also don't have a lot of money to spend. We want people to be able to buy themselves a sweet little treat when they feel like they want it or have coffee at an affordable price. 

Lee: Is there anything else either of you wanted to add or like to communicate to students and customers about the Bistro?

Leist: All of our decisions are made with the best best interest of our employees and the Bistro as a whole and all of our consumers. Those are who we have in mind; we're not like a money-hungry corporation. We're just students like the rest of us just trying to keep our small business alive. 

Stephens: The Bistro has never been like a for-profit business; any money that the Bistro makes does go back into running the Bistro. There have been instances in the past where the Bistro hasn’t made money. We've had lots of losses, and that's put us in financial situations like debt that we're still working with. But those are tricky financial situations that we are willing to be put in because we're trying to provide a service to the student population. I think any opinions people have about the debt, you're more than welcome to have them, but we're also just college students, and we're trying our best to make sure that the business works and stays alive. 

Lee: Since you already brought up the debt, would you mind sharing a little bit more about that situation? 

Stephens: At the end of every year, we reset our finances in a way, and we start with a fresh slate. We start with zero dollars at the beginning of each school year. We spend a lot of money up front just on training and the costs of buying goods.

And then slowly, the theory is, over the whole year we're supposed to make enough money to pay that back. But what's happened in years past is because of the economy, because of the changes to campus … one of the biggest things that we've been talking about with our financial consultant that we've brought in is the switch away from Compass Cash.

It was a thing before our time, like flex dollars, but you could spend it on anything on campus including the Bistro. The transition away from that took away a big source of revenue for the Bistro, so that in conjunction with the state of the economy, and the rising prices, COVID, and just people not having a lot of extra money to spend, the Bistro has not been making a lot of money to pay back all of the costs of running the business each year. So we have been put in debt very slowly over time. 

Every year, we inherit that debt as something that we need to pay off. We're very grateful to receive some subsidies from ASWU in the past. Without them, we couldn't operate. But it's not because we're not running the Bistro in a way that's financially responsible. It's just because of all of these factors piling on top of each other that we really don't have any control over that we are in this financial situation.The debt is something that we're actively trying to reduce and make sure that it’s not a continuing precedent in the Bistro. 

Lee: Is there anything else either of you would like to add? 

Stephens: We're just very grateful for the students. Honestly, I think the best part about this job is having the interaction with the public and the student body, and seeing how everybody treats the Bistro like their own space is what makes it so important to me. I feel like we don't have a lot of third spaces on campus, and I think that the Bistro is one of them. And so we want to keep it open, so people can come and hang out, regardless of where they live, what sports and clubs they are involved in or whatever. There are the hearths and stuff, but the Bistro is where everybody hangs out, and we just want to keep doing that. I love seeing people in the Bistro. It makes me so happy.