A new dining location, the 1871 Café, will open later this fall to offer grab-and-go meals for the college community. As a result, some Campus Auxiliary Services employees will be relocated to the new café.
The announcement came on Sept. 16, through a post on the Campus Auxiliary Services’ Instagram account. 1871 Café will be located in Fraser Hall where food and coffee is easily accessible to students and faculty.
The closing of Milne Library and the joint closure of Books and Bytes served as motivation for opening the new dining location.
“This came about for a couple of reasons. The main one is we recognize that the loss of Books and Bytes and Milne Library meant that we had an opportunity,” CAS Interim Executive Director Mat Felthousen said. “And as this will be for the foreseeable future, we wanted to make sure that we had a cafe within this space.”
The 1871 Café will operate differently than other dining options on campus. Given the limited space in Fraser Hall, the café will operate as a grab-and-go dining service.
“It will not have food preparation within its footprint … [We] will be preparing food elsewhere and bringing it to the cafe,” Felthousen said. “We’ll have coolers stocked with these items … made ahead of time and available in the grab and go coolers.”
According to CAS, a variety of options will be provided in a format that anyone could grab their orders and eat in a different location.
“So, we’ll have coffee from Finger Lakes Roasters. We’ll have grab and go items like salads, sandwiches, entrees snacks, parfaits, that kind of thing … We’ll have some sushi options and we’ll have a variety of snacks,” Felthousen said. “We want to provide a fair amount of variety.”
Since the new café is set to open later this fall, many CAS workers will be reassigned. In addition, social distancing guidelines will be taken into account for when the dining location becomes accessible to students and faculty, according to Felthousen.
“We were expecting to have the café open to coincide with the beginning of the fall semester, so those [workers who] are going to be working in the café are currently in the other facilities,” Felthousen said. “We would have a similar measure in place that we have in the other facilities where we have signage, reminding people of the distancing and mask expectations, where they have markings on the floor.”
Felthousen said CAS plans to take potential feedback upon the opening and continued operation of the cafe and anticipates being receptive to student needs.
“We’re open to feedback from the students, faculty and staff that make use of the cafe. If there are things that are working well or not working well, we will take that into account and make adjustments,” he said. “We know it’s not a complete replacement of Books and Bytes, but we hope that it addresses a majority of what Books and Bytes provided to fill that need.”